Art seen SOHO (needless to say): Tim Hawkinson''s construction

�Tim Hawkinson�s fantastical works suggest the profound strangeness of life, matter, and time. Interweaving images of bodies and machines at scales that vary from the monumental to the nearly microscopic, Hawkinson conjures a world that teeters on the cusp between the real and unreal,� remarks exhibition curator Lawrence Rinder, adjunct curator at the Whitney and dean of graduate studies at the California College of the Arts, San Francisco. From his compelling miniature sculptures of a bird and a bird egg entirely made from his own fingernail clippings, to his huge, sprawling mechanical wind instruments constructed of inflatable plastic tubes and ducts, Hawkinson�s oeuvre is a meditation on nature, machines, the body, and human consciousness.

Best known for his large-scale kinetic and sound-producing sculptures, Hawkinson has also created important works in photography, drawing, printmaking, and painting. Anticipating the do-it-yourself aesthetic that has recently become ubiquitous he has, since the late-1980s been using found objects and handcrafted materials and machines to create idiosyncratic works that are intensely personal yet seemingly scientific in the rigorousness of their processes. Virtually all of his works are made with common found or store-bought materials, endowing his pieces with a mysterious sense of familiarity and accessibility. He brings to these familiar materials, however, a sense of inventiveness that inspires surprise, wonder, and even awe.

How important is explanation to the understanding of a work of art? Should knowledge of the working method be necessary to appreciate the piece? If representative figures are employed as generic "man", is it any more than an amusement - or a diversion - to learn that they are modeled after the artist''s own body? These and other related questions surface in response to this accomplished and good-natured exhibition.


The central subject of Hawkinson�s work is often his own body, which he inflates, measures, weighs, reflects, and animates. Eschewing conventional self-portraits, Hawkinson uses his own physical form as a starting point for investigations into material, perception, and time. His analytical approach is often balanced by a suggestion of spirituality, as in Balloon Self-Portrait (1993, refabricated 2004), a life-size, inflated latex cast of the artist�s body that been inflated and hovers over the gallery floor like an apparition. In other works, though, Hawkinson reduces his self to a simple machine effect, as in the kinetic sculpture Signature (1993), which ceaselessly inscribes the artist�s own signature.

Born in San Francisco in 1960, Tim Hawkinson lives and works in Los Angeles. His one-artist exhibitions include shows at MASS MoCA and the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington DC. While Hawkinson�s work has appeared in numerous recent group exhibitions, including the 2002 Whitney Biennial, he has not had a comprehensive solo show since the 1996 exhibition Humongolous: Sculpture and Other Works by Tim Hawkinson, organized by The Contemporary Arts Center, Cincinnati, which traveled to Akron Art Museum (1996); the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San Francisco (1996); The Aronoff Center for the Arts, Alice F. and Harris K. Weston Art Gallery, Cincinnati (concurrent exhibition with The Contemporary Arts Center, Cincinnati, 1996�97); the Southeastern Center for Contemporary Art, Winston-Salem, North Carolina (1997); and the John Michael Kohler Arts Center, Sheboygan, Wisconsin (1997).