'Sedimentary', Ben Hamburger and Gus Hoffman, New Orleans Academy of Fine Art, 2024
Sedimentary
Ben Hamburger and Augustus Hoffman
New Orleans Academy of Fine Art
November 16th - December 18th, 2024
Painting is an inexact, messy science. As painters, we can fall victim to the desire for some formula to help guide us from beginning to end. But the act of creating is much more spontaneous and combustible than that.
Throughout the meandering process of making a painting, marks, shapes, and images are often destroyed only to reveal themselves in new ways later. An impulsive mark may fossilize into the scaffolding for an important passage down the line. What was once prized as sacrosanct gets washed away in a new eddy of decision making.
Acts that may feel like an erasure of past decisions are never actually going backwards, they are only moving the work towards some future self. The sediment of various struggles and resolutions accumulate to make the work itself, layered with muddled histories, many hidden beneath the surface but palpable nevertheless.
Photos by Jonathan Traviesa
