Shown here is a culmination of collaborative work between The smArt Collective artist member Anton Franz Hoeger and myself. You can catch this solo exhibition of 23 master paintings in Fort Worth, Texas. Location - Arts Fort Worth ( Arts Fort Worth ) Run Time - October 6, 2023 to November 25, 2023 Title - Hoeger's Middle America Curator Statement - Looking across the United States today… Climate Change is catastrophically damaging communities and the environment. Women’s Rights and Trasngender Rights continue to be a source of contention on the national stage. Racism and religious bigotry runs rampant in the face of an increasingly diverse United States. Propaganda has now taken the form of disinformation in the digital age, leading to a division in public health policies over such issues as masks mandates. Furthermore, Militarism and notorious paramilitary groups are on the rise as we see violence erupt at home and abroad. The struggles of the working class continue under the capitalist economic system. Looking at the current American political landscape, polarization is at an all-time high. Anton Franz Hoeger addresses these very problems engulfing American society through his artwork, however, with an emphasis on contemporary White America, specifically Middle America. In art history the movement known as American Regionalism depicted primarily the rural Midwest region (Middle America) in the 1930s; notable artists from this era include Grant Wood and Thomas Hart Benton. Contemporary art should then continue to have a dialogue on the political and cultural distress of Middle America since its development in the 1930s, a wider sentiment that is now shared across the nation. The artworks presented in this exhibition are meant to capture in part, the climate of Middle America’s socio-political atmosphere by providing compelling paintings gathered from Hoeger’s lifetime body of work. These works can also be seen to reference historical and present characteristics of Middle America like that of the continued reliance on railroad, animal husbandry, agricultural, and manufacturing industries. Middle America should not be seen as a monolithic identity. The selected paintings do not attempt to encapsulate the entire demographic of a loosely defined group of people, but rather to hint at a subject matter that is imbued with symbolism and esoteric imagery, often alluding to perceived Middle American conservative values, ideology, religion, and culture. Fantastic Realism, the style in which Hoeger paints, denotes a sense of a familiarity by rendering anatomically correct human figures with deep expressive emotions. In contrast, the figures in the paintings are placed within an unfamiliar background that depicts an empty void in a dream-like space, abstract and foreign, emphasizing the idea that this is a world at odds. Curated by: Mauricio Velasco
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Congratulations!
Artist and Co-Founder at Strike-Slip Gallery SF
10moLegitimately amazing 👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