Overview
Channing Hansen is a polymath, simultaneously pursuing interests in craft, science, and technology in his work.
Channing Hansen is a polymath, simultaneously pursuing interests in craft, science, and technology in his work.
Channing Hansen was born in 1972 in Los Angeles, California, USA, where he continues to live and work.
His large hand-knitted textiles are mounted on wooden stretchers and feature vibrant, abstract forms that undulate across their web-like surfaces. An extremely labour-intensive process, the artist skirts, washes, dyes, blends, and spins the wool himself.
The improvisatory appearance of Hansen's work is in fact predetermined by a computer algorithm that generates potentially infinite combinations of colour, fibre, pattern, and knit. Relying purely on the algorithm to prompt changes in form, the artist is unaware of how the finished work will look until it is complete. The resulting compositions are varied and complex; areas of dense, looped stitches within the works sit alongside open knots that reveal the stretcher bars and wall behind. Organic, amoeba-like forms intermingle with thin tendrils of yarn that dart across the surface of the textiles, interrupting solid blocks of vibrant colour. Reverberating with energy, Hansen generates a tension between chaos and order by containing these hallucinatory compositions within the confines of the picture plane.
