Mechanical Documentation: Art by John Hovig
I-4 Study 4 (Orange), acrylic and screenprint ink on linen
Today’s featured artist is John Hovig! John has a strange and interesting body of work on his website, www.johnhovig.com. John’s works have a sense of mechanical documentation to them, with close-up images of bicycle gears and spokes, as well as prints of hundreds of paperclips and rulers. His CR Mandalas depict large, dense clusters of paperclips so that they look perhaps like bacterial organisms under a microscope.
CR-239 Steel Ruler in Green, acrylic and silkscreen on linen
I love John’s Iris paintings, where the artist uses a combination of screen printing and acrylic. John isolates this interesting component of the eye to create an image that is recognizable knowing the title, but could just as easily function as a fully abstract work.
In his drawings, John uses a technique of continuous contour line to create immensely detailed abstract drawings. He starts each of these works with a broad stroke, which he then builds on in increasingly tiny movements.
