Hoving exhibit explores relationship between real and imagined images

“Presence,” an exhibit of work by artist Jackie Hoving, will be on view March 28 through April 24 at Ripon College. The exhibit will be in Caestecker Gallery, C.J. Rodman Center for the Arts, on the Ripon College campus.

An artist’s talk will be given at 7 p.m. March 28 in the lobby of Rodman Center. A reception will follow in the gallery.

Hoving is a nationally exhibiting artist, showing primarily in New York and Philadelphia. Her work recently was included in a traveling exhibit, “In Search Of …” Her work typically incorporates painting, printmaking, wallpaper, animation and collage, and is engaged in the concealing and revealing of images through patterns and layers, weaving together images to create a camouflaged, non-linear narrative.

“The term ‘presence’ refers to ‘the state or fact of existing,’ while also pointing to ‘a supernatural influence felt to be nearby,’” Hoving says. “My work exists in the gap between these two meanings. There may be more to our world than what we can empirically understand; perceptions shift and suddenly the un-seeable can be seen. Despite this openness to mystical occurrence, the directly observed world provides me with a fertile starting point.”

The motif of the forest, Hoving says, is a place for her to gauge the relationship between real and imagined images. Trees, hunting and wildlife act as foils to explore concepts of hiding, presence and absence. Figures and landscapes exist as sites for overlay and transparency. She looks beyond the literal description of a person or a place and instead conjures seemingly intangible impressions through the accumulation of color and mark.

“The process of building up mark upon mark, color upon color, allows for a density of image and a complexity of connotations,” Hoving says. “A pulsing red glow weaves through a forest. The implicit line created by the gaze between two animals is made into a solid form. Figures begin as specific people but are obscured and shifted through an additive process of drawing, spray paint and collage. Relationships between people, space, color and material come together to form images that are at once abstract in nature but also resonant in their emotional undertone.”

Hoving has received several awards and fellowships for her work. She teaches at Pratt University, Brooklyn, N.Y.

Click here to learn more about the Art Department at Ripon College.

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