Chasing My Tale
Heide Hinrichs’ installation of drawing, sculpture, and mixed-media objects, Borrowed Tails, is currently showing at the Seattle Art Museum. Hinrichs, a contemporary Seattle artist born in Germany has shown in both the United States and Europe. Lacking familiarity with Heide Hinrich’s work, I was initially drawn into the exhibit through her use of space, complementary colors, and bone-like objects which elicited a whimsical feeling, similar to a childhood memory. At first I was comfortable with in my surroundings because of the familiarity of the objects, then as I read the curator’s statement I began to question. Through the use of discarded everyday objects, Heide Heinrichs suggests a story told not by words or a narrative, but rather through a subtle visual and emotional dialog between repurposed materials and the viewer’s memories.
Upon entering one sees a group of rubber balls made of bike tubing which lead to a sculpture of wood and cardboard waves, followed by, my favorite part, a group of tool-like clay objects of unfired porcelain which resemble bone. There is a u-shaped path that advances the viewer through the room from sculptural works to drawings on the far wall.
Hinrichs uses easily overlooked objects for their material qualities that take on a life of their own through the viewer’s own recollections, experiences, and associations with each article. They seem to be objects of childhood and classroom that reference nature and evoke subjective emotional connections. Through her use of materials loaded with the past: drawings on notebook paper, soccer balls turned inside out, clay “bone” shapes, paper mache, and pencils she draws us in through our own presumptions. But slowly as the viewer digs deeper, they realize the simplicity of the objects stands in contrast to the complexity of the memories they evoke. In the way that memories transform, the objects Hinrichs uses seem to be in a state of change.
Hinrichs’ work allows an experience a landscape of found and fabricated items which are meant to explore the dialog between the materials and the viewer’s associations with them. When working with found objects, there is a history bound to each entity. The transformation of objects occurs as we begin project our past onto them. The exhibit is called Borrowed Tales because Hinrichs takes objects that trigger us to recall and uses them to work from stories that are not hers, but instead our own. She creates work based on a past that she does not know, nor will she ever know. The viewer is expected to insert their stories rather than relying on her for the narrative. Hinrichs simply sets the tone and the pace at which we travel.
The exhibit had a quiet feeling as the viewer explored from one object to the next. This allowed daydreaming, stretching the imagination back to childhood and thinking about what these objects might have meant then and exploring associations. I found it interesting that the Curator began their statement with an Italo Calvino quote, “Knowledge of the world tends to dissolve the solidity of the world, leading to a perception of all that is infinitely minute, light, and mobile”. Calvino’s concept of lightness caused his words to float rather than sink, made them weightless. There is something about Hinrichs’ work that is weightless and perhaps slightly ephemeral like a quick memory about to drift away. This weightlessness adds to the feeling that the objects are changing into something else and may soon be gone, which conveys the essence of the intangible.
From overhearing the conversations of others in the gallery, it seemed as if many of the viewers were not receptive to Hinrich’s work, because they wrote off its simplicity in form and material as lack of thought and effort. However, the ambiguity of the work both added to its appeal and threw off the viewer. I felt work like this should be in a gallery, in order to promote discussion. Viewed in the Seattle Art Museum, the room felt reserved and the works spoke softly. Although the installation seemed cohesive, no piece was able to stand alone. I had trouble reading the objects as text, which was spoken of in the curatorial statement. I wanted them to somehow be translated into words, but instead felt they were less concrete than words, they were pieces of recollections. It made me question our perceptions of work that belongs in a museum and our expectations a certain amount of craftsmanship and quality of materials.
Through her construction of a landscape or topography, Hinrichs has created a space where the viewer can explore the subjective on a sort of guided trip. Experiencing not only the objects she has created, but also what they evoke.
If you find yourself craving a fix of contemporary portraiture saturated with an analog vibe, look no further than Joseph Wolfgang Ohlert’s photographs of stripped-bare youthful subjects cast from his own friend circle or via social networking sites. Armed with a disposable camera and an eye for the present, Ohlert offers his audience a peek into a scene that they may not otherwise enter- unless their id boasts a birthday that falls before 1985. Born in Bavaria in 1991, Ohlert is currently a student at the Ostkreuz School of Photography in Berlin, but don’t let that status fool you into thinking his resume is amateur. His first solo photo exhibition, Photographed By, was just last year in Berlin, yet the roster of names he’s worked with includes figures of popular culture such as Pete Doherty, Lily Cole, Jonathan Meese, Bela B, Vanessa Hudgens, and Bruce la Bruce. Drawing influence from photographers such as Terry Richardson, Ryan Mcginley, and Wolfgang Tillmanns, Ohlert’s work is making ripples in the fabric of Berlin’s contemporary photography scene as he plays with our perceptions of the artist, object, and viewer. “An artist is inseparable from the work of art. The work of art stands on its own and should not be dependent on the artist. The artist is dead, the real artists are the viewers and consumers of art. Art is a process of contemplation and has nothing to do with the object.” according to Ohlert. See if his new work is the non-entity he speaks of at the opening for his series Der Kleine Prinz.
the CLUB
Biebricher Str. 14
12053 Berlin
Germany
Text by Olivia Samples
oliviasamples 