Look Closer

Tim Hawkinson likes to surprise. Sometimes what you see is not really what you get. The work pictured above is one such example. At his spring exhibit How Man is Knit at Pace Wildenstein Gallery in New York, he showed a Totem pole. Look closer, and you will see that it is made up of plastic oil containers covered in papier mache. You can make out the faces in the containers.



There is a metaphor here. We have become so dependent on oil that we may as well worship it. Innocent people are sacrificed for it. This is as political as Tim Hawkinson is going to get.

In Veil, below, you feel like you are looking at an audience at a theater - or may be tombstones at a cemetery. Get closer and you will see that the photograph is made up of multiple images...



...of a box of Kleenex.



In Scout below, he uses cardboard to imitate buckskin. The figure is a native Indian that has oversized hands, feet and balls. The way he plays with the material here is amazing.



Sunset below is a time-lapse photograph of a sunset made with a digital photo-scanner.



Finally, Egg, a mixed media piece pictured below, reminds the viewer of blood cells under a microscope, connecting the piece to the show's theme, or title, How Man is Knit, part of which is a survey of the human anatomy.