First Street Gallery presents an exhibition of new paintings by Hank Feeley. The work featured in the show—oils on canvas, and small bronze sculpture—depicts the ironic consequences of "The Information Age" on a globalized world.

In a recent New York Times Magazine article, "When Here Sees There," April 21, 2002, author George Packer wrote:

"The globalization of the media was supposed to knit the world together. The more information we receive about one another, the thinking went, the more international understanding will prevail. … But this technological togetherness has not created the human bonds that were promised. In some ways, global satellite TV and Internet access have actually made the world a less understanding, less tolerant place. What the media provides is superficial familiarity—images without context, indignation without remedy. The problem isn't just the content of the media, but the fact that while images become international, people's lives remain parochial—in the Arab world and everywhere else, including here."

Packer's sentiments resonate with Hank Feeley's own point of view. During travels throughout the world in the 80s and early 90s Feeley became aware of and concerned with the inter-cultural contradictions created by an increasingly pervasive information access, that now permeates all levels of society. Many of the incongruities that result from this technological overload are visual, and this is what Feeley so deftly interprets in the latest of his series on "The Information Age."

Feeley's means to an end, his method, is figurative, but his monumental, symbolic approach to subject matter is allied with Expressionism. Heightened color, bold form, and, often enigmatic, stinging narrative add impact to the pictures he crafts. "The Information Age" is the second in a series of paintings and sculpture on the theme that Feeley first exhibited at Lyons Wier Gallery, Chicago, in 2001.

Hank Feeley 's artist statement and selected works