Listen Until You Hear, Florian Hetz, Jim Fiscus
© Eric Gottesman, The Encounter (2023), Pigment Print from Expired Film and Digital Capture, 34 x 44 in. Courtesy Fotografiska New York.
Fotografiska New York | Listen Until You Hear, May 5 – October 22, 2023
“Fotografiska New York is proud to partner with the artist-led organization For Freedoms to present Listen Until You Hear, For Freedoms’ first curated art exhibition in New York City. Featuring the work of six artistsof diverse backgrounds, the show’s curation—which goes beyond Fotografiska’s primary focus of photography by prominently including sculpture and textile—furthers the museum’s practice of contextualizing film-based work in the overall visual arts landscape.
“‘Listen Until You Hear invites us to look beyond the surface and practice deeper forms of listening that can lead towards greater awareness and connection to ourselves and the world around us,’ said the artist Michelle Woo, who co-founded For Freedoms alongside Eric Gottesman and Hank Willis Thomas. ‘The exhibition explores themes ranging from freedom, family, love, pain, survival, and the future. Each artist’s distinct visual language and use of representation highlights the connections between meaning and value; historical and cultural storytelling; and our capacity to listen and hear what is at once physical, psychological, emotional, and spiritual.’”
For more information visit Fotografiska New York.
© Florian Hetz, 13, 2019. Courtesy of Everyday Gallery.
Everyday Gallery | unusual experiences: Florian Hetz, July 14 – September 3, 2023
“Florian Hetz (b. 1980, Germany) uses photography in a process of mapping, navigating his life and his milieu through visual artifacts. Having suffered from encephalitis, an inflammation of the brain, Hetz’s memory was significantly affected and he was left with extensive memory loss. Photography served as a tool to mitigate this and ultimately provided a point of departure for his practice. This accounts for the fragmented nature of Hetz’s work, which is suggestive of its link to memory.
“Susan Sontag aptly stated that ‘photographs give people an imaginary possession of a past that is unreal’, Hetz’s awareness of this is strikingly visible in his work. He doesn’t attempt to disguise the photographs as depictions of reality or truth. Rather, he constructs almost painterly images through his use of composition, lighting, and color schemes. Hetz conflates memory and desire, seeking to uproot and visualize hidden desires that are commonly experienced by people with nonconforming sexual or gender identities, thereby also contributing to the canon of queer cultural memory. He aims to take up space and underscore these desires, presenting them in a tender and sensual way, whilst nonetheless remaining confrontational. The viewer is supposed to stare, not look away.”
For more information visit Everyday Gallery.
© Jim Fiscus, Hit with a Stone, 8/28/21, 9:24 a.m.–10:29 a.m., Clarksdale, Coahoma County, Mississippi (the intersection of Issaquena Ave and Blues Alley), Archival pigment print on cotton paper, 31 3/4 × 23 3/4 inches, Collection of the artist. Courtesy Georgia Museum of Art.
Georgia Museum of Art | Where Shadows Cross: The Photography of Jim Fiscus, July 22 – October 8, 2023
“The title of this new exhibition, Where Shadows Cross, points to the artist’s way of creating well-composed scenes, but it also conveys ghostly overtones that conjure up tales of the South. It alludes to the shadows on the wall in Plato’s famous Allegory of the Cave, in which prisoners look at the outlines of objects being carried in front of a fire behind them. In the allegory, the real world is outside the cave, and the silhouettes on the wall have very little to do with it. In this exhibition, shadows take center stage to help us enter and inhabit the scenes the artist created over the last three years.
“In 2020, amid the drastic changes we all experienced, Fiscus’s work on commissions slowed down. Spurred by the habit and the need to make images (as well as by cabin fever), he embarked on an aimless road trip in a camper with a friend and began to take pictures. Fiscus has a set of photographic tools that he has mastered, and he took them into these unpredictable circumstances, allowing events to flow. He then looked for patterns and logic in the chaos of those casual encounters. Always sensitive to the participants, he managed to make them feel comfortable enough to reveal their inner selves in each session. They gladly stepped into the stage set or ‘tableau’ that Fiscus had set up for them. Many of his large compositions feature deeply personal motivations and plots, but they are set in unexpected places and almost all the actors are people that the artist had just met. Time and time again, strangers reenacted something deeply intimate for the artist and had a chance to relate to everyone involved in the photo shoot.”
For more information visit Georgia Museum of Art.
