Chicago Tribune - April 14, 2006
by Alan G. Artner, Tribune Art Critic
...They are refined (X-ray paintings) because the extreme precision
and delicacy of the work is shown to have grown out of his abstract drawings...
Part of the success of the pieces, it seems to me, is in how they
trigger the viewer's responses toward the human body without providing
a strict representation. Hopkins' X-ray images are as vague as clouds
and are not of actual bones or joints. The way the slate takes the ink,
breaking it down into a veritable mist gives a further sense of something
real and familiar that, nonetheless, is barely there, and such hovering
presences complement most beautifully the firmer inventions in hard-edged
geometry.
Since I first saw the pieces last year at the LIPA Gallery, the
artist has added color and increased the size with no diminution of the
pieces' purity or concentrated effect. In fact, every time I have seen
a Hopkins show, he has extended his discourse, which is how it should
be with artists but rarely is.
The Chicago Reader - March 31, 2006
by Fred Camper
Michael Hopkins calls his 11 small, haunting, eerily transparent works
at Navta Schulz, X-ray paintings, and though some are ambiguous, others
do suggest bones, perhaps a rib cage or joints. Fragile, strangely glowing
presences, these untitled pieces in white ink on slate hover before the
eye like ghosts. ...Hopkins has strong beliefs about not modifying his
work to make it more commercial. "I'm not a jukebox," he says,
"I don't take requests." ..."if you even for a second start
to think about the market," Hopkins says, "you're dead as an
artist." ...He's also writing a play - about an artist and "what
other people would like him to do. Usually it's not to be an artist."
Chicago Tribune - March 3, 2006
by Alan G. Artner, Tribune Art Critic
I was impressed by the spectral "x-ray" paintings on
slate by Michael Hopkins, abstract works on paper by Koutoujian and Potter's
plastic-and-glue collages.
Albuquerque Journal - Nov. 5, 2004
by Dottie Indyke
A native of Chicago, Hopkins says he grew up in an environment
that cultivated salesman and factory workers, not artists. When his first
attempt at a more practical career (he majored in business) bombed, he took
two years off, then returned to art school.
Eighteen years later, he has never looked back. After numerous
failed attempts to win a $5,000 grant from his local arts council, he aimed
higher, and in 2003 received $15,000 from the prestigious Pollock-Krasner
Foundation to support his work. This accomplishment, he jokes, has moved
him up a notch "from poor to upper-poor."
Sante Fe Reporter - November 3-9, 2004
by Zane Fischer and Mara Goldwyn
Whatever the intent, these small, free-flowing meditations offer
a satisfying and spare experience, like inhaling cold, high altitude air.
Chicago Tribune - October 22, 2004
by Alan G. Artner, Tribune Art Critic
Five of Chicago's better artist are in a group exhibition celebrating
the move of the LIPA Gallery to the Fine Arts Building...But as the present
exhibition indicates, work of real achievement goes against easy equations
and proves rare in any locale...the new white ink drawings on slate are
uncanny in their ability to suggest human bone structure as in X-rays before
quickly departing to a purer formal realm. They represent a great leap forward
from the earlier; accomplished abstractions.
Daily Herald - October 30, 2003
by John Davis
If winning a MacArthur Foundation Genius Grant puts one on cloud
nine, consider Michael Hopkins to be kneeling on cloud eight and a half.
The Arlington Heights artist learned Tuesday he's among the latest recipients
of a Pollock-Krasner grant from the Pollock-Krasner Foundation in New York
City... Caroline Black, the Pollock-Krasner Foundation's program officer,
said Hopkins is one of 39 recipients in the first round of grants for 2003-04.
He's not just the only Illinois artists to win, but the only Midwestern
artist to win, she said.
Chicago Tribune - October 10, 2003
by Alan G. Artner, Tribune Art Critic
...an artist seeking to establish purely visual relationships
is these days such an anomaly that one might as well think the effort radical.
Either way, the course in painting Hopkins has taken certainly is not common.
