ALLAN D. HASTY
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Allan D. Hasty’s Art is an intriguing exploration of American obsessions.
It’s a vast country with complex parallel realities, with strong storytellers shaping it’s perceptions and identity. Allan is one of those storytellers using the language of Visual Art in a very efficient manner in this process. His is a Conceptual work of Art. It’s strength is clarity, formal exploration, and visual drama. He learned lessons from Marcel Duchamp and Andy Warhol very well, making them work for our current unsettling time. His Texan upbringing and years working as an Artist in NYC are incorporated into the DNA of his work; explorations of sexuality, violence, addiction, social tensions, money & power, ...... In the creative process, he is using different mediums; from manipulated photography, collages, printmaking, painting, video, text based work,... to be best able to break through to the viewer with a precise message. In this particular new set of Allan’s works, a series of 10 paintings on paper, he continues to explore American underbelly with underground sensibility. Silk screens of drug brand logos on uncut sheets of U.S. dollar bills. Dollar bills are a play on Warhol, branding, perception, perceived value, and performance, pushing it an inch further with actual bills being the background paper on which the tragedy of the pure addiction is being played. With these precise references, he is going straight for the jugular. “Pray for Death”, “Kiss me”, “USA”, “Blue Horse”, “Hype”,....., are names of the works and drug brands the images belong to. Branding so central to American and global Capitalism in Allan's logic, drug brands printed on American currency, is such a perfect representation of our PostCapitalist crisis we are squarely living in. Obsessions of an Artist in its purest form. |
