Tim Hawkinson: A Whirlwind Of A Show
Norma Drimmer
Tim Hawkinson, Untitled (Ear/Baby) 1989. Mixed media 20 1�2 x 15 1�2 x 6 1�2 (52.1 x 39.4 x 16.5). Drawing of ear. On reverse is fetus suspended by meandering umbilicus seeming to grow from inner ear. Courtesy of Whitney Museum.
Once in a while you return from an exhibition so full of excitement that your mind is in a whirlwind of ideas and associations. Sometimes only a whisper is left after a day or two. A good exhibition will last, images returning unbidden to the retina in odd moments, long after the viewing. Tim Hawkinson’s show at the Whitney draws you in and turns your mind in all directions. It’s child-like entertainment and feels like one of those candy drops that tastes sweet at first, until it releases its acid filling. Hawkinson’s use of alternately immense and miniscule scale, make-believe machinery, head-moving skeletons, and, of course his own façade and body, all well known mechanisms in the art world, are most unusual. His work makes you see with new eyes.
I step out of the elevator into a room filled by a structure of large tubes and strange, primitive-looking man-sized figures. It is fun to walk among the clicking sounds, trying to identify the location of these computer-engineered sounds that come at me from different directions. As I follow the haphazard, queer tubing that connect the sound and figures, I feel an oncoming uneasiness about the futility of communication and the clicking looses its fun and turns ominous. In the next room, a flat tire-like structure made out of wood, fabric and string looks like a fun piece, too. I recognize the forms of sailing ships, their high masts turned toward inward, leaving a small gap in the middle. As I ponder the immense change in civilization brought about by the invention of the wheel, I think of the O shape as a synonym for eternity. Those almost touching masts that usually point towards the sky recall the form of the earth and the illusions of above and below. That empty space in the middle leaves room for one’s own imagination.
I walk on, passing skeletons that mechanically move their heads, ranting mop heads that move and emit sounds. I find them kind of funny, though they remind me of all those senseless activities that are part of monotonous daily routines, as well as those meaningless sounds often emitted to mask for conversation. Tubes are everywhere and keep recalling the piece at the entrance. The miniscule form of a skeletal bird is placed in such a way as to suggest a first impression of beauty. It is only after a longer review that its material makeup becomes evident and that the acid reflux creeps back: Fingernail parings are not something we usually talk about, as they have a negative connotation.
The adjacent stump of wood reminiscent of forming wooden root is actually constructed from cardboard. Clearly evident are the time-recording rings which in a real tree would tell its age. Though many pieces in the exhibition make references to time this one is most telling. Hawkinson mocks the ways in which we destroy that which is real and replace it with make-believe form and make-believe time.
The aforementioned works are only a small selection of this astounding show. Yet they reveal Hawkinson’s striking consistency of thought employed throughout a very wide variety of materials and forms.
