ARTIST TALK: Allen Hansen, The Atmosphere of Nothingness / or 0

About

6:30 PM to 8:30 PM, Thursday, September 20, 2018

Please join Lichtundfire and the Artist for an Informal Artist Talk & Exhibition Walk Thru with Q & A for The Atmosphere of Nothingness/ or 0, a solo exhibition of large scale abstract paintings by Allen Hansen (Allen Anthony Hansen). This marks Allen Hansen's first individual show at Lichtundfire and his fifth appearance at the gallery.

Allen Hansen, originally a skilled Neo-Romantic landscape painter, has been working for the past two decades as a Minimalist after a progressive transformation of continuously minimalizing his landscapes until the question arose: "Where do you go when you get rid of the horizon line..?"

Hansen describes it as finding himself being rather interested in "what contains and- is contained by- the number 0 than in the abstracted jug of water", in other words- in preserving the atmosphere of a landscape void of its horizon line. Subsequently, keeping the light source, or more general, the value of light in lieu of the horizon line, became Hansen's new point of reference for his execution and direction for the viewer.

A challenge to the eye's forever restless search for reference points in the quest to discover WHAT IS THERE- Hansen's depiction of an 'atmosphere of nothingness', (beyond light and color), keeps his audience guessing, and reaching out into the dense void of a carefully calculated composition.

A fictitious light source and the occasional color on his dark canvases, painted with roofing tar, a medium shaped by his personal childhood memories as son of a roofer, leave the viewer with all but no substantiated image, and rather with a sense of time and space.

What lies beyond this threshold in Hansen's paintings, however, is in the eye of each beholder, and in the visceral experience of his works, shaped by the distinct application of his medium and- a whiff of roofing tar.

Allen Hansen was born in Los Angeles, CA and raised in California. He holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the University of California, Irvine, CA. In the 1980's Hansen relocated to New York City and has since exhibited in numerous solo and group exhibitions at venues and institutions such as Hampden Gallery, UMASS Amherst, MA, Proctor Art Gallery at Bard College, Annandale, NY and The Virginia Museum of Fine Art, Richmond, VA and in New York City at ABC No Rio, Exit Art, The Abrazo Interno and LES Galleries at The Clemente, Carolyn J Roy Gallery, Front Room, Side Show, Carter Burder, Edward Thorp, The Whitney Museum of American Art and, most recently, at LICHTUNDFIRE, NYC.

Allen Hansen's Solo Exhibition is on view at Lichtundfire Wed through Sat, noon-6 pm, & Sun 1-6 pm.

For more information and images of The Atmosphere of Nothingness/ or 0, please contact Priska Juschka at info@lichtundfire.com, or via telephone 917-675-7835, or visit www.lichtundfire.com

Lichtundfire: 175 Rivington Street NY NY 10002

Contact: Priska Juschka, info@lichtundfire.com, Tel: 917-675-7835

General Gallery Hours:

Wednesday to Saturday 12 pm to 6 pm

Sunday 1 pm to 6 pm

www.lichtundfire.com

KINDLY SPONSORED BY

Dragon’s Milk, Tsingtao and  Kopparberg