As New York Streets are starting to look deserted, Alex Hamilton’s artistic vision is coming back to haunt us. As if the artist knew of the distortion our reality would face and the invisible force of destruction getting hold of our cities.
Lines in white and colour are meandering and spreading like weird waves through the air, sneakily taking over familiar squares and plazas. The flowing lines lead our eye into an ambivalent architectural landscape that constantly shifts between recognisable structure and dissolution.
Urban space is reinvented and reinterpreted through Hamilton’s trademark technique of photocopying photographs onto watercolour paper to then erase parts of the image while developing the composition with a variety of drawing techniques. The artist asks us to re-orientate ourselves amidst the ordered chaos of the familiar and the imagined. His dense and layered drawings open our tired eyes to our alienated reality with the promise of ultimate renewal.
In Alex Hamilton’s mind, and in his ever-expanding drawing universe, fragmented realities and seemingly contradictory associations somehow make sense. The disruption, chaos and ongoing renewal threaten and accuse us, yet deep down they also fascinate us, as we get a condensed glimpse of our far too complex world.