D’Amelio Terras, New York
November 9 – December 23, 2007
D’Amelio Terras is pleased to present our first project with artist Leslie Hewitt. The site-specific installation created for our front room space consists of a triad of works: a video projection, a photo sculpture and a text by writer Rose Oluronke Ojo. The individual parts support each other formally as well as conceptually.
The freestanding wall in the center of the room is a platform for two of the works. The grainy Hi-8 video recording of a performance resembling raw footage is projected on to one side of the wall. A geometric structure evocative of an awning is hung low on the other. A composite of found 1970’s news imagery and a textbook definition of the word “consume” published in the mid-80s create a montage that covers the surface of the marquee.
Here, as in her earlier projects, Hewitt addresses the architectural space and history through photographic and sculptural means. She takes a stance to privilege the flux of a vernacular aesthetic that includes formal concerns of color, light, shadow, composition, balance, scale and function while acknowledging the history embedded in sculptural forms. Hewitt’s work questions both the visual and physical experience through archiving the intangibles of life, and transforms the residue of popular culture in the realm of the personal. The works together pose questions about the conundrum of the past and its connection to the contemporary moment.
Leslie Hewitt is currently an artist in residence at the Studio Museum in Harlem, New York, NY. In 2007 her exhibition Replica Of A Lost Original was presented in the project room at Artists Space, New York, NY. In 2005 2007 she was a resident at the CORE program, Museum of Fine Arts Houston, Houston, TX. Her past exhibitions have included The Bronx Museum of the Arts, New York, NY; Sculpture Center, New York, NY; and LAXART, Los Angeles, CA. Hewitt’s work is in the collection of the Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY.
