HS1 | public, private, urgent, intimate, sparse
Featuring first and second year fellows:
Amber Eve Anderson + Tommy Bobo + Sera Boeno + Luke Ikard + Kaitlin Jencso + Madeline A. Stratton
Washington, DC: Hamiltonian Artists presents a series of online exhibitions inspired by social-distancing, Hypothetical Show (HS), live online. The first exhibition, “HS1 | public, private, urgent, intimate, sparse,” on view April 13–May 30, 2020, features the work of current Hamiltonian Fellows Amber Eve Anderson, Sera Boeno, Tommy Bobo, Luke Ikard, Kaitlin Jencso, and Madeline A. Stratton in a miscellaneous white cube space from the internet. The series has two objectives: to represent current Hamiltonian Fellows in curatorial formats and dialogue without the use of physical space and to play with what an online exhibition can mean.
When documentation is all you have, what can it do for artists, organizations, and open dialogue. Further exploring the idea of space, all the works in this show call attention to interpretations of personal space in a time of uncertainty. This exhibition explores aesthetic scarcity, visual intimacy, interpretations of personal space, and digital mediation. Pacing through the show the viewer is asked to confront the waning criticality of digital and social media platforms brought on by the global pandemic as we focus solely on these tools as windows to, or inventions of, intimacy and vacancy. With a tongue in cheek sense of humor found in aestheticized white cube spaces and overly simple cut-and-paste photoshop tools, HS1 considers a new normal.
In a time where we are left with only the possibility of posting our personal lives publicly to connect and experience hybrid forms of intimacy, this exhibit takes in the hypothetical. The exhibition explores aesthetic scarcity, visual intimacy, interpretations of personal space, and digital mediation. Pacing through the show the viewer is asked to confront the waning criticality of digital and social media platforms brought on by the global pandemic as we focus solely on these tools for, windows to, or inventions of, intimacy and vacancy.
In the first room, we see works by Kaitlin Jencso, Madeline A. Stratton and Luke Ikard. Kaitlin Jencso photographs moments of familial relationships, capturing quiet observations of those closest to her, pulling out the details for us to experience. Unidentified wisps of blonde in Jensco’s photographs, in combination with Madeline A. Stratton’s large architectural painting of home from memory, create a sense of tender ambiguity. In the presence of Luke Ikard’s “Use this Megaphone” sculpture, the quieter images placed at a variety of heights begin to illustrate unease. As you enter the second room of the show this tone carries and transforms. Stepping into the room you see Tommy Bobo’s enormous pile of confetti being hit with moving light, creating an aurora borealis effect in the black box alcove in the corner. The rest of the space remains brightly lit and lighter in tone, with a selection of Amber Eve Anderson’s “Nature is Amazing!” from a series of family group texts wherein the texters observe and share their surroundings; a reflection of a family’s yearning for connection, through which the shared experiences of nature provide them. The work contextualized in a time of quarantine has a particular sting of isolation and digitally mediated nature. On the floor, concrete sculptures “Çocuk Oyunu (:Board Game)” by Sera Boeno, look as though they’ve been lost to time. The sinister humor in the room is subtle. Bobo’s empty room of confetti sits next to another Jencso photograph of a flurry of iphone flashes at a dinner party that we now can only dream up, or replicate on Zoom.
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