HEIDE HATRY

Imagine It Thick In Your Own Hair

A benefit exhibition
and
Silent auction of work by numerous artists commences after July 16th

 

July 6 through August 1, 2010

Reception and Silent Auction on Thursday
July 22nd 6 – 9 pm
(Bidding ends on July 22nd at 8 pm)

 

Pierre Menard Gallery is pleased to announce the exhibition Imagine It Thick In Your Own Hair, a benefit for victims of the oil spill by Heide Hatry in conjunction with a silent auction of work by numerous artists.

The exhibition Imagine It Thick In Your Own Hair includes paintings, sculptures and artist books by artist and curator Heide Hatry.  Some of the work in the current exhibition will include actual animals such as birds, opossums, rats and mice.
Using road kill and found animal corpses, Hatry creates scenes suggestive of what is happening in the Gulf of Mexico today.  Her pigments are actual oil and tar and other “organic” materials that are the substance of the disaster.  Life is a circle.  Even the repugnant oil that is responsible for destroying life and land was once living animals and plants itself.
The show is intended to evoke the tragedy being visited upon earth and sea that is choking its life from it right now and to motivate people to help.  It is difficult to not look away when you see an actual animal suffering, and Hatry wants, as she always does in her work, to demand awareness by putting the harsh truth directly in front of the viewer, unmitigated by distance.  The show is a benefit exhibition, and the proceeds from sales will be used to support the Audubon Gulf Oil Response, the principal organization assisting the wildlife of the Gulf region.  The effort will be supplemented by a silent auction of work by various artists contributed by the gallery and gallery artists.
Hatry has created several unique artist’s books for the current exhibition in conjunction with poet Robert Kelly, whose poem, Imagine it Thick in your own Hair, provides the show’s title and with poet Franz Wright. Both works are previously unpublished.

Imagine it thick in your own hair
your eyes stuck shut

you gouge your scummy finger
in your nose to break a way for air
the black snot won’t come out
you breathe a little, it whistles

it’s in your eyes now, burning
and your ears are stuffed with sludge now too
you can’t even hear yourself scream

and while you’re screaming
you’re thinking
if you can still think
that all this oil was leaf and meadow once,
turf and forest waving
millions and millions of years

all this was green life once
and even now the glistening black sludge
has a sheen of tree-brown in it
a sheen of green—

forget the pelicans and pretty ducks,
this is happening to you

you are the one
sealed in scum

you feel your scalp aching
your head trying to breathe
did you know we breathe through the skin?
only you can’t, not any more,
never again,

your skin belongs to business now
this is the Midas touch of money
they trade in your skin on the bourse,
there is nothing left of the original you
you still are screaming
you make hardly any noise
your throat is choked with oil
you make only a little shushing noise
like money changing hands

you still worry about the pelicans and the sea turtles
you worry about the ducks and cormorants
the beautiful anhinga
but this is happening to you

a tar-black seagull
wings still flapping
is stuck to your shoulders

you can’t breathe any more
you pray for the pelicans
are you praying for them or to them
and you are the pelican now                        Robert Kelly

This is our planet and we are responsible for it.  If we want to continue living on it, we have to act responsibly, and now.

 

Heide Hatry is a German visual artist and curator. She studied art at various art schools and art history at the University of Heidelberg. She taught at a private art school in Germany for 15 years, and since moving to NYC in 2003 she has curated exhibitions in Germany, Spain and the USA (notably Skin at the Goethe Institut in New York, the Heidelberger Kunstverein and Galeria Tribeca in Madrid, Spain; Out of the Box at Elga Wimmer PCC in NYC; Carolee Schneemann, Early and Recent Work, A Survey at Pierre Menard Gallery in Cambridge, MA; Meat After Meat Joy at Daneyal Mahmood Gallery, NYC; Kate Millett, Oppression and Pleasure at Pierre Menard Gallery in Cambridge, MA and Theresa Byrnes, NEST  in Brooklyn).
She has shown her own work at museums and galleries around the world, and has edited more than a dozen books and art catalogues.  Her book Skin was published by Kehrer Verlag, Heidelberg in 2005 and Heads and Tales by Charta Art Books, Milan/New York in 2009.

 

Gallery Hours: Daily 12-6 pm
For further information please contact
Mary Curtin: marycurtin@comcast.net
Andrea Kalinowski  pierre@pierremenardgallery.com or
Heide Hatry:  h.hatry@gmail.com