Roger Hiorns - Richard Hamilton for Sale

arrow to next work titled: Qui perd gagne

Pascale Marthine Tayou - Qui perd gagne

arrow to next work titled: Instructions to make Catachresis #13 (elbow of the pipe, eye of the potato, eye of the needle)

Amalia Pica - Instructions to make Catachresis #13 (elbow of the pipe, eye of the potato, eye of the needle)

Top

Roger Hiorns

You are following

Richard Hamilton, 2014

View Work
to Scale

About The Work

Roger Hiorn’s edition Richard Hamilton is created in response to an image from Hamilton’s exhibition “Growth and Form,” which was originally on view at London’s ICA in 1951 and subsequently recreated in 2014. The image in question is a blurred photographic fragment. The text which accompanies the photograph suggests that it depicts a plastic tube emitting foam. Hiorns is renowned for his use of foam and here has adapted this technology in order to recreate the supposed scene in Hamilton’s image fragment. Hiorns considers the work to "not belong wholly to me or to Richard but to a time between its creation and its re-creation". Thus, "it seemed appropriate to name the work Richard Hamilton.”

Courtesy of ICA

Watch a video about the work here:

About Roger Hiorns

Roger Hiorns’ sculptures have a seemingly straightforward, functional material presence, but this is always combined with an element which provides a sense of the imaginary, the poetic, or the esoteric. The tension between these two aspects is a vital part of Hiorns’ work. For Vauxhall 2003 Hiorns sunk a gully into the surface of the Sculpture Court at Tate Britain but, instead of water running down through the grating, a ﬂame rises up from it. The gully’s specific function is subverted by the artist, as he explains “the ﬁre transforms the reason for the gully to exist.” Transformation is a theme throughout Hiorns’ work. He has arrived at a formula which involves combining two basic elements, that transform and disrupt each other and are often materially very different: steel and perfume (used in another work also titled Vauxhall 2003) or steel and thistles (Intelligence and Sacriﬁce 2003). In each case one is entirely functional and the other something that carries with it the notion of the sacred. Furthermore, Hiorns often uses a material that transforms itself, such as copper sulphate which changes from a liquid to vivid blue crystals, or soapy liquids that bubble into foam. This element allows the sculpture to ﬁnish or conclude itself beyond the control of the artist. It also introduces chance or chaos into works which are often very formal, deliberate, and resolved structures.

Hiorns has had solo exhibitions at institutions such as The Art Institute of Chicago, Hammer Museum of Art at UCLA, Tate Britain, and Centre PasquArt in Biel. His work has been included in group exhibitions at venues including the Venice Biennale, MoMA PS1 Contemporary Art Center, Tate Modern, Walker Art Center, and De Hallen in Haarlem. In 2009, Hiorns was nominated for the Turner Prize for his critically acclaimed work, Seizure, a massive crystallization within the interior of a bedsit in a condemned South London council estate.

Courtesy of Tate