Regarding Hannah Fink’s recent studio work undergarments, shoes and gender:
Hannah Fink’s odd combination of materials and ideas are obviously a query into the past. Her sculptural form is clothing rife with reference. The encaustic medium feels right for her garments, encapsulating them, analogous to the effect of memory. The hand stitching underlines the innocence of the underwear – innocence in some cases, the hidden nature in others, the quasi-erotic in others – as does the color of the wax and its texture, its very fleshy textures.
The giant scale – parental power. Loud and lewd jokes. Pathological longing. Compassion. The human condition.
The decision to be literal, to ride the fine line between literal and abstract while coming down more often than not on the side of clear, gut-punching imagery.
The notion of paying attention to the underneath, the past, and the need or habit of privacy continues to be the interesting aspect of Hannah’s work. The fact that sometimes it is nostalgic, sometimes playful, sometimes humorous or gross, sometimes gender-daring is the energy that comes out of it.
Madelaine Shellaby
Artist and Arts Educator
HUNTERDON ART MUSEUM HANNAH FINK: OBJECTS
Hannah Fink’s objects are at first recognizable and familliar but they quickly take on another presence. They appear to have aged, as if their substance has metamorphosed. And the scale is altererd. They feel at the same time tender and disturbing, as if belonging to a parallel existence or having come out of a vaguely remembered dream, inaccesesible but strongly sensed.
Whimsical in her approach Fink reduces the work to its most essential structure, allowing it to become part of the sculptural language of form in space. She then uses the actual reference to pull on our emotional impulses. The addition of wax, wire, rope and organic materials adds the textural elements that cause more visceral responses. The combination allows the viewer entry on multifaceted psychological and conceptual levels.
Artists Joseph Beuys and Antoni Tapies used objects in a
similarly raw and potent fashion. Tapies talks about “the
most secret innerness of things.” The artwork is “...simply
a ‘support’ that invites the viewer to participate
in the much broader game of a thousand and one visions and
feelings. It is the talisman that builds or tears down walls
in the deepest corners of our spirit.”
