Michael Huey

Fotografien existieren nicht als bloße Repräsentanten einer Existenz: sie selbst sind Teil einer Welt der Objekte – wenigstens in ihrer pre-digitalen Form. In dieser beständigen Objekthaftigkeit überleben sie oft ihre eigenen Inhalte. Denn fotografische Ausarbeitungen sind zwar weniger robust als die sie bevölkernden menschlichen Akteure, gleichzeitig aber seltsam beständig und überlebensfähig. Ohne Narben kommen sie allerdings meist nicht davon, ob in Form von Kratzern, Rissen oder Fingerabdrücken. Manchmal auch Gravierenderes. So werden Fotografien langsam zu Protagonisten ihrer eigenen Dramen, erzählen individuelle Geschichten und Leidenswege. Wie beim Menschen sind ihre Veränderungsprozesse nicht selten innerer Natur. Die chemische Zusammensetzung der Blätter verursacht je nach Fortschritt der Zeit und abhängig von weiteren Bedingungen stetige Verfalls- und andere Begleiterscheinungen. Ein Umstand, der Michael Huey in seiner Arbeit entgegenkommt. Das Betätigungsfeld des in Wien lebenden, amerikanischen Künstlers umfasst vor allem die Themen Verlust, Vermächtnis und Archiv. [Quelle: http://eyes-on.at/2014/]

All ye know on earth, and all ye need to know is an artistic reflection on a literary one, a revival of thought processes developed in John Keats’ Ode on a Grecian Urn, and, as such, a contemporary meditation on memory and forgetting. The process of representing an artwork rendered in one medium by an artwork rendered in another is known as ekphrasis; Keats’ poem is a frequently cited example of this formal device, which simultaneously references, recalls, memorializes, and heightens. Through his lyrical description of and musings about the painted urn of his title, he translates and dramatically amplifies the message and meanings of that object. In a similar way, the installation itself revisits Keats’ word-sketch of the urn, addressing his lines afresh not through further narrative, but through visual art all over again. Housed in the Georg Kargl project space ‘Permanent’ as though in a glass-fronted cabinet, the 4 m high silhouette – a ‘painted’ classical urn – heightens, both literally and figuratively, the meanings of Keats’ literary one and its archaic predecessor, even as it takes liberties with these forbears. The result – one might call it ‘ekphrasis reloaded’ – relies on the viewer’s memory of Keats’ poem, just as Keats’ poem requires the reader’s memory of ancient art. All ye know on earth, and all ye need to know – the title is a fragment from Keats’ verse, which concludes with his controversial statement on beauty – builds a complex chain of things remembered and things forgotten. Through the pairing of mutually referential negative and positive silhouettes within the installation, a kind of memory forms in real time in the mind of the viewer: simply put, he sees one vase as a negative shape and, when confronted with a second as a positive, actively recalls the first and seeks to reconcile the two, just as the reader of Keats’ poem must reconcile the ‘real’ vase with the described one. At the same time, the intentionally plain, starkly graphic silhouettes themselves seem to have ‘forgotten’ the supposedly immortal scenes adorning the original urn to which the poet refers; the viewer, meanwhile, may summon them up once again in his mind, projecting them onto these blank prototypical outlines. Apart from these mental memory exercises, the large wall painting will undergo, over the duration of the show, a real-life course of physical erasure and re-instatement. As in the famous parlor game, each rendition will achieve gains while at the same time sustaining losses. Through this process the artist seeks to provide a visual, archaeological-based commentary on descendance. The Sisyphean task of re-visiting the past again and again lies at the core of Michael Huey’s work and drives its related recurring themes of lineage and legacy; damage and loss; the archive, the inventory, and most specifically, the China Cupboard, which became the subject of an extended series and the title of a 2011 solo show in New York. It begs questions of authorship and of the urgent connection, in his work, between the author and the artist. text: M.H. [Quelle: http://www.georgkargl.com/]

Galerie Lisa Ruyter is pleased to present „Full Death“, an exhibition of photographic works by Michael Huey, whose artistic practice is evolved from painting, genealogical studies, art historical research, and collecting photographs. „ Artifacts are robust: on the one hand, they usually outlive us. On the other hand, they are fragile, and not just physically: they are open to manipulation and have no way of defending themselves (except, as I say, by outliving the manipulator and waiting around for the next, possibly fairer, interpreter). I have always been intensely passionate about justice (Gerechtigkeit), and I tend to want to apply it to the past, as well.“ -Michael Huey Michael Huey re-photographs historical documents and, in particular, photographs from the second half of the nineteenth century. In looking at his own family, he identifies the 1860s and 70’s as the time period where the tangible and intangible become irresolvable. It is also one of many points in Huey’s work where nostalgia, fetish, and death become interchangeable stylistic flourishes. The identities of relatives and strangers become confused with the identities imposed by the decorative, scientific and stylistic processes of the image-making of different eras. For Michael Huey, the highly reflective surface of the currently trendy Diasec technique calls to mind daguerreotypes and the wet-collodion photographic process of the era of his primary fixation, the middle and last decades of the 19th century. With diasec, a reflection is impossible to avoid, the viewer is included in the image through the same channels of distancing. Michael Huey’s other techniques include scale, meta-narrative implications, cropping and coincidence. Michael Huey considers his appropriation to be related to the act of photography itself – related to the act of using a camera to „take“ a picture. By recovering nearly lost artifacts of moments in time, sometimes with identifiable origins in family members or 19th century photo studios, Michael Huey’s work begins to tackle the bigger subjects of personal history, authorship, ownership, inheritance, legacy, and justice. This is Michael Huey’s first solo exhibition. He was born in 1964 in Traverse City, Michigan and has lived and worked in Vienna since 1989. [Quelle: http://www.galerielisaruyter.com/]

Umfangsangabe: [Ca 50 ] Bl. : zahlr. Ill.

Umfangsangabe: 32, 24 S. : überw. Ill.