| Tim Hawkinson | Octopus | | Cindy Sherman | Untitled Film Still #82 | | Robert Glenn Ketchum | Lakeshore in Morning Fog | | Abelardo Morell | Camera Obscura Image of the Grand Tetons in Resort Room, Jackson Hole, Wyoming | | John Sanchez | Rachel Rosenthal, Artist | | Mitch Epstein | Buena Vista, Colorado | | Leland Rice | Volkswagen With Figure | | Catherine Wagner | The Lamps of 1900 | | Ned Sloane | Telephone Pole Piece, Los Angeles: Photograph of Kim Jones | | Andrew Freeman | #3.4.04- Don Becker's Garage & Guesthouse, Independence, California N36O.48.229 - W118O.11.620 | | Ken Gonzales-Day | Franklin Avenue (1920) | | Jo Ann Callis | Man in Tie | | Bruce Nauman | Burning Small Fires (Artist Book) | | Annie Leibovitz | Scarlett Johansson, Chateau Marmont, West Hollywood | | David Maisel | Oblivion 1382-52p | | Gilbert B. Weingourt | Timothy Leary | | Richard Misrach | Untitled (Ocotillo) | | Edward Steichen | Sylvia Sidney, Hollywood | | Ruben Ochoa | Fwy Wall Extraction | | Hunter S. Thompson and others | From "Gonzo" | | Henry Wessel | Las Vegas No. 15 | | James Fee | Epiphany | | John Baldessari | Face (with Red Nose): Plus Four Alternate Noses | | Anthony Hernandez | Everything #2 | | Ansel Adams | Graduation dress | | Loretta Ayeroff | Mountain View, Edris Drive | | Grant Mudford | Walt Disney Concert Hall, Under Construction #7 | | Frederick Sommer | Stendhal | | Tina Modotti | Interior of the Church Tower at Tepotzotlan | | Henri Cartier-Bresson | Mexico City | | Irving Penn | Hell's Angels, San Francisco | | William Dassonville | From Glacier Point | | Christina Fernandez | Fashion International | | Mark Laita | Air Traffic Controller, Todd Phipps, Palmdale, California, May 5, 2006
Juggler, Sergey Gripkov, Los Angeles, February 21, 2000 | | Mark Wyse | Untitled Landscape | | U.S. Air Force 1352nd Photographic Group, Lookout Mountain Station | Sugar, 1.2 Kilotons, Nevada | | Julius Shulman | Von Sternberg Residence, Northridge | | Joaquin Trujillo | Amy, Los Ninos | | Robert Heinecken | Shiva Manifesting as a Single Mother | | Han Nguyen | Tsunami | | Melanie Einzig | Bikram Yoga Instructor, North Beach, San Francisco | | John Patrick Salisbury | Untitled No. 134 | | Karen Halverson | Gamble House Entry | | Bill Owens | 4th of July Parade, Pleasanton, California | | Catherine Opie | My Studio, Suzanne's Work | | Eliot Porter | Reflections in Pool, Escalante River, Utah | | Adam Bartos | Los Angeles | | Stan Honda | From the Heart Mountain Barracks Project | | Hiromu Kira | The Thinker | | Jeff Mermelstein | Yosemite National Park, California | | Lewis Baltz | West Wall, Unoccupied Industrial Structure, 20 Airway Drive, Costa Mesa | | Dennis Hopper | Robert Irwin | | Hansel Mieth and Otto Hagel | S.F. Water Front | | Edward Burtynsky | Oxford Tire Pile #8, Westley, California | | Beahan & McPhee | Almond Trees and Flood Irrigation, Oakdale | | Larry Sultan | Boxers, Mission Hills | | Isabel Gomes | Blue Horizon, Santa Rosa Island | | Edward Weston | Cabbage Leaf | | Anthony Friedkin | Offshore Winds, Zuma Beach | | Richard Long | Donner Pass Circle: Along a 20 Day Walk from Ebbetts Pass to the North Fork Feather River Sierra Nevada California 2005 | | John Swope | Dorothy McGuire, Beverly Hills | | Hans-Christian Schink | LA Night #1 | | Herve Friend | Redlands From Smiley Hill | | Joel Sternfeld | Queen of the Prom, the Range Nightclub, Slab City, California |
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Tim Hawkinson
Octopus
2006
© Copyright 2007 Tim Hawkinson, Courtesy the artist, Los Angeles, California
LL/20465
Photo Synthesis
Colin Westerbeck
"Zoopsia: New Works by Tim Hawkinson" is at the Getty Museum through Sept. 9.
There's only one photograph in the exhibition, but it's a dilly. Primarily, Hawkinson is a sculptor, as three of the four works in this eccentrically small show demonstrate. I'm including the photographic piece in my count because it's a collage in which separate prints have been glued together over spray-foam backing to dimple the surface so it's three-dimensional.
"Zoopsia" is a term for hallucinations in which animals appear, such as a drunk with delirium tremens might have, and all four pieces are examples of that condition. His "Octopus" and another work in the exhibition, "Leviathon," also demonstrate Hawkinson's tendency to fashion his whimsical nightmares from imagery of his own body. "Leviathon" is a dinosaur skeleton in which the skull is a nude contortion of the artist himself; likewise, the suckers on the octopus' tentacles are photographs of Hawkinson's puckered lips.
Such self-centered creativity might suggest the egotism traditionally associated with artists, but the effect Hawkinson's work has is more one of alter-egotism. The scores of kissing lips in "Octopus" threaten us with the sort of needy affection that would suck the very life out of anyone to whom they attached themselves. Here, as elsewhere, Hawkinson's own presence in his work is something to which we can respond with delighted aversion.
[Originally published in West Magazine : May 20, 2007, p.11]
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