Fantasy Pick #13: Hope Gangloff

I’m playing “Fantasy Art Collection,” inspired by games like Fantasy Baseball. Go to the main page to get the idea.

I think my art collection is getting too snooty, and my fantasy life has become insanely disproportionate to my actual life.  I guess it’s also a little suspicious that I’ve only made one acquisition this year—and I really am thrilled to have 2 Albers paintings hanging on the wall of my rent-stabalized apartment—but I didn’t budget properly and I’ve been living on a shoestring ever since.

Truth be told, I really want to be able to buy art someday, although it’s doubtful that I’ll be snapping up Banksys and Lichtensteins like I did last year as my collection got increasingly fancy. So for the time being, I’ve decided to switch gears and buy work by artists that are working today, in need of the support, and maybe, just maybe, not impossible to have in my real life art collection someday.

Fantasy Art Collection Pick #13: Gangloff

I love Hope Gangloff‘s work, so I’m buying one of her paintings. I’ve actually never seen her work in person, but I know of her because she was mentioned last summer on East Village Radio when the DJ had spent the weekend posing for a painting at her studio upstate. So I looked her up and just can’t get the work out of my head. I love it.

Her paintings and drawings have elements of Klimt, Alice Neel, Matisse and Schiele, but what I love most is how personal they seem. I also love the way she incorporates graphic design—detailed wallpaper patterns, colorful textiles, cigarette logos, book covers, magazine pages, ticket stubs, beer bottles etc. Each painting feels narrative to me because of how specific they are—much like a snapshot, I imagine the story that’s developing on either end of the moment she selects to magnify—making the “insignificant” significant.

It seems like it’s always the casual unexpected moments of life that turn into the most important memories, and her work makes me smile and remember that every time I find myself clicking through her website.