Portraits

Portraits
by Erik Hougen

chashama Times Square Art Space
112 West 44th Street
New York, NY

(between Broadway & Sixth Ave. / Subway: 1,2,3,B,D,F,N,Q,R,V,W to 42nd St., 7 & shuttle to Times Square. Bus: M104, M42 to Sixth Ave., M5, M6, M7 to 43rd St.)

February 4 - 16, 2010
Opening reception: Thursday 4th: 6-8p

Thursday 4th: 10a-8p | Saturday 6th: 11a-5p
Monday 8th: 6-9p | Tuesday 9th: 10a-6p
Wednesday 10th: 6-9p | Thursday 11th: 11a-9p
Saturday 13th: 11a-8p | Monday 15th: 6-9p
Tuesday 16th: 10a-6p

Portraits, presented at chashama, is a survey of watercolors from three stages, showing my technical and conceptual experimentation. The first watercolors were created from stills of my sister hiking in the Appalachian mountains. They were only black and white, but laid the foundation for creating a dialogue between the digital video and handmade painting.

In my recent body of work I have been exploring a traditional approach to the portrait. By using only frontal head shot poses in my paintings, I have been able to concentrate on the process to capture the life and personality of my subjects.

Although the end product of my work is typically large-scale watercolors on paper, my process often begins with video stills from the films I make. I reproduce these video stills by separating them into Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, and Black (CMYK), color separation maps. I then "manually print" each separation map using very transparent washes of watercolor. Composed of loose, drippy brushwork, these large-scale works are explorations of a technical imaging process. They are intended to invite the viewer to question the method and origin of the image, as well as the relationship between manual process and photographic reproduction. artist statement Erik Hougen was born in Bismarck, North Dakota and moved to New York City in 2006 to pursue a career as an artist. He graduated with a M.F.A. in Printmaking from Pratt Institute in 2008, and since graduation has worked for Pace Prints as a printer, and as an artist assistant for Takashi Murakami. Erik also operates a silkscreen studio where he prints editions for local artists and co-founded SHO Gallery in 2009. He lives and works in Downtown Brooklyn. 

Portraits is supported in part by an award from the National Endowment for the Arts.