Photo by Bryan Tarnowski, 2014 http://www.thisiscolossal.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/heather-3.jpg

Heather Hansen is a performance artist who creates large scale charcoal drawings through her body and movement. Hansen works as a process-orientated artist where a great portion of the art is in the performance itself and not just in the finished product. Her body moves from gesture to gesture, leaving behind the evidence of movement through the long gestural lines of charcoal.

One of Hansen’s more recent exhibitions is the Value of Line at Ochi. Here she created performance pieces, as can be seen below, in front of spectators as she draws with her gestures. Hansen’s explains her work of “download[ing] my movement directly onto paper, emptying gestures from one form to another”. Much of her work relates to this process of relaying gestures on to paper, with the finished product as layered and symmetrical expressive lines. Her work relates to drawing into space with her process of creating. The space occupied by her body during creation, the movement of the gestures across the paper from one to another, and the suggestion of time and movement in the finished product, all translate to the theme of drawing into space.

http://www.ochigallery.com/heather-hansen/#lightbox[group-330]/10/

Photo by Spencer Hansen at Ochi Gallery, 2014. http://www.thisiscolossal.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/heather-12.jpg

The artwork below draws attention to an implied 3D space of an interior and exterior of the spherical shape.

Heather Hansen EGLA-1 9.26.15, 2015, charcoal on rice paper 59” X 84”. http://www.ochigallery.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/EGLA-19.26.15_EMAIL-605×415.jpg

Heather Hansen EG SUWON1 8.19.15, 2015 charcoal on canvas, varnish 134” X 134”. http://www.ochigallery.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/EGSUWON1.8.19.15_EMAIL.jpg

Post by Rebecca Lempereur, 1/24/2016