About Vince Hazen

When making art I try to be conceptually clever and formally sophisticated in my efforts to document an artful life. Combining a love for Natural History with Dada strategies I create artifacts that elevate the overlooked into aesthetic experience. I invent art making rules and techniques that are constantly changing to fit each new epiphany of an examined life. Modernist form and mechanical reproduction are equally at my disposal, for there are no theoretical barriers in my artistic thought. I seek a style-less art, believing that styles die; only kitsch survives.

For me, the choice of subject matter is a convoluted process that mixes intuition and rational thought. The process relies heavily upon past experiences and the direct observation of my environment. 

The pattern in my art reflects my interest in the mysteries of the metaphysical. Beauty and significance is derived not from godly precision but from flaws and irregularities, the human element of randomness and variety that is unique to hand crafted objects. This tedious time consuming process is also an important method of giving an art object value in the eyes of the viewer.

Jimmie Durham describes the post-modern aesthetic as romantically representational and naively sophisticated, using cleanliness, purity and simplicity as signs of sophistication. I’ve adopted this aesthetic to shift the context of filth (dog hair, muddy paw prints, spoiled food in my refrigerator,) pests (millers, lice, fleas, ticks, spiders, mice, yellow jackets, junk mail) or mundane nuisance (picking stickers from my socks) into objects of meaning. This concept elevates the quality of my life.