StephanieB: 2011

Monday, April 4, 2011

artist report

The artist that I choose to write about is New York-based artist Shane Hope. He has attended the University of California Los Angeles, the San Francisco Art Institute, and the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture. He received his MFA from the University of California San Diego in 2002, and has exhibited his work in galleries in New York, Italy, and Belgium. In 2009 he had a solo exhibition called “Your Mom is Open Source” at the Winkleman Gallery.
Shane Hope’s pieces are very complex. His archival pigment prints consist of thousands and thousands of miniscule details that all work together to make up one piece. With Hope’s work there is never a single focal point. There is so much to look at that your eye continuously races across his prints moving from one part to another. This is one aspect that I really enjoy about his work. His pieces possess an element of chaos but don’t appear too overwhelming. Every little detail has its own meaning and place.
Hope calls his prints Molecular Modeling prints, or “Mol Mods”. His belief is that “the molecule is the brushstroke of the future”. His tool is the computer and he uses the coding languages Python and Perl. Hope’s work is very conceptual and may be hard to comprehend with all of his intricate and compounded words that he uses to describe it. For example, he uses the terms Technoprogressivism, Futurology, and Molecular Machines. He uses things drawn in flowchart software and also converts drawings into molecule models. Shane Hope’s work is extremely unique and I have never seen anything like it. His means and methods are extraordinary and one of a kind. I love the bright saturated colors as well as the abstract qualities. I also love the patterns and textures that are created in his work through his layering process. Although his work is complicated, I think that almost anyone can find something that like about it whether or not they completely understand it.