Sean Hogan

The Disconnect Paintings

September 19th – October 18th, 2025

A pigment sprayed. A colour looking for a friend. A painting unseen. A language spoken backwards.

Five Walls Gallery is pleased to present Sean Hogan’s new exhibition, The Disconnect Paintings.

Hogan begins with a single word, image, or gesture—a poetic kernel that sparks his thinking. From this, he develops a framework rooted in system theory and complexity science, drawing on geometry, colour, proportion, and materiality. His works explore dualities such as complexity/simplicity, order/disorder, and connection/disconnection.

In previous exhibitions such as Nevermore, repetition and system-driven sequences allow subtle shifts in time, space, and mood to emerge, producing visual and temporal variation. Hogan’s engagement with contemporary content is evident in works like Volume 1 (2022, Melbourne Now, NGV), which visualised redacted pages of the Mueller Report as monochrome horizontal lines, exploring the intersections of information, politics, and perception.

With The Disconnect Paintings, Hogan extends these investigations. Painted by hand with spray cans—a gesture recalling early cave painting—these works reference Janus, the Roman god of dual perspectives, thresholds, and transitions. Each piece is executed in reverse, a form of “blind painting” in which the surface cannot be seen while it is being made, producing spatial disorientation and contingency.

The series is constructed in paired panels whose foreground and background colours alternate, creating visual tension and echoing Janus’s dual gaze. The structures are further organised by invisible grids based on musical time signatures, generating a visual discord akin to counterpoint. Titles are drawn from songs reflecting themes of dislocation, alienation, and lost love, extending the rhythmic and emotional underpinnings.

Colour is deliberately limited to two tones per work, drawn from natural, fluorescent, and greyscale palettes. Painted on acrylic sheeting, the surfaces reflect their environment, mirroring viewers and surroundings, and creating a “colourised alternate world”—a threshold space aligned with Janus’s symbolism of passage and transformation.

Across his practice, Hogan investigates the interplay of poetic impulse and ordered systems, producing works in which structure and flux, clarity and disruption, coexist. Nevermore and The Disconnect Paintings invite viewers to experience art as a dynamic negotiation between visible form, invisible forces, and temporal rhythm.

Melbourne-born Sean Hogan (b. 1972) studied Art and Design at Swinburne TAFE before completing a Bachelor of Graphic Design at Swinburne University. He has exhibited at the National Gallery of Victoria (Melbourne Now, 2022–2023), La Trobe Art Institute, and art fairs including Spring 1883 and Sydney Contemporary. His work is held in major collections including the NGV and Artbank, and he has received recognition through national awards such as the Australian Book Design Award and the Royal Australian Institute of Architects Award.