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MARVIN HINES
Remains of the Fire Oil on Canvas 60” x 60”
The work of Marvin Hines–born in Virginia and based in
Dallas – maintains a delicate balance between portraying
our ways of organizing knowledge, and the impossibility
of depicting their continual process of adaptation. Many
canvases suggest grids, patterns and rhythms that are
still developing: kinetic systems hard at work. His pieces
—mostly oil and acrylic paintings—portray order and chaos
developing side by side. Hines grapples with the productive
imperfections of our schemes in an abstract expressionist
style, layering measured geometric patterns and strong
brushstrokes. Rather than overwhelming visual space with
incoherence, the resulting compositions create fascinating
tensions, questioning our ability to process and integrate
difference and change.
Hines’ bright, dynamic and multilayered paintings recall
the gestures of Mark Rothko and Hans Hofmann, among
others. Meanwhile, his inclusion of abstract grids, patterns
and geometric structures evoke Piet Mondrian, using
repetition and slight variations as expressive tools. Melding
these rhetorical styles, Hines suggests simultaneous
reliance upon and suspicion of grand totalizing systems.
Each painting features shapes, colors and lines that recur
predictably. Between and beneath these, however, bold
brush strokes, thick layers of whites, grays and blacks,
and ridged accumulations of paint undermine any sense of
smooth coherence. It’s as if Hines were creating structures
then testing them to their breaking point.
All this, however, doesn’t make Hines’ work aggressive or
violent. Instead, he achieves a mood of playful collaboration
with viewers, intimating that flexibility and improvisation are
equally integral to human experience as order and continuity.
Hines acknowledges this tension between comfort and
In the Midst of this Wide Quietness Oil on Canvas 60” x 60”
Marvin in his Studio
uncertainty, explaining that his work “reflects my strong belief
in the ability of color and abstract shapes as a provocation
of emotion and an adventure into self-interpretation.”
Though his paintings often evoke cornerstones of modern
aesthetics, his project is distinctly postmodern: to create,
explore and exploit ruptures, repetitions and glitches
in our organizational networks. Across city grids, social
networks and computer chips to flight patterns, coordinate
systems and family trees, Hines imagines less rigid, linear
approaches to thinking and living.
Website: www.Art-Mine.com/ArtistPage/Marvin_Hines.aspx
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