Pop music is emotional, transformative, and, like all music, essentially abstract, playing out its mysterious existence in the invisible elements of time and sound waves. And for many of us, pop music is an intimate component of our self-definition, having first gotten under our skin through the record albums we bought and listened to (and the CDs we continue to buy and listen to) alone in our rooms or cars, underscoring the very depths of our identities. Pop music also has several visual components which are both powerful and not necessarily peripheral, including the potent imagery of the lyrics, the trend-setting/generation defining designs of record jackets and the fanciful images projected by musicians provide the imagery for our dreams and fantasies.

Erik Hanson makes drawings, paintings and sculpture that take visual measure of our complex experience of music; David Bowie, Roxy Music, and The Village People, among many others, inspire his thoughtful work. He explores the gap between the experiential and the analytical -- at one level, his work attempts to directly reflect the way we encounter pop music on record albums; his drawings are literally visual maps corresponding to the length of songs, with references to the configuration of grooves on an LP, the number of songs that make up an album, and the order in which songs are presented. Yet on another level, this analytical approach to an entirely subjective subject matter opens a window on sensory perception and its relation to the self.

In this exhibition, Hanson's work will focus on natural elements, extending his interest in the related dichotomies between nature and culture, and thinking and feeling. Works in this show include a sculpted branch of buds with their color drained from them, slowly fading out like a song; two clusters of grass, one right side up, the other upside down, referencing the configuration of tracks on a phonograph record; and a skylight fixed on the night sky where a constellation of stars appear, each star referencing a song on a David Bowie album. Hanson will also be showing two paintings on canvas, both of which were inspired by early strategies of abstraction. One, Untitled (Village People), is based on the colors and shapes of camouflage; its elements refer to the names of places that were gay meccas at the time of the release of the Village People's album, and the songs all contain references to remaking oneself. The music that Hanson uses in all of his pieces resonates with hidden messages -- codes which the artist has gleaned from popular culture, all of which contribute to the artist’s invention of self.

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