press release
56 Bogart Street Brooklyn NY 11206
Opening reception: Friday, October 11, 7-9 P.M.
Artist talk: Sunday, October 27, 4-6 pm
Exhibition dates: October 11 – November 10, 2013
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Meg Hitchcock: The Land of Bliss
Studio10 presents Meg Hitchcock in The Land of Bliss. Utopian concepts are common among religions in which an inner state of being is described in terms of place; a celestial territory with rivers and lush gardens. For the title piece in this exhibition, Hitchcock cuts and reconfigures individual letters from Bibles to create The Land of Bliss (“The Larger Sukhavati-Vyuha Sutra”), 2013. The piece includes a sound element of the artist reading the text with the divergent sounds of contemporary Bushwick in the background. The kingdom of Heaven, the gardens of Paradise, and the return to Eden are terrestrial terms referring to highly cultivated states of human consciousness. The Sukhavati-Vyuha Sutra, is a Buddhist text in which the Buddha Shakyamuni describes the dwelling place of bodhisattvas, or enlightened beings. The text describes the mythic realm of Sukhavati in exhaustive detail, rich with metaphor and veiled allusions to the highest states of consciousness.
Hitchcock meticulously removes and reforms the letters from one sacred text to manifest another of ideological significance. The letters are often set in precise bas-relief stacks or as streams of contiguous text in meandering type. Like the circuitous floor maze of Chartres cathedral, Hitchcock’s line acts as a path towards a centre, which stands independent of understanding text. In Amazing Grace (2013), Hitchcock cuts letters from the Bhagavad Gita to recreate the popular Christian hymn. The hymn is dissected and arranged around a circle, creating a baroque mandala that alludes to the rose windows of Christian cathedrals. It is interrupted by the Sanskrit mantra OM TAT SAT, a reference to the sacred text of Hinduism (the Bhagavad Gita). Trimalchio’s Feast: The Declaration of Independence, 2013 is comprised of letters cut from the Satyricon by Petronius; a Latin work of fiction that satirizes the lower classes of the Roman Empire. Like Rome, America is built upon lofty principles that have eroded over time. This free-standing piece is an unfurled scroll weighted at both ends with cutlery as if for a feast of words in a glass vitrine. In contradistinction to the austerity of Trimalchio’s Feast is the large, stylized work titled Branch, (Isaiah, Chapter 11), 2013. Here the form of the reaching branch is braided with the content of Isaiah and with the mystical meaning of the Kabbalah, from whence the letters were cut.
Hitchcock was raised as an Evangelical Christian. Though no longer of a particular faith, she has profound respect for an individual’s spiritual beliefs, and her work is a celebration of the sacred experience. Her practice points beyond the specifics of religious beliefs to the ineffable experience of connectivity. Hitchcock’s labor-intensive practice is a devotional act and one that mediates the differences between beliefs with the act of art making.
Meg Hitchcock studied painting in Florence, Italy, and has a BFA in painting from the San Francisco Art Institute. She has exhibited in New York, San Francisco, Chicago, and Los Angeles, and her work has been reviewed in Art in America, the San Francisco Chronicle, and featured online in the Huffington Post, Bomb, Daily Beast, and Hyperallergic.
Artist Talk: Sunday, October 27th Meg Hitchcock with moderator Benjamin Evans.
Benjamin Evans teaches at Parsons and is a PhD Candidate in the department of Philosophy. He is the director of Projective City Contemporary Art and the former director of NurtureArt.
For more information and images, please contact Annelie McGavin at (718) 852-4396.
Gallery hours: Thursday through Sunday 1 - 6 pm or by appointment
Contact: studio10bogart@gmail.com (718) 852-4396 www.studio10bogart.com
The gallery is across the street from the Bogart Street exit at the L Train Morgan stop.