Paradoxically, technology is both affirmed and denied in the collages of Melbourne based artist Jason Haufe. In spite of the works handmade appearance, not one line or form has been hand drawn.
Jason uses pieces of paper that were either photocopied from the source material directly, or manipulated digitally on a computer and then printed and photocopied. Much of the source material comes from patterns on the back of pay slips or from the inside of envelopes, photocopied on different scales and then distorted beyond recognition.
These patterns form the basis for the discovery of new visual connections. While collage may be the medium, it is this process that allows the work to function as drawing. Freed from the drudgery of mark making, unique or irregular forms can be repeated many times in new and different combinations.
Undulations and shifts in the line are the result of an emphasis on discovery and decision making, not hand gestures or preconceived ideas. Having exploited the machine in pragmatic fashion, he betrays no love or faith in technology.
Born in 1974 in Melbourne Australia, Jason Haufe has been committed to Abstraction and his professional arts practice for nineteen years. Since graduating with his Honours Degree in Fine Art at Monash University in 1995, he has delivered nineteen solo exhibitions and has explored Abstraction through painting, collages, sculpture and printmaking.
From 1996 to 2010, Jason explored various spatial and pictorial ideas within the limited means of geometric abstraction. He is an accomplished draughtsman and has been shortlisted for the National Drawing Dobell Prize at NSW Art Gallery (Sydney, Australia) in 2009, 2008 and 2005.
Jason has also been shortlisted for the Rick Amor Drawing Prize at The Ballarat Regional Art Gallery. Haufe has been recognised for his rigorous draughtsmanship by Academic and Historian Christopher Heathcote in his essay Journeys into Drawing in the Macmillion Art Publication Contemporary Australian Drawing #1.
Sydney Morning Herald Art Critic Michael Fitzgerald recognised his ability to create dynamic compositions “there is a satisfyingly cerebral play between soft and hard shapes in these abstract works by the Melbourne-based Jason Haufe, who is inspired as much by Howard Arkley as Piet Mondrian in his elegant interlocking grids of tense, spray-painted colour.” His comprehensive body of work explores many aspects of geometric Abstraction and its links to Cubism.
Jason has been selected for major art prizes in Australia such as Fletcher Jones Art Prize (Geelong Art Gallery; 2008), Blake Prize (S.H. Ervin Gallery; 2001), Fleming Muntz Albury Art Prize (Albury Regional Art Gallery; 2005). He is represented in Melbourne by Stephen McLaughlan Gallery and has exhibited at Factory 49 (Sydney), Westspace (Melbourne) and various other artist-run spaces, and has been collected by Art Bank, Chisholm Institute and Monash University.
More recently Jason has been exploring the process of feedback loops to generate new directions in his collages. This is his third solo exhibition at Factory 49 and his first comprising collages.
Jason Haufe
Factory 49, 49 Shepherd Street, Marrickville
Exhibition: 19 – 28 February 2015 (Opening: 18 February 6 – 8pm)
Free entry
For more information, visit: www.factory49.blogspot.com or www.jasonhaufe.com for details.
Image: (supplied by the artist)