Ross HANSEN: Material Images

About

To encounter the work of Ross Hansen is to encounter a painted world that confounds expectations at every turn. This is a world in which images become the objects they describe; where the boundaries between copies and originals are blurred, and the virtual and tangible are inextricably intertwined. This is a world in which time is upended, where a gesture can be extracted from the moment and context of its inception, sampled and replayed at a later date.

Material Images, Ross Hansen's 4th solo exhibition at the gallery, sees the artist continue his conceptually driven deconstruction of the conventions of painting practice. He does so by considering painting 'at one remove', whilst simultaneously working within the confines of the medium. In this latest cycle of work Hansen responds to formulaic and prescriptive modes of art production; from digital brush-marks generated by an algorithm, to the pre-set shapes of French curve templates. He does so with a literal mind-set and a dry wit, reworking these 'standard forms' in a variety of expansive and innovative ways.

The elements in Hansen's paintings appear to live double lives, often appearing to be one thing, before revealing themselves to be another, mediated version of themselves. In photographic reproduction many of Hansen's works appear indistinguishable from the 'original' forms from which they are derived. When encountered in the flesh however they gradually reveal their identity as painted reproductions; made by hand, with brushes and bespoke formulations of pigments and binders. Transformed by process and physicality, the results are materially different images.

Central to an appreciation of Hansen's work is an understanding of the hyper-real context for its genesis. He makes paintings about making paintings, in a cyclic, self-referential continuum of art production that replays the age-old game of painting, ad infinitum. In Hansen's hyper-reality the production process is rarely as it first appears. The fluidity of time, labour and context that becomes possible when 'living in the reproduction' is precisely why the artist chooses to locate his practice within this territory. It is in this space, characterised by flux, variation and contradiction, that Hansen can perform his signature manipulations of perceptions and expectations.