HOPE GANGLOFF

Over her two-decade-long career, Hope Gangloff has become as well known for her landscape and still life painting as she has for the early mark she made on portraiture. Hitting her “supple, sensual, optical stride,” [1] Gangloff follows on with new work that brings her characteristic luminosity to prolonged moments...

A black and indigo Montana landscape, punctuated by neon pink and red stars and city lights; the weaving pink and green tentacles of fauna on the shores of Monterey, California; and, the lavender-hued Mount Monadnock, New Hampshire, at sunset. Operating as compositional vehicles for explorations of color theory, form and scale, these scenes proffer fragmented personal narratives, detailing the locations of some of Gangloff’s most poignant career and private moments.

Wigmore sleeps perhaps too soundly on a suburban lawn; Blaze glowers through parted elevator doors; Ben sits in a windowsill, light from the street illuminating a modest hoarder’s paradise. These are but a few of the characters that populate Hope Gangloff’s world and so her paintings. Surprisingly these candid moments are not captured in the instant, but contrived and painted wholly in the studio. Complete sets are built in the service of spontaneity, to create the semblance of I.R.L.

Gangloff’s frontal, direct and focused paintings recall August Sanders approach to portraiture. The model becomes an archetype under her gaze. Subjects are platonic forms cast into the contemporary; think the cook, the thief, his wife and her lover. But more than bloodless ciphers, these individuals have a story to tell which Gangloff relays through expression, posture and textured nuanced detail. No clue is left to chance but plays a role in the bigger picture.

Within the grand tradition of portraiture, the sitter is commonly surrounded by personal effects meant to provide clues to the identity and personality of the sitter, attributes. In a work by Hope Gangloff, these attributes threaten to become the subject and the sitter, a clever foil which allows for their depiction. Gangloff portrays a generation not through its luminaries but through the unsung details which often escape attention.

A hyper-energized mash-up, “THISORGANIZED” presents work which spans genre and me- dium from almost two dozen young, working artists in dialogue. It is a microcosm of a bur- geoning artistic community that is united by individuality of vision—from Chie Fueki’s vivid multi-cultural response to American popular culture, to Benjamin Degen’s heady, psychedelic throwback to Cubism, to the obsessively rendered pen-and-ink drawings of Blaze Lamper to Yuri Masnyj’s singular approach to Still Life in two and three dimensions.

Hope Gangloff’s is a life examined and perceptively recorded with unfailing attention to detail. Paintings of friends and colleagues capture a personal American Vision, a modern day Dick and Nicole Diver who by some turn of events have found themselves inhabiting a Brooklyn cold-water flat. Psychological portraits, each picture hints at a back story and inner life as suggested by the artist’s frenzied line and distinctive palette. Gangloff paints a picture of being in a modern world, an eloquent hard won beauty.

Hope Gangloff is a collector of moments, moods, objects, and patterns. Primarily portraits of her friends, Gangloff’s work glamourizes the mundane with a signature style. She describes her role among friends as observer, documenting daily activities, exchanges, and reflections. Objects and patterns that she finds visually compelling also figure into her compositions, rendered with the precision of a master draftsperson. Through this body of work, Gangloff offers a tantalizing glimpse into the lives of others—her fragmented narratives leave the viewer longing to know more.

The paintings and drawings of Hope Gangloff faithfully illustrate a life lived. Though drawn from casual snapshots, each work suggests a constructed mise-en-scene whose actors, props and sets have been drawn directly from central casting. Equitably the artist assigns each individual element a starring role. Every scrap of wallpaper, each cigarette or paper lantern, every expression and gesture is lavished with care and attention. The fixed gaze and concentration of detail serves to heighten and intensify the moment. It is this same obsessive attention to detail that propels the work beyond the familiar into the realm of the surreal.

"Summer of Love '07" - a conscious repost to the uptown exhibition of the same name, a montage of contemporary equivalents: excess, youth, hippy chic, war, wayward souls - Bruce Conner, Hope Gangloff, Annette Lemieux, Simone Shubuck, Greg Smith, and Christopher Ulivo.

Hope Gangloff is a collector of moments, moods, objects, and patterns. Primarily portraits of her friends, Gangloff’s work glamourizes the mundane with a signature style. She describes her role among friends as observer, documenting daily activities, exchanges, and reflections. Objects and patterns that she finds visually compelling also figure into her compositions, rendered with the precision of a master draftsperson.