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Richard Hawkins

Richard HawkinsArtist’s Statement

Though I’ve used many different media in my work (from paintings to ceramics to digital prints), for the sake of clarity I’ve focused the included images on one particular exhibition which represents two recent themes and goals in my practice: an investigation into conventional forms and the re-working of cultural images – both contemporary and historical – through the frame of gay male desire.

Like the drunken smiles on the Greek archaic statuary portrayed in the collages, the altered dollhouses are meant to imbue liveliness into a relatively rigid form through the conventions of hauntedness and entropy. As liveliness in painting often historically perceived in terms of facture, a connection to the “lively” is made between the painted facture in the backgrounds of the collages and the dilapidated exterior of the houses.

Aside from the obvious inclusion of nude statuary and some sense of interior-design­-gone-wrong, the gay content in the work may best be perceived through the allusions made to past works of my own. For example, the combination of contemporary pop-­culture beauty and the gothic in my “disembodied zombie” iris prints and altered Chinese lanterns (like the houses and Greek collages, both were first shown and reviewed here in Los Angeles) should help flush out the desires and urges I have decided to leave relatively submerged in this new body of work.

Website: greenenaftaligallery.com/artists/richard-hawkins

Biography

Select Solo Exhibitions

2010
Art Institute of Chicago

2008
Celestial Telegraph Paintings, Galerie Daniel Buchholz, Cologne, Germany

2007
Mid-Career Survey, De Appel Centre for Contemporary Art, Amsterdam, Netherlands

Select Group Exhibitions

2007
If Everybody Had an Ocean, Tate St. Ives, Cornwall, UK

2005
The Black Byrne Collection, Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, CA

2003
Ishtar, Midway Contemporary Art, St. Paul, M

1998
In Your Face, Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh, PA

1990
Que Overdose!,Mincher/Wilcox Gallery, San Francisco, CA

Professional Expertise

2004 – Present
Core Faculty, Art Center of Pasadena

1997 – 2003
Senior Lecturer, Otis College

EDUCATION

M.F.A., 1988
California Institute of the Arts

B.F.A., 1984
University of Texas