Aaron Hobson's work is mesmerizing.
I grew up with a mystery writer (my mother), which leads me down the very twisted path of my imagination that really connects with this work. The sense of darkness, foreboding and a strange sense of dry wit really compels me to look at this work over and over and over.
I first saw the work on Aline Smithson's great blog Lenscratch, and then again during my review of Critical Mass, from the great group at PhotoLucida.
Information about Cinemascapes -
Hobson's work is created by combining several sequential, vertical images, thereby offering more visual information and an obscured rendition of any moment depicted by a single image. These preserved moments straddle between the contexts of fictitious, universal and isolated autobiographical experiences. At times inspired by scenery near the artist's residence in the Adirondack mountains, the work contains narratives steeped in the everyday-from the machismo American cowboy to the disheveled Wall Street staffer. In a fashion comparable to that of feminist portraiture the figure in the image is always the artist whose signified identity morphs through changes in attire and ever-changing elusory surroundings. The nuanced details in the photographs are not forced, whether the interior of a '64 Mercury or a seemingly unconscious figure, and lack excessive or immediately shocking details. Rather, the restive energy that pervades the artist's work unexpectedly draws and subsequently arrests the viewer as the narrative unfolds exposing sensual, disturbing, and onerous undertones. The incredibly intricate and open-ended narratives are at once left to the interpretation of the viewer and restrained by details conveying the intentions of the artist; in the end, leaving the onlooker to ponder happenings within the frame incessantly.
