What a Bloody Mess

Hollis Hammonds, Jenn Hassin & Claude Van Lingen

Opening Reception: Friday, April 14, 7-10pm

Exhibition Dates: April 7 – May 7, 2017

Fear is a common theme with this exhibition; each artist is fretting over the future. The list of concerns is growing daily: environmental hazards, natural and man-made disasters, military conflicts, political and social strife. Influenced by media and the collective consciousness, the work reflects and calls into question the zeitgeist of our time. While each artist has an individual approach to expressing their concerns and fears about the current environmental and socio-political situation, all the pieces reflect on and interrogate the world in which we live.

Hollis Hammonds

Concerned with social issues ranging from global warming to consumerist culture, natural disasters, and wartime imagery, my works are filled with a variety of images, from mundane objects to precious artifacts, assembled, collected, and collaged together through drawings and installations. The works themselves act as evidence, whether of personal memories or broader events affecting larger communities. No matter what form the work takes, threads of memory are intertwined with a sort of collective consciousness. My goal when combining a variety of images or junk picked up on street corners is to create some scene that feels real to me, something that conjures and feels as close to my own memories as possible.

Jenn Hassin

My work is a labor of love and an obsession to record and reflect our troubling times. Research and facts influence my use of materials. I often use newspaper to act as a time capsule of current issues. Whether they be issues of race, our justice system, death, our military, or suicide and mental illness, our media has a way of eloquently putting these topics on paper. I also use handmade paper from clothing. Military uniforms, prison uniforms, everyday clothing, clothing worn while being raped or while working in a surgery unit, are all transformed into soft paper that I rip up and roll into tightly spiraled objects. This spiral represents an individual life, from beginning to end. Sometimes I use statistics to discuss facts behind these issues, using one rolled piece of paper for each life represented, giving the paper a voice. This process turns into layered conceptual pieces, through which I have every intention of making a difference and promoting change.

Claude Van Lingen

Prospective time has been the central concept driving my work since 1978. The 1000 Years From Now series reflects my deep concern for the environmental, political, and social well-being of the world in which we live. I have explored this concept by writing dates, lists of names, figurative and nonfigurative painting, and/or photographs combined with TV sets and mirrors, as well as performances. They consider the layering of the physical, conscious, and subconscious experiences we have as individuals and as a global collective. In other words, this layering encapsulates the events, emotions, and conditions that link the past, the ever-changing present, and the unknown/anticipated future into an inextricable whole. Each work is created by using a medium and process most appropriate to communicating the situation to be portrayed. At times this entails the use of charcoal, flame, water, and debris collected from a particular disaster site.