Wednesday, May 9, 2012

Hein Koh Studio Visit

The latest from Hein!!! (she also had quite a few works in progress, but I promised not to include any spoilers) She used actual porcupine quills in the one on the right- the true artist suffers for her art, literally. Hein's brand of unapologetic feminism is something I relate and respond to, and yet her work is so complex that it goes beyond just the feminist critique. These sexualized objects contain within them the savage beauty and cruelty of nature, as well as the natural world's obliviousness to whatever we humans attempt to hold holy. In this violent form of sexuality, it is not a nurturing mother nature that emerges, but one that unhesitatingly maims and kills whatever she creates.     

Hein sometimes names her eye sculptures "The All-Seeing Eye." Yet these eyes don't appear to see anything, let alone "All." Adorned with burnt canvas and shards of glass, these comically grotesque eyes appear to be frozen in a perpetual state of pain.

I am biased towards work that is both cerebral and expressionistic, and so I took a lot of pleasure in visiting Hein's studio today. 
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