Vignette: Mia Hanson

“Ida Disa” by Mia Hanson, Photograph, POR

To begin at the beginning, photographer Mia Hanson has a first memory of a camera: “While my parents were away, I sought out a 35mm film camera from a glass case and held it to my right eye; instantly, the world around me had space and definition unlike before. It was a new way of seeing, I realized.”

Today when Hanson teaches digital photography for Louisville Visual Art, she keeps this important “first time” in mind. “We’re not just  taking fun pictures in class, we are learning how to see in a new way.”

Hanson’s images often discover an otherworldly quality, a view of human figures that escapes the mundane details of corporeal existence. One is tempted use the word ghost, and while it is true that a ghost might appear in a Mia Hanson photograph, we must be open to a more organic and ephemeral relationship between the artist and her subject. As Hanson explains in a 2006 interview:

“I'm always searching for the soul of my subject. As a photographer, I try to tap into some other frequency of mood and emotion that is there, yet hidden. Unlike the painter who creates from imagination, I'm fascinated with the thought of lifting the veil from our given reality.”

All art can investigate this thin place of transition between Illusion and Reality, Life and Death, posing questions about different planes of existence, if not always answering them. Photography occupies a special place in this territory, because it plays on our expectations that the camera is capturing an objective reality, when the truth is that it is another tool in the artist’s box. Even when Hanson is using natural environments, such as in “Disturbance in Central Park”, the location is suggestive of a fantasy world. The pensive pose could be anywhere in the world, and only the title ties it to a few yards from a busy Manhattan street. And the image is timeless. It looks to me like a frame enlargement from an early silent film. Look at stills from F.W. Murnau’s Sunrise for a comparison.

“Disturbance Central Park” by Mia Hanson, Photograph, POR

Hanson has lived in Stockholm but returned to the states with her partner, painter Hawk Alfredson to live for several years in the fabled Chelsea Hotel in NYC. While in residence there she, “Created portraits utilizing the light and charged energy of the hotel atmosphere while careful not to disturb or “document “ what is not entirely capable of being captured. The ghosts are best left alone.”

We can venture a guess how much the Hotel Chelsea influenced Hanson’s images, but it may a rhetorical question. If we entertain the notion of an artist connecting to other realities, then both she and Alfredson might have arrived at the Chelsea guided by unseen but always present forces. That may sound eccentric and picturesque, but, after all, we are talking about connecting to an ethereal plane.

Hanson’s work has appeared as cover art illustration for publishing houses such as Random House, Houghton & Mifflin, and Simon & Schuster, as well as magazine editorial work for Psychology Today and New York Black Book. She has exhibited internationally and is currently teaching for Louisville Visual Art.

Photo: Hawk Alfredson

Hometown: Santa Monica, Ca.
Education: Studied film theory and photography in San Francisco’s Bay Area before leaving to pursue a photographic mentorship with influential photographer/ videographer Matt Mahurin in NYC in the 90’s.
Website: www.miahanson.com

Scroll down for more images

“Jennica” by Mia Hanson, Photograph, POR

“Balance” by Mia Hanson, Photograph, POR

“Terezka the Betrothed Shrew” by Mia Hanson, Photograph, POR

---

Written by Keith Waits. Entire contents copyright © 2018 Louisville Visual Art. All rights reserved. In addition to his work at the LVA, Keith is also the Managing Editor of a website, Arts-Louisville.com, which covers local visual arts, theatre, and music in Louisville.

Are you interested in being on Artebella? Click here to learn more

2019 art[squared] Featured Artist: Hawk Alfredson

“Apparition” by Hawk Alfredson, Oil on canvas, 24x24in, $2000. Available for purchase through silent auction at the 2019 Art[squared] Fundraiser

Photo by Mia Hanson

The 2019 art[squared] Fundraiser will feature the work of three local artists sold through silent auction.

Hawk Alfredson was born in Örebro, Sweden in 1960. He moved to New York City in 1995, where he for many years lived and painted in the fabled Chelsea Hotel. Louisville businessman Gill Holland encountered him there and began enlarging his private collection with Alfredson’s work. When the rising cost of living in NYC became a challenge, Holland introduced the painter to Louisville’s Portland neighborhood, and Alfredson arrived in early 2018.

The life of an artist is unpredictable. Free from the day-to-day grind of business is but a dream for many, but to create is to carve out one’s own space in the universe. It requires little to conjure up the cliché of the bohemian lifestyle with which artists are often characterized: wooly-headed anarchists or anti-social thugs railing against the ruling class and the government.

