In her sculptural and photographic works, Leslie Hewitt brings together personal, political, and formal materials to destabilise fixed notions about the art object. Hewitt is most known for her 'Riffs on Real Time' (2002–2009): a photographic series that considers the way past and present moments overlap.
Read MoreEach work belonging to 'Riffs on Real Time' consists of three layers: on top, an old family photograph from Hewitt's archive of both personal and found images; in the middle, a piece of paper from mass-circulated sources including magazines and maps; and on the bottom, a floor surface. In these works, Hewitt often references African American communities during and after the 1960s civil rights movement, in which her parents were involved.
Leslie Hewitt's 'Riffs on Real Time' series presents the artwork as a meeting-point of various connections. Riffs on Real Time, 4/10 (2004) juxtaposes a snapshot of an outdoor gathering with a 'Words to Learn' page, all framed by a blue carpet; while Riffs on Real Time (2012–2017) consists of black-and-white images depicting a car seen from the rear and a branch diagram, with a hardwood floor as a backdrop. Drawing connections between seemingly unrelated activities, the artist enters public and private spheres in conversation that transcend time and space.
Hewitt engages with the still life medium through investigations into the relationship between photography and perception. In 'Color Study' (2016), she captures dahlias in three black-and-white photographs and one colour photograph; the differences between the flowers in each image are barely discernible to the eye. The series was inspired by the 18th-century Swedish botanist Anders Dahl, after whom the dahlia flower is named, and 20th-century American Expressionist painter Alma Thomas, known for her use of fragmented brushstrokes to depict natural phenomena.
Hewitt disrupts the distinction between photography and sculpture through her photo-sculptures: framed photographs typically showing a square piece of wood that leans against the wall, often accompanied by small ordinary objects that include snapshots, books, and shells. In exhibitions such as Reading Room—the artist's 2019 solo presentation at Perrotin, New York—the photo-sculptures reflect their content by leaning against the wall.
Reading Room also featured Forty-two (2019), which expanded Hewitt's exploration of art as a point of intersection between past and present. The computer-generated video, installed in Perrotin's bookshop, randomly selected words from a data set to create concrete poetry. The data referenced civil rights activist Lewis Michaux's influential National Memorial African Bookstore (1932–1974) in Harlem.
Leslie Hewitt received a BFA from The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art, New York (2000), and an MFA in sculpture from Yale University, New Haven (2004). Between 2001 and 2003, she was a Clark Fellow in Africana Studies and Visual Culture Studies at New York University. She is currently an associate professor at The Cooper Union.
Anatomy of a Flower and Other Studio Experiments, Perrotin, New York (2020); Leslie Hewitt, Sikkema Jenkins & Co., New York (2017); New Pictures: Leslie Hewitt, Minneapolis Institute of Art (2016); Collective Stance, The Power Plant Contemporary Art Gallery, Toronto (2016); Sudden Glare of the Sun, Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis (2012).
Pictures, Revisited, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (2020); Prisoner of Love, Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago (2019); The 57th Carnegie International, Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh (2018); Nothing Stable under Heaven, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (2018); Human Interest: Portraits from the Whitney's Collection, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York (2016).
Sherry Paik | Ocula | 2020
