ALLEN HANSEN

BIOGRAPHY

In 1979 I was awarded an internship at the Mary Boone Gallery in New York from the University of California Irvine. I then decided to stay in New York, with the help of my college professor and mentor Craig Kauffman, and pursue my art career. The Edward Thorpe Gallery included several group shows most notably EPIPHANIES IN 1989 with Ross Bleckner, Morris Graves, Joseph Stella, and Walter Murch and NOCTURNAL VISIONS in CONTEMPORARY ART at the Whitney Equitable 1989 with Ross Bleekner, Vija Celmins, Eric Fischel, Alex Katz, and Joan Nelson.

In 1992 I was invited to show at the Proctor Art Gallery Bard College, show title THE DEPICTED UNKNOWN with Jim Sullivan, Ellen Kozak, and Rick Klauber. In 1993 I had a solo show at the Carolyn J. Roy Gallery in New York. Recent exhibitions include a one-person show at the Carter Burden Gallery, New York, and a solo show at the Lichtundfire Gallery, New York. along with multiple group shows at the Lichtundfire Gallery, and was favorably reviewed by Carol Diamond in Delicious Line and favorably reviewed by Jonathan Goodman in Tussle magazine.

Recent paintings are firmly rooted in neo-romantic landscape but rather than representing the sensory geographies of the world outside my current work has moved beyond representation by conjuring and capturing indeterminate geometries. I hope to reflect an ontological dynamic, not unlike that triggered in Proustian memory, where the past and present elide and become “ real without being actual, ideal without being abstract, and immediately the permanent and habitually concealed essence of things is liberated “ ( In Search of Lost Time lll 905-06 ) I have maintained certain formal aspects of my earlier landscape paintings most notably an atmospheric light source, a new point of reference, applied to these formal abstractions. 

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