ANN HAMILTON
reading
September 24 – December 23, 2010
The solo exhibition, reading, at Carl Solway Gallery, marks the publication of new print editions by the internationally known artist, Ann Hamilton. The project is curated to draw together a selection of Hamilton's recent work that engages the experiences, process and act of reading. The artist describes the experience of reading as one that might leave the reader forever changed, yet leave no material trace; Hamilton asks how this ephemeral act might become a form of materialized making, a form of drawing. These questions have informed large-scale architectural works recently installed at the Seattle Public Library, Guggenheim Museum, New York, and the Pulitzer Foundation for the Arts, St. Louis, as well as the objects and prints that comprise this exhibition.
Blue prints titled reading, evidence Hamilton's notations and underlinings in book passages. In its process of recording, this ongoing series becomes a diary of attention to word, line phrase and meaning as they emerge from the text blocks of a page. Rotating video projections animate alphabetically organized spines of words photographed with a miniature surveillance video camera, which sits like a pencil in Hamilton's hand and has functioned over the years as a central stylus of her making. Utilizing stills taken from this video, she has created a new series of printed words which emerge from the process of reading with a camera and fix in time its fleeting moment.
The series, book weights (human carriage), published with Carl Solway Gallery, were made by placing small stacks of cut and rejoined paperback book sections on a digital scanner. These archival inkjet prints have a monumental sculptural quality, but the original book stacks are the scale of a human hand. Book weights (human carriage), developed as an outgrowth of Hamilton's installation human carriage, commissioned by the Guggenheim Museum, New York, as part of the 2009 exhibition The Third Mind: American Artists Contemplate Asia 1890-1989. In this installation, the reconfigured book stacks acted as counterweights to a wheeled carriage housing two suspended Tibetan cymbal bells that traveled on a pipe following the spiral shape of the museum's rotunda in a system exchanging weight for weightlessness and sound for the silence of reading. As the book weights were packed for shipment to the museum, Hamilton and her assistants placed them on a scanner as a method for recording the inventory. During the process an unexpectedly beautiful body of new work emerged.
Ann Hamilton is internationally known for large-scale multi-media installations. Her ephemeral environments create immersive experiences that poetically respond to the architectural presence and social history of their sites. In addition to these large installations, she is known for smaller- scale multiples and print editions. Among her many honors, Hamilton has been the recipient of the MacArthur Fellowship, NEA Visual Arts Fellowship, Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation Award, Guggenheim Memorial Fellowship, Skowhegan Medal for Sculpture and the Heinz Award. She represented the United States in the 1991 Sao Paulo Bienal, the 1999 Venice Biennale and has been extensively exhibited around the world.
Born in Lima, Ohio in 1956, Ann Hamilton received a BFA in textile design from the University of Kansas in 1979 and an MFA in sculpture from the Yale School of Art in 1985. From 1985 to 1991, she taught on the faculty of the University of California at Santa Barbara. In 1992, she established her home and practice in Columbus, Ohio. Since 2001, she has been a Professor of Art at The Ohio State University.
book weight aa (human carriage), 2009/2010, Archival inkjet print, Edition of 10 + 2 Artist Proofs, AP 1, Image size: 58.5 x 42 inches, Paper size: 60 x 44 inches, Framed: 62.75 x 46.75 inches
book weight bb (human carriage), 2009/2010, Archival inkjet print, Edition of 10 + 2 Artist Proofs, AP 1, Image size: 58.5 x 42 inches, Paper size: 60 x 44 inches, Framed: 62.75 x 46.75 inches
book weight cc (human carriage), 2009/2010, Archival inkjet print, Edition of 10 + 2 Artist Proofs, AP 1, Image size: 58.5 x 42 inches, Paper size: 60 x 44 inches, Framed: 62.75 x 46.75 inches
book weight dd (human carriage), 2009/2010, Archival inkjet print, Edition of 10 + 2 Artist Proofs, AP 1, Image size: 58.5 x 42 inches, Paper size: 60 x 44 inches, Framed: 62.75 x 46.75 inches
