Do you like energetic art? Big canvases with a lot going on? Then check out Christopher Hocking’s rollicking show Paintings, which runs through July at the Lobby Gallery of the UGA Performing Arts Center. The PAC hosts a free reception Thursday, Feb. 12 at 5 p.m.
Hocking, an associate professor of drawing and painting at the Lamar Dodd School of Art, is displaying four large-scale canvases up to 7 feet tall. Each contains a riot of images, as if pictures were pressing their noses against glass and competing for the viewer’s attention.
“I operate as a glimpser,” Hocking says in an artist’s statement, “drawing from a wide constellation of peripheral images: fragments from popular and folk cultures, art history, astrology, toys, games, patterns, children’s books, ephemera, anecdote, and literature.”
Notably, The Wall includes not just a star and a clothesline but a swatch of argyle and a piece of Swiss cheese accompanied by a mouse made of the same cheese.
“I like a lot of things flying around,” says Hocking, who teaches undergraduate and graduate courses in drawing and painting. “Some areas are just planes of color. The things I’m painting are usually things like shapes and forms. They’re not windows into the world. They’re not about anything. They’re about what’s there. There’s not a narrative.”
But these paintings do include homages and suggestions of other works. In Looking for Magic White Elephant, Hocking incudes partial reproductions of two works by Mingering Mike, an obscure Washington DC artist who created countless fake LP covers in the late 1960s and early 1970s.
“I know these paintings are kinda rough on the eyes, ” Hocking says. But it’s only because his canvases present a wealth of colliding images. He’s a noticer, a collector, a joiner — and makes the viewer all these things, too.
“They do reflect my thinking, the way I’m seeing the world,” he says. “I’m not telling you how to think about them. Paying attention to the periphery is important, paying attention and questioning what you’re looking at.”
The PAC Lobby Gallery is on the mezzanine level outside Ramsey Concert Hall, and is free and open to the public Mon.-Fri., 10:00 a.m.-5:00 p.m. and during performances.
For more information about UGA Presents events, visit PAC.UGA.EDU or call the Performing Arts Center Box Office at (706) 542-4400, Mon.-Fri., 10:00 a.m.-5:00 p.m.
