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Laurie
Hogin's allegorical paintings of vicious creatures suggestive of human counterparts
skillfully appropriate 17th century Flemish painting techniques to narrate
tales of a poisoned utopia. Frequently humourous images of brand-loyal monkeys,
snarling bunnies and fabulously feathered bird creatures are encoded with
political and cultural messages meant to critique our trust in the contemporary
global economy, including celebrations of hipness, consumerism and tourism.
Hogin contends that the history of European painting since the rise of the
merchant class in the 16th century represents the history of Western attitudes
towards the subjects depicted, including beauty, wealth, domestic life and
romantic transcendence, as well as human dominion over nature. These attitudes
persist, even as our means of representing them have expanded, and are but
part of our daily cultural currency. Hogin's project is to employ a seductive
exposition of nostalgic, painterly celebrations of beauty, romantic allegory
and the pastoral idyll to reveal the ideologies inherent in these visual
forms.
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