Lasse Hoile: Portraits

Best known for his long term visual collaboration with progressive-music icon Steven Wilson, Flood Gallery Publishing present a collection of his best work from this unique and acclaimed visual artist.

Unburdened by the classical definition of what constitutes beauty, Lasse Hoile portrays the human condition seen from the id, with its subconscious fears brought to the surface and revealed in plain sight. A place we are more familiar with via the work of Francis Bacon and Goya rather than someone working within more mechanical means.

What makes Lasse atypical is that he works in a commercial environment, producing something which may be art, but always with a client at the other end making the ultimate decision. It’s a hard place to inhabit as the tastes of commercialism tend to mirror whatever is fashionable within the genre. Fortunately, he works with sympathetic patrons and has more freedom to explore than most photographers in his field.

Lasse Hoile’s world is crepuscular, twilit, with flashes of viscera. His newer work explores fluorescent colours but grounded in human fever-dreams – a claustrophobic nightmare psychedelia, a vivid void made real.

Images from his noted collaborations with Steven Wilson will be familiar to many. Portraits also goes outside to other assignments, giving a partial glimpse in to an immense body of incredible work.