I recently visited artist Hugh O’Rourke at his Greenpoint studio. Hugh and I met in 2007 while in Venice, Italy upon our commencement in NYU’s MA in Studio Art program. Since graduating in 2009, he has continued to actively make work and evolve, transferring Pop Art and pop culture into something that is his own.

Whether constructing two or three dimensional space, Hugh tends to focus on removal of information and the act of disappearance, figuratively and metaphorically. He is currently reading various theorists, shifting perceptions of psychoanalysis from Freud’s theory on the unconscious to Young’s theories on myth and the collective unconscious and also Lacan’s Four Concepts of Psychoanalysis.
A cotton candy pink often finds its way into his sculpture and painting and is pleasantly unexpected. It is through this and a strange, moody grey that he makes portraits based on emotional color-form. Recognizable human form is revealed through texture and color field.
What does pink feel like? Well, its up to the viewer to decide through his/her personal and collective experience. Seen in the studio, evidence of dried paint splashed and splattered, decorates the floor in uneven amounts. In the paintings and sculptures each mark, scratch and carved surface contains a particular amount of astuteness. The walls feature paintings neatly hung salon style and the only evidence of chaos exists within the frame of the canvas. In between the negative space is a niche, carved out between sculptural Styrofoam and disruption of two-dimension space on canvas. As an artist, all one can hope for is to remain true to him/herself. Hugh has taken and continues to take risks and it is in the educated risk taking, that art is made.
Hugh O’Rourke is one to keep on your radar! In between, find him at NYU’s fabulous gallery located across from Washington Square Park, 80WSE. Stay tuned….
More soon
xo

— Posted from my iPhone

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