Islands
Erik Hougen & Stephanie Bassos
Brooklyn, ny
July, 2018
As Richman finally recorded it, “Roadrunner” was the most obvious song in the world, and the strangest. - Greil Marcus, Lipstick Traces A Secret History of the Twentieth Century.
In Lipstick Traces, Greil Marcus describes the Jonathan Richman song Roadrunner as both obvious and strange. When reading Marcus’ description of the Richman song, the work of Erik Hougen always comes to mind. It’s something about the atmosphere each artist creates: the sense of landscape passing by with progressive urgency and the way they both construct images that seem to be pulled directly from the American collective experience.
The seven works in Islands rests on the tension between the obvious and strange. They are large-scale digital photographs taken by Hougen, the content is simple and everyday: a solitary motor boat on a silent lake, two men in a pick-up truck, a waste paper basket in an empty office building, the back of a hooded figure. Hougen then applies paint to the photograph in individual layers of CMYK. He layers paint on the image the way ink is applied to a print, but he does this completely by hand; doing manually what is usually Erik Hougen “Islands #7” done by machine. This manual process allows Hougen to make decisions about what to bury or accentuate from the original photograph. With Hougen’s editorial choices, innocuous images take on the suggestion of the sinister or unknown.
Planting the Seeds of Revolution in DUMBO
Hyper Allergic
2011
Even the ambitious curators of Can’t Hear the Revolution at Kunsthalle Galapagos admit that revolutions tend to happen slowly. But that doesn’t mean they’re not determined. With the debut show for the new Kunsthalle Galapagos curators, they are fixing the roots of what they hope will grow into an initiative where, above all, art will have a purpose.
The reestablished Kunsthalle Galapagos got off to a sweltering start last Saturday with a packed opening in the gallery situated above Galapagos Art Space. The exhibit by the new Kunsthalle Galapagos collective, Julie McKim, Gracie Kazer, Erik Hougen, Albert Shelton and Paul Bertolino, was organized in just two weeks, and the salon-style exhibit with works by over 100 artists does have an air of spontaneity about it. The group is taking over the space from Elizabeth Grady, who organized some impressive installations in 2010 and 2011, including Ofri Cnaani’s The Sota Project and Ryan Humphrey’s Look for the Dream that Keeps Coming Back, which incorporated limited artist editions.
Like every group show of this scope, there are highs and lows, but I was overall impressed with the quality of the art and the intelligent playfulness that gives it a bit of continuity. (I wasn’t surprised to hear several of the artists have or currently work for Jeff Koons or Takashi Murakami.) By inviting artists they knew and had worked with in the past, the curators intended Can’t Hear the Revolution to be a launching event, to showcase the work of the artists in the community they’re involved with, and who they would like to consider for solo shows and site specific installations in the future.
Interview with Daniel Kingery and Julie McKim
White Hot Magazine
2010
Daniel Kingery and Julie McKim like to talk. This probably came in handy as their recent show at Tape Modern, You Are Free was curated across an ocean. McKim is based in New York and Kingery has been living in Berlin for the last eight years. With two very different perspectives on the Berlin art scene and on curation in general, McKim and Kingery possess insight that is evident in the quality of the work in You Are Free. A group show that explores, among other things, the connections between visual art, music, youth and rebellion You Are Free captures moments that are both universal and incredibly personal.
Caroline Potter: As an art city Berlin is really exciting right now, coming from New York the art world feels much more accessible.
Julie McKim: I mean Germans are more formal, so I think there’s that.
Daniel Kingery: Things are a lot less formal though, I think the art scene is just a lot more laid back. Maybe four years or so ago, it got super-professionalized and then galleries from all over the world started moving here and opening space because it was cool, they could access a lot of artists and it was relatively affordable.
DK: People have the freedom to develop on their own terms in Berlin. That always has the negative side as well, a lot of sort of half artists. The great thing about Berlin is the people who aren’t really very serious do end up doing something else.
JM: The thing for me in New York is that it’s really necessary to find community. Community has been really key, and in Berlin it seems like community is a more natural possibility. I think in Berlin, I probably could go to a few bars and have a dialogue and meet artists where as, I don’t think it’s possible in New York in the same way. You come to New York for this very specific time in the art world, and I don’t know if its over, but it’s different. But people are still always going there. And we’re all searching for something that I kind of found in Berlin.