Blind Insights is a series of collage-based work that continues a trajectory of ideas from Hopkins' earlier wall sculptures, while also marking an evolutionary shift in scale and materials. For Hopkins, the intimate scale of collage is emblematic of contemplation:

"Collage provides an analogous process of "breaking down" and "piecing together" the bits of information we call reality".

On an intuitive level, these individual pieces seem to resonate like "feedback loops" between the artist and life as a creative journey. How we make sense of it all, literally, resides just below the surface -- an "inner world" of visceral feelings and insights. 

In addition to its' smaller scale, Blind Insights employs a more painterly approach through its' collaged layering of gouache on paper, and colors that suggest aerial or satellite photography. Even the use of irregular planar-shapes hint at shifting geological surfaces and tectonic plates.

At the same time, Hopkins' use of wood skewers, literally, extends the work into the realm of sculpture, with various allusions to architectural and archeological structures. The overall impression of these hybrid-forms is that of a restless energy, in which they are seemingly morphing from one guise into another -- from one emotional terrain to another.                                                                                                                                                

  See Blind Insights Gallery.

Inner Navigations is a series of intuitively derived contour-line drawings that reveal Hopkins's sculptural background, as well as his improvisatory search for new forms. Characterized by indeterminate structures that seem to float in perpetual suspension, their 3D dimensionality suggests "systems" of various origins, and the potential "chaos" inherent in such a multiplicity of systems. According to Hopkins:                      

"From interstellar systems to molecular systems, life is
comprised of a multitude of systems we navigate on a 
daily basis — ranging from the banal to the sublime, 
from the unconscious to the transformational.”

Occasionally, though, these systems collide, triggering states of confusion and mixed reactions -- "sparks of chaos" for some people may actually be "sparks of creativity" for others. And for Hopkins, in the world of creativity, there is no such thing as "chaos" -- only "creative chaos". 

In Inner Navigations, for example, we encounter technological-looking images that flip back and forth between their appearance as "tools" or the "subject" of such tools. This open-ended interaction between "subject" and "object" also resonates with the paradoxical relationship between the "subjective" and "objective" in quantum physics. It is precisely this open-ended gap of interpretation that provides the space for "creative chaos". 

Ultimately, Hopkins's drawings serve as a field guide for his inner explorations -- a journey that ventures just beyond the shoreline of conscious meaning.                                                                                                                                          See Inner Navigations Gallery.

Cornucopia is a series of watercolors that feed off Hopkins earlier wall sculptures, yet, as a transition from one medium to another, feels less restrained by formal boundaries. According to Hopkins:

"I am especially eager to exploit the fluid energy of water in its' "wet-on-wet” approach and to exercise a more gestural spontaneity through the mediums' intrinsic immediacy."

Unlike the wall sculptures of Hopkins's Circadian Loop series, which "leap" directly from the wall into three dimensional space, these watercolors "embrace" the two dimensional surface of cold press paper and come alive by soaking into the very fibers of its' 100% cotton ground. By harnessing the fluid energy of water and allowing it's spontaneous effect on watercolor washes, Hopkins is literally riding the waves of "creative chaos".

As the series title implies, Hopkins envisions this work as "tapping into a cornucopia of creative energy and improvisation." Qualities that Hopkins pushes to the brink in Beijing through the use of multiple layers — experimental washes that also seem to parallel the cultural layering of assimilation. Indeed, their micro-biological appearances even seem to suggest the immersive nature of such assimilation. 

Finally, when stepping back to view Cornucopia as a whole, one can also see a certain affinity with Hopkins's drawing series, Inner Navigations. If his drawings suggest a field-guide quality, these watercolors evoke a lighter version of Rorschach inkblots — a playful                                                                        invitation for probing the viewer’s imagination.

See Cornucopia Gallery.

Wallscapes is a series of digital photographs of “hutong” walls in Beijing that document the remnants of grey paint used in covering up graffiti and advertising. As Hopkins acknowledges, this project generates a bifurcated series of work — black and grey originals, along with digitally “saturated” versions.

”I enjoy using an “infra red” approach — in which the digital camera allows me to take value temperatures of any given image, and then accordingly adjust their warm and cool colors.”

Hopkins first used this process in his Mirrorscapes work.

In his Wallscapes series, such color-saturation often results in final images that appear more painterly than photographic. It also invites the viewer to stop and explore a visual landscape that would ordinarily go unnoticed.

Indeed, Hopkins’s Wallscapes enjoy playing with art historical notions of abstract painting and the picture plane as a wall-like surface, with nodding allusions to Arte Povera and Cy Twombly. At the same time, these works demonstrate an eye for texture that have characterized much of Hopkins’s work over the years.

See Wallscapes Gallery for prices and sizes. (Coming soon.)