Marvin in his Studio 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 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.

www.Art-Mine.com/ArtistPage/Marvin_Hines.aspx

Remains of the Fire - Oil on Canvas 60'' x 60'' In the Midst of this Wide Quietness - Oil on Canvas 60'' x 60''