Artist of the Week: Tim Hawkinson

TIM HAWKINSON

b. 1960 San Francisco

Lives and works in Los Angeles

Education

Bachelor's Degree: San Jose State University

MFA: UCLA

Hawkinson’s process can be long and arduous, labor intensive and repetitive. Play and humor emerge. He has a predilection for using what’s ready at hand including his own body as material, reference and model. He has a persistent fascination with perception, time, scale and the “primitive” or rudimentary. His investigations produce the craft to take the ordinary into new and astonishing realms.

Best known for his large-scale kinetic and sound-producing sculptures, Hawkinson has also created important works in photography, drawing, printmaking, and painting. Anticipating the do-it-yourself aesthetic that has recently become so ubiquitous, he has, since the late-1980s, been using found objects and handcrafted materials and machines to create idiosyncratic works that are intensely personal yet seemingly scientific in the rigorousness of their processes. Virtually all of his works are made with common or store-bought materials endowing his pieces with a mysterious sense of familiarity and accessibility. He brings to these familiar materials, however, a sense of inventiveness that inspires surprise, wonder, and even awe.

TIM HAWKINSON'S CLOCKS

Corner Clock, 1996 

Clock, Motor
12"(H) x 12"(W) x 6"(D)
Ace Gallery

Packing Peanuts Clock, 1996 

Plastic Bag, Polystyrene Pellets, Twist Tie & Clock Monitor
13 3/4"(H) x 13 1/2"(W) x 19 3/4"(D)
Ace Gallery

Envelope Clock, 1996 

Manilla Envelope & Clock
15 1/2"(H) x 12"(W) x 1"(D)
Ace Gallery

Coke Clock, 1996
Coke Can & Clock Monitor
4 3/4"(H) x 2 1/2"(D)
Ace Gallery

In this clock the pull tab tells the minutes and the sipping hole tells the hour.

(Index) Finger, 1997 

Pens, Pencils & Polyester Resin

6"(H) x 5"(W) x 5"(D)

Ace Gallery

(Index) Finger, 1997

The red pens and pencils used to make the drawing Wall Chart Of World History From Earliest Times To Present become the blood and gore of a severed fingertip.

Signature Chair, 1993 

School Desk, Paper, Wood & Metal Motorized

3' 1"(H) x 2' 4"(W) x 2'(D)

Ace Gallery Los Angeles

Signature Chair, 1993

A machine that signs 'Tim Hawkinson' onto a roll of paper, chops it off, and drops it into a pile.

Emoter, 2002 

Altered Ink-Jet Print, Monitor, Stepladder & Mechanical Components

4' 1"(H) x 1' 5"(W) x 1' 4"(D)

Ace Gallery

Emoter, 2002

The Emoter shows the artist's image under the inexorable influence of random electronic signals.

This piece is composed of a photograph of the artist's face that has been cut up into fragments and reassembled in a kinetic collage in which the various parts of the face are moved by the hydraulic mechanisms.These mechanisms in turn are driven by light sensors attached to the screen of a television that is tuned to a broadcast program. The sensors capture the flickering light on the screen and transfer this information into signals that control the lips, eyes and eyebrows, of the collage.

Pentecost, 1999 

Polyurethane Foam, Sonotubes, Solenoids, Found Computer Program & Mechanical Components

Dimensions Variable

Ace Gallery

Pentecost, 1999

Twelve Figures based on the Bathtub-Generated Contour Lace pattern were suspended within the branches of a tree composed of cardboard tubes covered with wooden-deck rubbings (Crow's Nest).

Each figure taps with a different part of his body on a branch of the tree. Syncopated, rhythmic patterns are generated by a found computer program.

Bear, 2005

Überorgan

(from The Getty Center: www.getty.edu)


Überorgan is an enormous contemporary sculpture by Los Angeles-based artist Tim Hawkinson. It exemplifies Hawkinson's characteristic use of the ordinary to achieve the extraordinary, combining and recomposing common industrial materials and found musical phrases into a multisensory sculptural experience.

The musical score for Überorgan consists of a 250-foot-long scroll. Black dots and dashes encode the notes of traditional hymns, pop songs, and improvisational tunes. The notes are deciphered by light-sensitive switches in its player and scrambled to sensitive switches in its player and scrambled to create an endless variety of compositions. Überorgan performs for five minutes every hour on the hour throughout the run of the exhibition.

To hear Überorgan, click here

For more more information, images, videos go to:

Pace Gallery

PBS Art:21

Clare Hawkinson's Treehouse   (It's good to be the daughter...)