book weight ee (human carriage), 2009/2010, Archival inkjet print, Edition of 10 + 2 Artist Proofs, AP 1, Image size: 58.5 x 42 inches, Paper size: 60 x 44 inches, Framed: 62.75 x 46.75 inches
book weight ff (human carriage), 2009/2010, Archival inkjet print, Edition of 10 + 2 Artist Proofs, AP 1, Image size: 58.5 x 42 inches, Paper size: 60 x 44 inches, Framed: 62.75 x 46.75 inches
book weight oo (human carriage), 2009/2010, Archival inkjet print, Edition of 10 + 2 Artist Proofs, AP 1, Image size: 35 x 25.75 inches, Paper size: 44 x 34 inches, Framed: 46.25 x 36 inches
book weight pp (human carriage), 2009/2010, Archival inkjet print, Edition of 10 + 2 Artist Proofs, AP 1, Image size: 35 x 25.75 inches, Paper size: 44 x 34 inches, Framed: 46.25 x 36 inches
book weight qq (human carriage), 2009/2010, Archival inkjet print, Edition of 10 + 2 Artist Proofs, AP 1, Image size: 35 x 25.75 inches, Paper size: 44 x 34 inches, Framed: 46.25 x 36 inches
book weight rr (human carriage), 2009/2010, Archival inkjet print, Edition of 10 + 2 Artist Proofs, AP 1, Image size: 35 x 25.75 inches, Paper size: 44 x 34 inches, Framed: 46.25 x 36 inches
book weight ss (human carriage), 2009/2010, Archival inkjet print, Edition of 10 + 2 Artist Proofs, AP 1, Image size: 35 x 25.75 inches, Paper size: 44 x 34 inches, Framed: 46.25 x 36 inches
book weight tt (human carriage), 2009/2010, Archival inkjet print, Edition of 10 + 2 Artist Proofs, AP 1, Image size: 35 x 25.75 inches, Paper size: 44 x 34 inches, Framed: 46.25 x 36 inches
book weight uu (human carriage), 2009/2010, Archival inkjet print, Edition of 10 + 2 Artist Proofs, AP 1, Image size: 35 x 25.75 inches, Paper size: 44 x 34 inches, Framed: 46.25 x 36 inches
book weight vv (human carriage), 2009/2010, Archival inkjet print, Edition of 10 + 2 Artist Proofs, AP 1, Image size: 35 x 25.75 inches, Paper size: 44 x 34 inches, Framed: 46.25 x 36 inches
book weight ww (human carriage), 2009/2010, Archival inkjet print, Edition of 10 + 2 Artist Proofs, AP 1, Image size: 35 x 25.75 inches, Paper size: 44 x 34 inches, Framed: 46.25 x 36 inches
book weight xx (human carriage), 2009/2010, Archival inkjet print, Edition of 10 + 2 Artist Proofs, AP 1, Image size: 35 x 25.75 inches, Paper size: 44 x 34 inches, Framed: 46.25 x 36 inches
book weight yy (human carriage), 2009/2010, Archival inkjet print, Edition of 10 + 2 Artist Proofs, AP 1, Image size: 35 x 25.75 inches, Paper size: 44 x 34 inches, Framed: 46.25 x 36 inches
book weight zz (human carriage), 2009/2010, Archival inkjet print, Edition of 10 + 2 Artist Proofs, AP 1, Image size: 35 x 25.75 inches, Paper size: 44 x 34 inches, Framed: 46.25 x 36 inches
carriage, 2009, Slices of paperback books, cheese cloth, string, bookbinders glue, binders board, museum board, bookbinding cloth, acrylic panels, Edition of 15 + 3 APs, 4/15, Outside circumference 13.75 in., inside Circumference 5.5 in., depth 2.5 in. (16.75 in. in length if laid straight), Box dimensions: 6.5 x 19 x 19 in.
carriage, 2009, Slices of paperback books, cheese cloth, string, bookbinders glue, binders board, museum board, bookbinding cloth, acrylic panels, Edition of 15 + 3 APs, 4/15, Outside circumference 13.75 in., inside Circumference 5.5 in., depth 2.5 in. (16.75 in. in length if laid straight), Box dimensions: 6.5 x 19 x 19 in.
reading. . ."On Touching - Jean-Luc Nancy" by Jacques Derrida, p. 6-7, Spring 2010, Archival inkjet print, Edition of 3, 3/3, Image size: 27 x 35 inches, Paper size: 36.5 x 44 inches
reading. . ."On Touching - Jean-Luc Nancy" by Jacques Derrida, p. 24-25, Spring 2010, Archival inkjet print, Edition of 3, 3/3, Image size: 27 x 35 inches, Paper size: 36.5 x 44 inches
reading. . ."On Touching - Jean-Luc Nancy" by Jacques Derrida, p. 34-35, Spring 2010, Archival inkjet print, Edition of 3, 3/3, Image size: 27 x 35 inches, Paper size: 36.5 x 44 inches
MIND, 2010, Archival inkjet print, Exhibition proof, Image size: 39 x 60 inches, Paper size: 44 x 64 inches
NOW, 2010, Archival inkjet print, Exhibition proof, Image size: 39 x 60 inches, Paper size: 44 x 64 inches
TIME, 2010, Archival inkjet print, Exhibition proof, Image size: 39 x 60 inches, Paper size: 44 x 64 inches
Free Library of Philadelphia, reading 3-1, June 2006, Digital pigment print on Hahnemuhle German Etch 330 gsm paper, Edition of 1 with 1 Artist Proof, 36 x 84 inches, Framed: 38 x 86 inches