In truth, the artists who actually live the life work very hard. Many get up early and are diligent about maintaining a studio practice each and every day – a regular workweek not unlike any laborer. But the muse can be a cruel partner, lighting out for other environs with little or no warning. It makes a life in art an endless adventure, and sometimes a move is exactly what is required.

“Yaraia” by Hawk Alfredson, Oil on canvas, 59x79in, 1991 - 2006

An examination of Alfredson’s earlier work finds, compositions of complex structures of people and objects teeming with unrest and curiosity. The surrealistic images merge profound psychological and social disruption that suggest violence but don’t depict it. In the best surrealist tradition, Alfredson explores the conflicts that struggle within the human consciousness. They do not occupy any specific place in history or geography, although the “Northern-European quality” comes through. As dark as they are, there is also an important touch of whimsy at work here, a crucial counter-balance of emotions.

In other paintings Alfredson has conjured up simpler pictures of singular individuals. The religious aspect of the staging – and I choose that word deliberately because of the highly theatrical attitudes he employs, remind us of altar pieces and depictions of beautified saints and martyrs. Is Alfredson imagining the divine when he echoes such iconography? With the passing years, the artist feels less obligated to explain himself, but a recent artist’s statement illustrates his thinking:

“Chance Meeting in the Outskirts of Town” by Hawk Alfredson, Oil on canvas 36x24in, 2013

“When I begin a painting, I have no definitive destination. Rather, while I work I encourage subliminal ideas and cosmic forces to collaborate with the process. What I am hoping to achieve when I paint is a sense of mystery and beauty - I wish to create a vision that not even I, the creator, fully understands. I usually describe my imagery as Magic Realism. I want to transport the viewer into an altered state of consciousness where she or he may be inclined to experience who they truly are when they are free of mundane thoughts. My paintings act as mirrors or Rorschach tests; the viewer perceiving the images filtered through their own reality.” 

Now, as we see in his painting for Louisville Visual Art’s 2019 Art[squared] event, landscape has risen to a greater prominence, or at least the infinite horizon. Alfredson’s work grows less and less populated over his career until we are left almost alone in a primitive landscape, almost as if the artist has been regressing through the past in search of the beginning of life on earth.

“Icon For An Unknown Religion” (detail) by Hawk Alfredson, Oil on canvas, 39x33in, 1999

In 2006, Art & Antiques Magazine proclaimed Mr. Alfredson as "one of the most collectible of the European Contemporary Surrealists of the new Century".

Alfredson’s prestigious list of exhibits includes The Katonah Museum (in a group show curated by Thelma Golden of The Whitney Museum), Japan's Prefectoral Museum in Tokyo, New York's Alternative Museum, Australia's Regional Art Museum in Orange, NSW, and the historic Nordiska Museet in Stockholm, Sweden. Gallery exhibitions can be counted in the hundreds and include the destinations Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago, Boca Raton, Boston and Baltimore along with his frequent showings throughout New York City.

In addition, his presence in The Chelsea Hotel placed him in various film and video projects about the historic location, most notably Abel Ferrara's documentary, "Chelsea on the Rocks", which features Alfredson speaking candidly on his, at times, shocking experiences while living and painting within the walls of the Chelsea. 

Other films to include Hawk's original artwork, courtesy of Film Art L.A.: "Ocean's 13" (Warner Bros.), "Mystery Men" (Universal Pictures) and "I AM LEGEND" (Warner Bros).

Alfredson is scheduled to have a solo show in August at Craft(s) Gallery in Louisville.

Hometown: Örebro, Sweden
Education: Fetco's School of Fine Arts (now Konstskolan i Stockholm); advanced classes in formal painting at Pernby's Målarskola in Stockholm
Website: www.hawkalfredson.com

Scroll down for more images

"Stebuklingas Drugelis" by Hawk Alfredson, Oil over egg tempera/mixed media on canvas, 79x59in, 1994-2005

“Soaraurora” by Hawk Alfredson, Oil on canvas, 30x25in, 2012

Written by Keith Waits. Entire contents copyright © 2018 Louisville Visual Art. All rights reserved. In addition to his work at the LVA, Keith is also the Managing Editor of a website, Arts-Louisville.com, which covers local visual arts, theatre, and music in Louisville. 

Are you interested in being on Artebella? Click here to learn more.