John Hawke’s work began in on-site landscape painting practice.  The performative nature of the artist in public space and the insufficiency of an optical approach in representing the landscape led to a practice that instead sees  landscape as a snarled network of vectors of interest with the artist having an special capability in rupturing existing spatial conditions.

 

Using the principle of productive confusion developed through the collaborative platform Orange Work, for the past seven years he has made architecture and sign interventions into urban environments as well as maintaining a studio practice in painting attempting to create pictorial metaphors for the restriction and partition of public spaces.

 

Hawke studied classics in college, and went to Pratt for graduate school in 2002, writing his art history Master’s thesis on Robert Smithson’s anti-environmentalism.  He participated in the Whitney Independent Study Program in 2006, and is currently a resident in the Volunteer Lawyers for the Arts: Art and Law Residency Program.  His work has been widely exhibited, presented and reviewed.