Tim Hawkinson's Mid-career Retrospective
Tim Hawkinson’s mid-career retrospective at the Whitney is daunting in its thematic variation. Through the show he elaborating on himself. His own body is the starting point for transformation or translation, the inevitable elapse of time, and the meticulous measuring and documenting of the banal and everyday. Every piece is referential either to Hawkinson or to itself. His work never hides the way in which it is made and the materials do not seem substantial enough to perform their tasks, yet they do. Like the piece, “Spin Sink (1rev./100years), 1995” where the texture of corduroy is turned into the teeth of gears. By minimally being altered, these household materials retain their integrity. The potential this reveals reaches beyond Hawkinson’s work to all unappreciated junk we surround ourselves with. His mechanical appropriations are extensions that faithfully reproduce aspects of himself, like the signing of his name in “Signature, 1993” or the changing facial expressions in “Emoter, 2002”.
However, he seems to lose all of his magic when he works with traditional materials i.e. drawing and painting. It is as if he is trying to represent what his other work actually shows you.
A unique aspect of Hawkinson’s curatorship are the footnotes under each piece that tell you not only the materials, but how the object was made or what the mechanical components do. These footnotes are how Hawkinson talks to his audience. When his body is involved the particular order of operations is described. “I stood in front of a full legnth mirror, nose to nose, and sculpted my reflection to the glass.” It is fun to watch faces react when reading these details; they are now in on his secret joke. Others were opposed to reading. While a lot of contemporary art suffers from being rather inaccessible, this show thrived on its accessibility. Anyone, artist or not, can come and understand if not appreciate this work. I left this show, my imagination churning, if aluminum foil could be made into elephant skin, anything seems possible.
parabola
I search for complex order which is created through individual parts acting selflessly towards the benefit of keeping a whole in equalibreum. In creating my work, I am laying down the foundations to find my own place in the whole and giving the viewer their position as seen by me.
The parabola provides an example for the kind of order I’m searching for. It is a structure that is made of straight lines tangent that intersect to form a curve. If you think of each line as a moment in time, the intersection of two lines would represent change. If you think of the parabola as a life line, the first line would represent conception, and the last line would represent death. The first line is also a mirror image of the last line, going in the exact opposite direction. Everything in between is your life experience. These lines extend off into infinity suggesting the immeasurable amount of things one person influences and is influenced by. Everything is interdependent.
The present is not measurable, so my parabola would have an infinite number of lines. And if this were the case, there would be no difference in the angle of the lines or you would not be able to detect the difference. Also, the lines would condense to the point of becoming tone and what you would have in the end is a curve suggested by the connection of two shapes which contradict and create each other. This positive/ negative reversal denotes your life experiences and the outside forces that have shaped it.
The parabola is a natural phenomenon that repeats itself endlessly in nature. The trajectory of objects when projected into the air is the most common. Take the perfect curve created by a rocket when fired to its chaotic destination for example. The unpredictability of this action juxtaposed with the parabola that preceeds impact is metaphorical of the illogical nature of birth and death. Life (or the arc) I believe can be understood. It is the beginning and the end that are unknowable.
