Carter Hodgkin fuses art, science and technology to explore a new language of abstraction.
Approaching the modification of code as a drawing tool, she generates atomic particle collisions to create animated forms, which visualize energy.
Her working process is an interplay between digital means woven into traditional media with an emphasis on the hand. She utilizes a range of media from animation and programming to drawings, paintings and large-scale mosaics.
Her work has been exhibited in the US, Europe & Asia. Awards include the Pollock Krasner Foundation, the Gottlieb Foundation and New York Foundation for the Arts. Americans for the Arts cited her permanent public art project, “Electromagnetic Fall” as one of the best public art projects for 2010. Articles and reviews have appeared in Artforum, Art in America, The New Yorker and Art+Science Now. Her work appears in public and private collections including the ZKM Center for Art & Media Karlsruhe, Germany, the Zimmerli Art Museum, the Basil Alkazzi Foundation, U.S. Art in Embassies Program, and the U.S. Library of Congress.
She lives and works in New York.
CARTER HODGKIN ARTIST STATEMENT
My work is based on visualizations of energy, inspired by particle physics and forms in nature. I use the lines of colliding atomic particles to explore a new language of abstraction.
Fusing physics, digital technology, and painting, I create hyper-energetic compositions based on the unstable paths of speeding particles after collision. I am interested in the structures and patterns of movement revealed by these collisions.
To create my paintings, I generate animations of atomic particle collisions. From these animations, I capture still images, which become templates for the work. A collision is captured and digitized through the lens of mosaic, collapsing the highest tech with the lowest tech imaging.
Conflating mosaic with the digital, form is created by gluing hand-painted paper squares onto grounds of canvas printed with digital noise patterns. Using acrylic and watercolor, I play with color and visual textures to create layers of depth and movement.
The construction of form becomes labor-intensive, meditative and contemplative. What takes seconds to create in a collision, takes weeks to interpret into a painting.
What emerges are paintings which reflect a tension between technology and handcraft revealing states of flux; mining the relationship between algorithmic data and the pictorial while exploring the emotional possibilities of abstraction.
In all these works, I aim for an intense visual experience of flux- where color, line, and form simultaneously coalesce and break down.
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