Art Gage Hamilton - The Alexander Hamilton Project
The art of Oregonian Gage Hamilton is akin to the feeling a twelve year old boy would undergo upon first opening a skin magazine; it is jaw dropping, shocking, and addicting. At first, he does not know what to make of it, but his worldly vantage is forever altered, and he is definitely coming back for a sequel.
The innovation of what Hamilton crafts is a mind bender. The aspirations of his ideas seem almost implausible. Yet he achieves brilliance, visceral three dimensional M.C. Escher pieces, and manages to do so while making it appear effortless. Unlike many of his contemporaries, who linger in a state of pretense, Gage Hamilton creates with a reason.
Look no further than The Alexander Hamilton Project.
He calls it “A celebration of the absurdity of money and the incessant desire to make it”. With all of the complex and structured threats to everyday life that money causes, The Alexander Hamilton Project subtitles our motion picture with genius simplicity. With a scale currency bill, crumbled and discarded behind the rear of Wall Street’s iconic Charging Bull, the innuendo is a biting, searing synopsis. Hamilton’s admitted money fetish (not as a system, rather as an object) pours all over TAHP.
Whether constructing dollar-Mache floral arrangements in the cracks of Detroit’s urban blight, or presenting the gut check landscape of a Portland garbage bin overflowing with the green stuff, the motif is never lost, although with Hamilton’s gift, it would be easy to be distracted.
Once told that a career in Wall Street would make him a man, Gage Hamilton’s art portfolio is healthier than the financial portfolios of many of the very traders and gurus he skewers. Once a cliché, there are now literally two sides to every coin; those who chase it, and those who lambast the audacity it breeds. Who’s to say who is “right”, but through his passion, Gage Hamilton is starting the conversation.
Reader Comments (1)
Tremendous