Tim Hawkinson—Finding the Extraordinary in the Ordinary

Garden Variety SF

It’s been awhile since I saw the Tim Hawkinson’s exhibition Zoopsia at the Getty, almost ten years in fact now that I look it up online, and its centre-piece creation "Urberorgan" remains in my mind as one of those rare contemporary works that holds true to its eccentricity while capturing the attention of a mass public.   

Uberorgan on display at the Getty

Youtube video Owen Smigelski

Witnessing "Uberorgan’s" glutinous belching berth crowded into the architectural splendor of the Getty’s atrium was like giving a mysterious sea creature of the deep (sea slug, jelly fish, crossed with a whale and an actual organ) reign above land in a castle of man.   Hawkinson’s images and sculptural renderings of octopuses and bats, combining composites of human parts--lips, hands, fingers, nails--and recycled materials were so deceptive that it took some inspection to dissect their true provenance—unsettling, strange, rooted in the familiar.

Detail, Thumbsucker, 2015

On view Hosfelt Gallery March 26-May 7, 2016 

Cosmonaut thumb, made from impressions of Hawkinson's thumbs

So, I was quite excited last month to follow-up a meandering afternoon in San Francisco, that included beachcombing along Ocean Beach (best sand dollars along the coast), with a Tim Hawkinson exhibition at Hosfelt Gallery, “Garden Variety”. While I would say Hawkinson is an approachable artist he does have his moments of weirdness that have become his signature motifs:  

Butt-head Lens Microscope, 2013

Impressions in resin of the artist's butt cheeks and head

Fingernails, impressions of his lips, butt cheeks, and feet mixed in with the eco-friendly upcycling of paper bags from Trader Joe’s, plastic bottles, and common household leftovers (eggshells, Christmas tree limbs, debris blown into the garden after a storm).  

Egg-shell star burst, 2016

Egg shells & cyanoacrylate

It follows to say that Hawkinson’s garden is anything but ordinary, rather an impressive mix of genetically modified oddities. 

Averaged Vitruvian Man, 2016

Archival inkjet prints on soda bottles, steel

As one account puts it: " Everybody knows Leonardo’s drawing. It has become familiar to the point of banality", still Hawkinson's take on this classical image is anything but conventional--with all the main body parts photographed, printed onto identical pieces of paper that are then wrapped around plastic soda bottles. . . every time I look at this image I can't help but thinking how they look like sausages. 

Thumbsucker, 2015

Plaster and urethane

The exhibit’s showcase piece, "Thumbsucker", an astronaut suspended in front of an asteroid against a dramatic blue backdrop, is made out of impressions of the artist’s lips and thumbs.  

Detail, Thumbsucker, 2015
Mouth Moon

It’s an odd juxtaposition and at the same time it makes sense.  Aren’t the stars the stuff that we are made of?  If there was such a thing, I would call it a sort of reverse-anthropomorphizing, bestowing something greater, vis a vis the mundane, upon our human forms.  

Untitled (pinecone), 2012

Craft paper, polyester resin, urethane, steel

But isn’t that the common human conceit, always placing ourselves above and beyond the world around us?  It feels like something that Hawkinson is wrestling with as well, before turning his fingernails into a delicate bird, here turning himself into a moon.  Across forms Hawkinson distorts the human form into a plethora of recognizable and abstracted ideas. 

Foot Quilt, 2007

Silver polyester fabric, dacron batting

20 x  6 1/2 foot quilt sewn by Hawkinson, detailing the impressions of his right foot in stitchery

It’s a sort of body art that moves beyond the gestural or a dissection of identity or for that matter the self-portrait, into a subliminal discussion of the corporeal.

Odalisque, 2016

Irrigation pipe, drip line, poultry netting, craft paper, paper shopping bags, siliconized acrylic

Long the fascination of romantic interpretation, Hawkinson's "Odalisque" (a female slave in a harem) finds a new interpretation in upcycled Trader Joe's bags--bodily, domestic, fleshy, malformed, suspended from the ceiling like a fisherman's grand, bloated catch. . . eerily fascinating.  

And I think it is also why, sometimes, Hawkinson’s associations can be difficult to decipher, they are grappling with something larger that at times is just as small and absurd as ourselves.

Untitled (pinecone), 2012

Detail of a small man rooted inside the seed