LORI HANSON
Articles
Art Issues - 2000
Lori Hanson at GALLERY LUSCOMBE
At first glance, one is tempted to coral Lori Hanson’s three
dozen zany paintings under the now common place stylistic banner of Pop
Surrealism, but closer inspection shows that they sound other notes as well.
This exhibition features some magic realist landscapes and many images which
could be called psychological portraits in the way that they mine a similar
vein to the work of Lucien Freud and Alice Neel. But these all take a back seat
to the largest works in the show, a series of elongated, panoramic compositions
that synthesize Hanson’s interests into what seem to be mythological
narratives. These narratives sport the kind of abrupt changes of scale and
incident that might remind the viewer of the Sienese break with late-Medieval tradition (pace Duccio and
Lorenzetti), but their color, atmospherics, and undulated topographies also
remind one of Thomas Hart Benton’s rhapsodic portrayals of quasi mythic American historical incidents.The panoramic compositions offer Hanson a way to bracket,
contain, and stage-manage the conflicted impulses toward supercilious satire
and empathic pathos that make her portraits a bit confusing. Certainly, there
is nothing deficient about Hanson’s technique; in fact, her ability to use
color to model complex topographies of skin and land is admirable. But the
panoramas seem to offer her a way to apply her talents to ideas that are worthy
of the obvious effort involved, and that makes each truly seductive, even
momentous.
Mark Van Proyen is an artist and art critic who is Associate
Professor of Art History, Painting and Digital Imaging at the San Francisco Art
Institute. His San Francisco e-mail appears regularly in Art Issues.
ARTWEEK - 1998
Serious Fun at GALLERY OBOY
Lori Hanson’s brand of
grotesque, psychological portraiture carries the greatest emotional content of
the show. Her fleshy, twisted funhouse faces suggest anxiety raised to an
alarming pitch, yet we remain connected through frontal immediacy and the
cracked and fissured lines of her magnified snapshots.
David Hunt for Artweek
ARTWEEK- 2003
Lori Hanson & Lawrence Lincoln at
SAN FRANCISCO MODERN MUSEUM ARTIST’S GALLERY
Lori Hanson and Lawrence Lincoln
collaborate to create images of unlikely circumstance and improbable
juxtaposition. Like a riddle, they combine elements of carefully rendered
people and landscapes in a way that challenges the viewer to figure them out.
In so doing, the work is open for reflection and interpretation. Road Car
Chandelier is described by the artists as charting “the collision course
between romantic love and practical cooperation”. Here a couple squats together
on a dirt highway divider busy with an unknown task. Traffic comes and goes on
either side and dusky blue fills the sky. Adding to the conundrum, the image is
inlaid into a rectangular bed of cement which is in turn displayed in a ornate
gold frame.
Debora Koppman for Artweek
