Gordon Hack

I treat image-making as an unstable, dynamic phenomenon. Trained as a PhD biochemist, I bring the tools of systems analysis to bear on the unruly processes of making and interpreting images.

Working across digital and physical media, I assemble fragments of contemporary visual culture into paintings and objects, using software, acrylic, oil and found materials. These works examine the instability of images, where symbols and gestures collide, and meaning emerges through unpredictable relations.

I build computational systems to investigate how artworks operate within larger networks of attention, behaviour and social interaction. By tracking how people encounter art, I map the information space that an artwork sits within. This is a materialist inquiry into painting’s peculiar agency: its function as network node, store of value and transcendental object. Here I probe the tension between painting’s archaic, almost magical operations and the scientific and sociological lenses through which we increasingly understand the world.