Corin Hewitt
The Hedge
January 18–April 14, 2013
Museum of Contemporary Art Cleveland
11400 Euclid Avenue
Cleveland, Ohio 44106
T 216 421 8671
Corin Hewitt’s solo exhibition The Hedge opens at MOCA Cleveland on Friday, January 18, 2013.
Continuing his series of performance-based installations developed over the past five years, Hewitt will convert the Museum’s Toby Devan Lewis Gallery into a combined studio, theatrical stage, and exhibition space.
Hewitt uses galleries and museums as spaces for production. Integrating process and display, Hewitt offers viewers the simultaneous encounter of an artwork and the action that brought it to be. For his installation at MOCA Cleveland, Hewitt has designed a compressed space inside the gallery walls, allowing him to work in close proximity to viewers while remaining unseen. The Hedge is composed of an array of elements that will shift over the course of the exhibition: sculptures nestled between exposed studs; backdrops or “grounds” made with photographs of Hewitt’s studio; and vibrantly painted domestic objects, including toast, rubber gloves, and key-shaped flash drives, integrated into both. Figurative and personal, these elements coalesce in the shallow depth of the walls, accumulating dense layers of material in transformation.
“I hope that the way I layer objects in my work opens up a new way to speak to the mind through the body,” Hewitt states.
“In The Hedge, the walls of the gallery become sites for change and renewal,” says David Norr, Chief Curator at MOCA Cleveland. “Hewitt’s exhibition will immerse visitors in a transformative process.”
MOCA Cleveland will be producing Hewitt’s first comprehensive monograph, published by Mousse in spring 2013. The book will include documentation of The Hedge and six of Hewitt’s previous exhibitions, with accompanying texts by Norr, Bouthillier, Kukielski, and Judith Rodenbeck.
Emphasizing the live and interdisciplinary nature of Hewitt’s practice, MOCA Cleveland will host a series of exhibition-related events. On January 17, Hewitt will be in public dialogue with Chief Curator David Norr.
On February 22 Hewitt’s video work House (2012) will debut in the Gund Commons, providing a deeper look at how the artist considers physical change through time-based media. Following the screening, renowned poets Anselm Berrigan, John Coletti, and Dana Ward will give readings that resonate with The Hedge.
On the exhibition’s closing weekend in April, a round table will reflect on The Hedge‘s unfolding, including Hewitt, Norr, Assistant Curator Rose Bouthillier, and Tina Kukielski, Associate Curator of the 2013 Carnegie International.
Hewitt was born in Burlington, VT in 1971, and lives and works in Richmond, VA. He holds an MFA from Bard College, a BA from Oberlin College, and has studied at Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, and Staatliche Akademie der Bildenden Kunste, Karlsruhe, Germany.
Solo exhibitions of his work have been held at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Atlanta Contemporary Art Centre; Western Bridge, Seattle; and Seattle Art Museum. In 2011 he was a recipient of a Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship for Fine Arts. His work is represented by Laurel Gitlen Gallery, New York.
This exhibition is funded by Leadership Circle gifts supporting inaugural year programs and exhibitions, including the Britten Fund, Agnes Gund, Scott Mueller, Rosalie and Morton Cohen Family, Doreen and Dick Cahoon, Becky Dunn, Harriet and Victor Goldberg, Donna and Stewart Kohl, and Toby Devan Lewis. Community support provided by Intercontinental Hotel Cleveland.
