Heide Hatry “Not a Rose”
57 STUX + HALLER Gallery
This event has ended.
Seamlessly juxtaposing flowers assembled from grotesque, immaculately manicured flesh debris and picturesque, nonchalant nature, Hatry’s works bring aesthetics and ethics into an explosive head-on collision that is both conceptually corrosive and visually arresting.
Hatry’s serene scenes of flowers are actually photographs of trompe l’oeil arrangements of the offal, sex organs and other residues of deceased animals. Their simple compositions almost recall scientific illustrations, whose directed focus on the flowers’ anatomy heightens their fragrant aroma and delicate beauty. Her commitment to recreating the physical beauty of flowers renders the viewer’s realization of the photographs’ true materiality particularly jarring. The instantaneity of photography confronts the ephemeral blossoms with the persistent momentum of death and decay, and invites viewers to interrogate our cultural conception of flowers and their function as, essentially, “sex organs for plants”. Elegant yet deeply disturbing, these works call into question the foundations of aesthetic perception (and perception in general) and the ethics of our use and abuse of living animal-plant nature.
Media
Schedule
from May 23, 2013 to July 03, 2013
Opening Reception on 2013-05-23 from 18:00 to 20:00