Exhibition Review: Curran Hatleberg
Curran Hatleberg Untitled (Bathtub) 2019 Courtesy the artist and Higher Pictures Generation
By DieuLinh
Fragmented, obscured, uncertain, yet hopeful. These are the words that can be used to depict the glorified American Dream – or rather, the arduous journey many find themselves in. When you are forced to perform a balancing act between strained optimism and constant dreaded failure in pursuit of so-called success, one is bound to fixate on the end goal rather than the shortfallings of the dream they’re chasing. Through his body of work, Curran Hatleberg exposes this reality: the American Dream beyond the rose-tinted glass.
Curran Hatleberg Untitled (Blocks) 2021 Courtesy the artist and Higher Pictures Generation
This is Hatleberg’s second body of work, where he travelled the country by car seeking to photograph – in his own words – the slough of the white man’s American Dream. As he once shared with fellow photographer Matthew Genitempo in a conversation published by the Houston Center for Photography, driving is integral to Hatleberg’s creative process and photographic practices. Hatleberg starts out with a vague notion and idea, typically aimed at a specific geographic location; he knows he has found the right place when there is “an undeniable atmospheric weight. A place that’s a sure thing will almost feel like a stage.”
And this time, the ‘stage’ hatleberg finds is undeniably a sharp, albeit powerful, turn from his usual works. Rather than capturing the essence of human emotion and complexities in our existence, as he has done before, Hatleberg shines the spotlight on the complete opposite: the remnants we leave behind. We are left only with the traces of human presence: an abandoned front porch, a cluttered forsaken kitchen, or a bloodied alligator carcass. The chaotic scenery and obscured fragments of human bodies – when they do appear – forces the world around us into the limelight.
Curran Hatleberg Untitled (Lavender Kitchen) 2013 Courtesy the artist and Higher Pictures Generation
By averting the focus away from the main subject, namely ourselves, Hatleberg’s fictionalised version of America and the American Dream purposefully accentuates a mental state of deep sadness, hopelessness, and even emptiness that one experiences in blind pursuit of The American Dream. The artist writes, “Our country is different and changed in its present iteration and we can’t help but regard it with a stare that we hold in reserve for the most difficult circumstances.” So as we bask in the confusion of a world where we are not in the picture, the questions that we evoke gets us closer to Hatleberg’s purpose: to re-examine who we are, what our place is, and what it means to live in pursuit of a dream.
In his own words, Hatleberg’s new collection strives to “mediate and reimagine the current American experience in hopes of communicating a deeper understanding of our shared time and place.” And perhaps what he is saying is that in order to best actualize that hope, we must not put ourselves at the center of each conversation.
Curran Hatleberg Untitled (Lift) 2017 Courtesy the artist and Higher Pictures Generation
Perhaps, time spent in uncomfortable and peculiar silence, observing and pondering, is the only way to reach a deeper understanding of ourselves, America, and our subconscious pursuit of the American Dream.
Curran Hatleberg was born in Washington DC in 1982, and is currently based in Brooklyn, NY. Earning his MFA at Yale University in 2010, his works have since been published by Harper’s, Vice, The Paris Review, The New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine, and Mossless Magazine. Hatleberg’s work is featured in the collections of the Davison Art Center, SFMOMA, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Williams College Museum of Art, and the Yale University Art Gallery, among many others. Hatleberg’s exhibition is on display at Higher Pictures Generation in Brooklyn, New York from now until November 13, 2021, with visits available by appointment.