Chicago Tribune - September 5, 2003
by Alan G. Artner, Tribune Art Critic
In Anticipation of Artistic Joys...contemporary abstract drawings
with the fluid lyricism of Asian calligraphy.
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Milwaukee Journal Sentinel - January 29, 2003
by James Auer, Journal Sentinel Art Critic
At 10 by 5 inches, they barely intrude on the consciousness
of the viewer - at least initially.
Then, curiously enough, they begin to generate a presence that
is an intriguing mixture of severely geometric architectural mark-making
and deliciously gestural Asian-style calligraphy.
The painted designs inhabit the rectangles that contain them
with grace and agility, using compression to strain against the hard edges
in a subtly rhythmic way.
Hopkins' work is an acquired taste, but, I suspect, a lasting
one. It's an enduring refutation of the ancient adage, "If you can't make
it good, make it huge."
Daily Herald - October 24, 2002
by Eileen O. Daday
Local Arlington Heights artist Michael
Hopkins finds himself in good company these days.
Last year, four of his drawings were accepted into the permanent
collection of the Milwaukee Art Museum with such masters as Rembrandt, Picasso
and Matisse.
Today, he finds himself being promoted in the same context with
the famed renaissance painter Leonardo daVinci, and that, he said, is humbling.
Arlington Heights Post - August 8, 2002
by Robert Loerzel
...the Milwaukee Art Museum's decision to include four of Hopkins'
drawings in its permanent collection.
"I really felt that Michael's work was good and merited being
in the collection," said Kristin Makholm, the museum's curator of prints
and drawings. "I like the way he creates very powerful images on a small
scale. It's not as easy as it looks."
Daily Herald - March 28, 2002
by John Davis
...his main forte is pure abstract drawing.
That's what attracted the eye of Kristin Makholm, the Milwaukee
Art Museum's curator of prints and drawings.
"I think the thing that's really distinctive about Michael's
work is the small, gem-like quality of his smaller work," Makholm said.
Akin to minimalist works of Richard Serra and Richard Tuttle,
she said, "they really add something that we don't have here."
Chicago Sun-Times - April 20, 2000
by Dave Newbart
Starting Friday, his work will be on display next to that of
two of the most famous architects of all - Frank Lloyd Wright and Daniel
Burnham - at ArchiTech gallery in Chicago. Diane Thodos, a critic
for the New Art Examiner, said Hopkins blends New York Artists' miminalist
tradition with Chicago's love for architecture.
What he does with lines is very unique and special," said Thodos.
New Art Examiner - September 1999
by Diane Thodos, Art Critic
One feels the weight of the line change, the bearings of the
human nervous system scratched out within a geometric schema. The apparent
simplicity of this work belies its difficulty. It is prescisely the pared
down appearance of the image in its white box frame that allows every nuance
of Hopkins' line to be felt. It is for this reason that works made on so
small a scale can surprise with such feelings of openness and freedom in
abstract form.
Dialogue - January/February 1999
by Corey Postiglione
The miracle of these small, spare paintings and drawings is
their power and conviction. One senses the Zen-like mastery of Hopkins'
stark black strokes, their just-rightness - nothing appears labored, excess
has been bled out.
Daily Herald - May 23, 1996
by Eileen O. Daday, Daily Herald Correspondent
"His (Hopkins") works are so spare, yet there are so many nuances.
He is able to reduce his drawings and his marks, to get to the essence of
it. He is a master at it." - Michele Rowe-Shields, director of the Evanston
Art Center.
Chicago Tribune - April 18, 1996
by Alan G. Artner, Tribune Art Critic
Antecedents are the chastely ravishing drawings by Bernar Venet,
though Hopkins begin more severly and achieve winning individuality through
an intimacy based in part on their comparative smallness.
Milwaukee Journal - March 1, 1992
by James Auer, Journal Art Critic
Hopkins' mind works logically and systematically, exploiting
the serial possibilities of his concepts in a fashion that is at once severe
and sensuous. His compositions are small enough to intrigue, large enough
to inform. |
