Bizarre, mutated landscapes and hyper-realistic neon beasts characterise Laurie Hogin’s dystopian painted universe. Brightly irresistible yet deeply critical, her “parodies of opulence” explore issues of consumerism, desire and mankind’s alienation from the natural world.
Hogin received her BFA from Cornell University, and MFA from the School of Art Institute, Chicago. She is currently Chair of the Painting and Sculpture Programme, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. During her 20-year career in fine arts, Hogin has held over 25 individual exhibitions, participated in countless group shows and lectured across the USA. Her work is featured in a number of public collections and museums, including New York Public Library, Addison Gallery of American Art, The Federal Reserve Bank Collection, Detroit, and the Illinois State Museum.
Aside from the 17th-century Dutch masters, Italian Renaissance paintings or naturalists such as John Audubon, Hogin cites contemporary sources of inspiration including retail displays, cartoons, fashion, toys and pornography. Her allegorical oil paintings appropriate the seductive visual language of popular culture to wittily expose our modern-day ills. As the artist explains, “my animals remain allegories of culture as much as avatars of my own psyche…their furs and skins are both tactile and toxic.”
