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Image of PHILIP HANSON's What fortitude the Soul contains (Dickinson), 2015

PHILIP HANSON

What fortitude the Soul contains (Dickinson), 2015
oil on canvas
25 1/4 x 25 1/4 in.
64.1 x 64.1 cm

 

JCG8253

Image of PHILIP HANSON's My life closed twice before its close (Dickinson), 2016

PHILIP HANSON

My life closed twice before its close (Dickinson), 2016
oil on canvas
28 x 28 in.
71.1 x 71.1 cm

 

JCG8319

Image of PHILIP HANSON's O Rose thou art sick (Blake), 2014

PHILIP HANSON

O Rose thou art sick (Blake), 2014
oil on canvas
25 1/4 x 25 1/4 in.
64.1 x 64.1 cm
 
JCG8252

 

Image of PHILIP HANSON's What fortitude the Soul contains (Dickinson), 2015

PHILIP HANSON

What fortitude the Soul contains (Dickinson), 2015 
oil on canvas
18 x 18 in.
45.7 x 45.7 cm
 
JCG8253
 

 

Image of PHILIP HANSON's I reckon when I count it all (Dickinson), 2015

PHILIP HANSON

I reckon when I count it all (Dickinson), 2015
oil on canvas
20 x 20 in.
50.8 x 50.8 cm
 
JCG8320
 

 

Image of PHILIP HANSON's O Rose thou art sick (Blake), 2015

PHILIP HANSON

O Rose thou art sick (Blake), 2015
oil on canvas
18 x 18 in.
45.7 x 45.7 cm
 
JCG8155

 

Image of PHILIP HANSON's O Rose thou art sick (Blake), 2016

PHILIP HANSON

O Rose thou art sick (Blake), 2016
oil on canvas
33 3/4 x 33 3/4 in.
85.7 x 85.7 cm
 
 
JCG8318

 

Image of PHILIP HANSON's O Rose thou art sick (Blake), 2015

PHILIP HANSON

O Rose thou art sick (Blake), 2015

oil on canvas

25 1/4 x 25 1/4 in.

64.1 x 64.1 cm

 

JCG8250

 

Image of PHILIP HANSON's I reckon when I count it all (Dickinson), 2015

PHILIP HANSON

I reckon when I count it all (Dickinson), 2015
Oil on canvas
34 x 34 in.
86.4 x 86.4 cm
 
 
JCG8255
Image of PHILIP HANSON's What fortitude the Soul contains (Dickinson), 2015

PHILIP HANSON

What fortitude the Soul contains (Dickinson), 2015
oil on canvas
84 3/4 x 84 3/4 in.
215.3 x 215.3 cm
 
 
JCG8152

 

Image of PHILIP HANSON's I reckon when I count it all (Dickinson), 2014

PHILIP HANSON

I reckon when I count it all (Dickinson), 2014

oil on canvas

42 1/4 x 42 1/4 in.

107.3 x 107.3 cm

 

JCG8247

Image of PHILIP HANSON's The World is Charged With the Glory of God, 2010

PHILIP HANSON

The World is Charged With the Glory of God, 2010
oil on canvas
30 x 30 in.
76.2 x 76.2 cm

 

JCG8235

Image of PHILIP HANSON's I’m nobody! Who are you? (Dickinson), 2014

PHILIP HANSON

I’m nobody! Who are you? (Dickinson), 2014

Oil on canvas

60 1/8 x 48 1/8 in. 

152.7 x 122.2 cm

 

JCG8248

Press Release

Philip Hanson - It is too difficult a Grace - Exhibitions - James Cohan

What fortitude the soul contains (Dickinson), 2015

Philip Hanson

It is too difficult a Grace

 

OPENING RECEPTION: FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 26, 6-8 PM
 

POETRY READING WITH ANSELM BERRIGAN AND JOHN YAU
THURSDAY, MARCH 10, 6:30 PM
 

James Cohan is pleased to present the exhibition It is too difficult a Grace, the gallery’s first solo exhibition of paintings by Philip Hanson. The exhibition will be on view from February 26 through April 3 at the gallery’s Lower East Side location, with an opening reception on Friday, February 26 from 6-8PM.
 
It is too difficult a Grace presents a selection of new and recent paintings that exemplify Hanson’s intersection of text and image, and his complex layering of dense, richly colored patterns with excerpts from Romantic era poets. Originally associated with the Chicago Imagists, Hanson’s approach to painting possesses the Imagists’ desire to capture the visceral and emotional aspects of what it means to be human, yet through the earnestness and sincerity that lives within the words of Emily Dickinson, William Blake, and William Shakespeare.
 
Words in Hanson’s paintings glint across unfurling banners and pass through layers of interlocking spaces characterized by dramatic shifts from light to dark. Often reworking lines from the same poems across multiple compositions, each time the words are manifested in new ways, sometimes echoing previous versions. Several recent works call upon the phrase “what fortitude the soul contains” from Dickinson, demonstrating that way repeatedly concentrating on the same phrase affords Hanson the opportunity to contemplate the underlying meaning, each time the structure and the flow of the letters is transformed.

Utilizing a bold palette of color and the structure of the letters themselves, Hanson
reinvents the language through its shape and therefore impacts its meaning as well.
Hanson’s adoption of this close, line by line analysis of a poem was greatly influenced
by his relationship with the New Criticism movement that proliferated mid-century
literary criticism while he was studying poetry at the University of Chicago. His
practice of diagrammatically breaking down and redeploying a poem across a network
of illuminated supports add to, rather than appropriate from, the poetry that inspires
them.


Hanson’s work is fueled by what curator Michael Rooks refers to as the “New Sincerity
ethos...a paradigm in which the pursuit of grand universal truths, like the virtues of
love, are conditioned by an innate skepticism. An ethos that searches for a truth that
it never expects to find.” The excerpts from poems such as Blake’s “The Sick Rose” and
Dickinson’s “I am nobody! Who are you?” possess this sincerity and fortitude of these
universal truths that have resonated over generations, and which Hanson is able to
externalize so aptly in his paintings.

 

Hanson has actively exhibited his work both nationally and internationally since the late 1960s. His work has been featured in numerous group exhibitions, including the 2014 Whitney Biennial, curated by Michelle Grabner; Chicago Imagists, Karma International, Zurich, (2013); and Art in Chicago, 1945-1995, Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago (1996). Prior to this, Hanson showed with the Chicago Imagists in exhibitions such as the seminal False Image at the Hyde Park Art Center (1968), as well as the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago (1969 and 1972); the Institute of Contemporary Art, Philadelphia (1969); and the Sao Paulo Biennale (1973). His work is in the permanent collections of the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, the Art Institute of Chicago, the National Museum of American Art, Washington, DC, and the Museum des 20 Jahrhunderts, Vienna. Hanson (b. 1943) received his BA from the University of Chicago and an MFA from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago. He currently lives and works in Chicago, Illinois.

 

For press inquiries, please contact Jeffrey Waldron at jwaldron@jamescohan.com or 212-714-9500.

 

For other inquiries, please contact Allison Galgiani at agalgiani@jamescohan.com or at 212-714-9500.

 

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