On photographing the “rage, spit, viscera and hope” of San Diego’s extreme music scene with Becky DiGiglio.Noted midcentury and post-War architectural photographer Julius Shulman’s work will be on display at the (free) Central Library Art Gallery beginning Saturday.MOPA’s annual juried youth photography show opens this weekend, and the theme is “Dreamscapes.” Previews of this show look phenomenal.(And More Arts and Culture News) Visual Art If you can make a gift in any amount, we’d appreciate the boost. We’ve raised $54,000 so far - more than halfway to our fundraising goal! An opening reception for “Brightest Beacons, Blindest Eyes” is Thursday evening at Mesa College Gallery. “This is an exercise to keep me sane,” he said. “I make the work because I feel it’s necessary for my life,” he said, and that if other people gain anything from it, that’s a bonus. It wasn’t until well into adulthood that Hogan focused on his art in a sustaining way. With a checkered past of barely making it out of high school, the native San Diegan delved into skateboarding photography and rock music. “You reach a point of maybe exhaustion or hunger,” he said, “Or maybe there’s a sense of satisfaction, like, yeah, I’ll stop there.” John Brinton Hogan in his studio / Photo by Julia Dixon Evans But he admits that the way he determines if a piece is finished sometimes comes down to dinnertime. In Hogan’s case, a mild synesthesia often dictates where the colors end up. His process is as precise as producing or editing a piece of music, but also as random as any flawed, human practice. “I wanted to extremely put my hand in it,” he said. With the digitization of photography, Hogan wanted to maintain an artist’s touch on his work. And by adorning them with paint, he’s not just making something beautiful, he’s calling attention to the way humans use nature as well as the subjective influence of the artist. He photographed people interacting purposefully with the landscape: friends hiking or a volunteer team removing invasive plants. Just before it disappeared, it glowed brightly,” Hogan said. “The moment when the Martian laser beam comes out of the ship and freezes the human beings in the scene, the obliteration, the disappearing of the human form. To him, that was the “War of the Worlds” film. His work was influenced by the fear and anxiety of childhood, specifically things that provoke it. It’s a striking expression of the irreversibility of the human touch on the planet. He took a photograph and digitally processed it, distorting it with a repetitive series of steps in Photoshop until the colors and individual pixels seemed unnatural (and satisfied his mild synesthesia), and then, on a massive print, he painted over the humans or human objects with bright, glittery paint. Hogan’s process to create these works was specific and repetitive. “But everyone seems so frozen and unable to move or do anything collectively to stave off the apocalyptic things that sound like they’re headed our way.” “It’s a particularly anxious time for us as a species, with seemingly nothing but bad news,” he said. Hogan’s forthcoming exhibition, called “Brightest Beacons, Blindest Eyes,” involves landscape photography with a distorted, embellished human component. It’s a sentiment that is somewhat at odds with what is in his work. “If the work ever needs to be unframed and completely taken apart, a conservator could reverse what I’m doing here.” The point is that the mounting process is reversible, and that means the work can last forever. Hogan prepared Japanese-style hinges, using archival-grade wheat paste and small strips of Japanese paper to secure prints to matting and frames. I’m stressed about the fucking temperature in here.” And I can’t step over that line at this point - I mean, I worked in a museum. “To make art that breaks down, that through chemical processes, the work actually either degrades or destroys itself. “There’s a trend right now among artists in contemporary art to make work that is ephemeral, and that’s tempting,” he said. It’s one of the hottest days of the season when I visit, and he’s framing the work that he’ll show at Mesa College Art Gallery this week. Photographer and mixed media artist John Brinton Hogan works out of two small studios perched atop El Cajon Boulevard. “Volunteers Removing Invasive Plants, Anza-Borrego Desert State Park, California, January 2015” from John Brinton Hogan’s exhibition at Mesa College Art Gallery / Photo courtesy of John Brinton Hogan “Volunteers Removing Invasive Plants, Anza-Borrego Desert State Park, California, January 2015” from John Brinton Hogan’s exhibition at Mesa College Art Gallery / Photo courtesy of John Brinton Hogan Culture Report: John Brinton Hogan Plays With Permanence | Voice of San Diego Close
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