Morphogenesis - the structural evolution of development of forms of life, or of an organism or part.
The images you see here were not pressured to happen – they were allowed to happen. Layers of paint begin to dictate prominent shapes and forms. Dominant forms assert themselves and become foreground, yet often still tenuously connected to the background through lofts and strands of paint.
I've learned a lot from paint. Allowing paintings to evolve by surfing the strange loops of the subconscious has given me an idea of how the universe arrived: being of one infinite substance, all discrete forms are really constructs of the consciousness that perceives them. There is a oneness to all, in that the foreground objects – trees and dogs and planets – only achieve definition as singular forms through the mind’s proclivity to catalog and identify, quantify and codify. It is my belief that living things are avatars of the One Life – the Soul of the Universe – what the Upanishads call the Self - and our consciousness is a collective phenomenon of word-and-symbol association that creates form out of formlessness as its primary essence of being. Every time I recognize an object – a mountain, for example – it exists only as long as my consciousness defines it as such. As soon as I turn my attention away, the foreground-of-being I labeled “mountain” retreats back into the field of oneness I pulled it from. It became a sovereign entity only as long as I perceived it as such.
Looking at the forms in these paintings, you may discover some morphing going on. In some paintings, I have stopped short of precise definition of forms, or purposely created multiple perspectives -- an attempt to illustrate the relativistic nature of reality.
These pictures, for all their crassness, began as a simple exploration into this principle. So while the image may show a disembodied butt-crack ejecting marmots into a guillotine / sandwich maker, the goal is an aesthetic of sincerity.
Why Strange Loops?
In his book Godel, Escher, Bach, the cognitive theorist Douglas Hofstadter puts forth the concept of human consciousness as a strange loop. A strange loop is a case of self-reference which affects the original item. Imagine two mirrors held up to each other, their infinite regress cascading away into forever. I’ve titled this show Strange Loops to refer to this mind-examining-itself phenomenon, as well as referring to the curious calligraphy that noodles its way throughout these vignettes.
Who is Lord North?
Erik VanHorn is not Lord North. Think of Lord North as a brand name for a certain aesthetic approach. Not every painting Erik paints is a Lord North painting. But these are.
Who is Erik Van Horn?
I’m an artist and animator. I’ve been a lot of other things.
Though I’ve had dozens of painting shows over the years, this is my first West Coast exhibition. The thirty-five works are heavy on the recent work with a few “legacy items” thrown in for color. The Lord North series of paintings started circa 1991 when I developed what I call the “Morphogenetic” method. It’s a stream-of-consciousness style with recurring themes of anxiety, repression and dystopia, and a design sense that betrays my day job as a cartoonist.
April 2006
Erik Van Horn is a painter, writer and animator currently holed up in Glendale with his wife KB and son Sage. He holds an MFA in Computer Animation from Savannah College of Art and Design and a BFA in Fine Art from Shepherd College. His prolific art career has seen over twenty solo exhibitions from 1991 to the present, with paintings and drawings in nearly one hundred private collections.
Lord North’s Strange Loops collects some recent works of his trademark graphic surrealist style, equal parts Miró and Mad Magazine.
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