Heide Hatry: Material Reality features a selection of objects and sculptures, many of them not previously exhibited, on view for one week only.
For Hatry, material embodies a fundamental truth, something like an external conscience to which art can re-open our minds. In the introduction to her collaborative conceptual artist's book, Icons in Ash, she speaks of making art subjects instead of art objects. Works whose very meaning and substance, in profound if elusive ways is the material of which they are made. In her earlier bodies of work she uses the dead, discarded and perforce accusatory remains of the animal slaughter industry. More recently Hatry eternalizes human ashes from which she has painstakingly created portraits of their erstwhile subjects, chemically, genetically and materially.
Material Reality offers an opportunity to experience Hatry's work outside of the complex self-reflexive and often paradoxical form in which she typically presents it.
A panel, also entitled Material Reality, organized by ATOA (Artist Talk On Art) will take place at The National Arts Club on Tuesday, Nov 28 at 6:30 pm, with panelists Laila Pedro, JW McCormack, Marc Pachter, John Wronoski, and Heide Hatry.