Following our week-long presentation in LA of Laurie Hogin's latest body of paintings, HAZE, we are delighted to bring this show, including a range of new works, to Seattle.

Best known for her allegorical paintings of mutant plants and animals in languishing, poisoned landscapes, posed as though for classical still life or portraiture, Hogin's latest body of work continues her examination of human (though not uniquely so) experiences and impulses spanning love, pleasure, desire, trauma, anger, obsession, addiction, violence, and grief. With special attention to how these states manifest in the current social, political, and environmental moment, Hogin uses narrative imagery to represent and discuss their consequences. Combining various tropes from the history of painting, natural history and scientific display, portraiture, entertainment, advertising, propaganda, and various strategies of political representation such as flag colors and group-identity iconology with satirical or poetic metaphors, she describes political, social, economic, environmental, and emotional phenomena that structure our experiences and portend our possible futures.

The exhibition’s title, HAZE, is a word that can refer to air pollution from industry or wildfires, a mental state of ignorant or confused transcendence, or an act of harassment or “gaslighting”. Its multiple meanings introduce some of the exhibition’s main topics while also referring to the artist’s strategy of using symbols, signs, icons, and metaphors to carry multiple, sometimes seemingly contradictory, or synthetic meanings. Such strategies mimic the language of the unconscious; dream language, appearing in all forms of art-making and other cultural messaging that structures and orients human identity and behavior.