Mark Hagen, Richard Hoblock, Lesley Vance

PRESS RELEASE

Mark Hagen, Richard Hoblock and Lesley Vance

28 June – 2 August 2012

Opening reception: Thursday, 28 June, 6 to 8 pm

Anthony Meier Fine Arts is pleased to present a group exhibition of new paintings and sculptures by three artists, all exhibiting at the gallery for the first time: Mark Hagen, Richard Hoblock and Lesley Vance.

Using utilitarian materials including concrete, steel, burlap and house paint, Mark Hagen navigates themes of modularity, minimalism, DIY building and modern architecture. While his paintings are geometric with a neutral palette and a play on negative space, Hagen veers from this order in his sculptural works with the use of obsidian, a naturally occurring volcanic glass, supported by architectural steel armatures.

While similarly employing negative space, Richard Hoblock’s abstract canvases are a study in excavation. Heavily textured and complex, with surfaces that often appear frenetically torn to expose rich underlayers of color, Hoblock’s paintings maintain an elegance in balance with electric, lyrical tension and movement.  

In contrast to the terrestrial quality of Hoblock’s canvases, Lesley Vance’s abstract surfaces, while also lush in palette and depth, sit entirely in one uniform layer. Vance’s compositions engage still life techniques while intentionally navigating around the specificity of objects in order to illustrate that paint is able to construct its own world.

The juxtaposition of Hagen, Hoblock and Vance’s works offers a conversation on contemporary abstraction and abstract painting that employs similar tools to varied and interesting result.