Erik Hanson The Surrealist

When I was a little kid looking at the artists of the early 20th century I was very excited by the surrealists and the futurists who created manifestoes denouncing what came before them and clearing the way for a future where their movement would rule, One of the problems with this modernist march forward to make it new, make it new !.....discarding what came before them....was that artists couldn’t really go back and look at previous movements and take from that what work for them. I loved reading in Andy Warhol’s diaries when he came to the conclusion in the early 60s that “drips were out” Some of his early pop paintings of Coke bottles and cartoon characters are very drippy and you could see how they came out of abstract expressionism with figurations slowly emerging from the energetic mess. But at a certain point any sign of the hand had to go in order to make it noon so therefore drips were out

What a great time to be an artist!… I love that we live in a time when as an artist we can go back and look at movements from the past and take from them what resonates with us. No one seems to think of my work as suspect because I use so many elements of classic modernism combining surrealism, futurism and pop in a single work.

 I always admired the surrealists For their ability to depict through an uncanny juxtaposition the ethereal events which take such a great part in our lives.I  I started out working with ethereal subject matter such as music and then I started to think where does music live so I created environments such as these multi panel and wooden rooms which to me would house these ethereal elements such as music and smells things that can’t really be recorded but inform our daily life. 

I am using a kind of automatic writing by drawing spirals for the duration of a listen to a song thereby creating a visual manifestation of a sound. Then I started to make environments where the music could live but there were no depictions of the music these are the wood paneled rooms who’s planes defy logic.

I’ve also moved every day cultural artifacts such as cartoon characters to Yves Tanguys planet I have also adapted the cartoon construct of a fight cloud where various appendages emerge in an illogical fashion As a way of depicting the chaos of every day life. And the fight between being our authentic selves and pleasing others

Erik Hanson The Graffitti Artist

I got a notice from The Bronx museum today that they will be showing Henry Chalfant's work and I was reminded how much that work meant to me......when I was a little kid I was fascinated by his images of subway cars in NYC covered in graffitti and when I first came to NYC in the 1980's I was thrilled when one of these moving sculptures would pull into a subway station. So using my artist's logic, In 2005 I made a series of works on paper where my 5 Favorite Albums by the group "Sparks" were translated into their own universe and the song titles where rendered as graffitti floating in the sky, these were exhibited at MoMA/PS1 in 2005 in a show called "The Curious crystals...." a show curated by Bob Nickas and Steve La Freniere....