LOS ANGELES, CA.- Garis & Hahn is presenting One Word Poems & Other Interesting Colors, marking Los-Angeles based artist Emily Hoerdemann’s debut solo show with the gallery. The exhibition will remain on view through July 20, 2019.
Hoerdemann’s latest series investigates contemporary femininity and what it means to be a female in our current moment. Heavily influenced by interrogations and appropriations of language, art masters, and ideas of objectification and the feminine, the artist repurposes materials, textures and techniques of creation traditionally associated with femininity to create analog cut-and-paste collages and small embroidered works. Many of the pieces incorporate appropriated images from auction catalogs and magazines, recontextualizing and renewing artworks by recognized artists.
Marrying text, photography, and collage, the One Word Poems and Text Cutouts re-examine recognized symbols and components of femininity. Taking words and phrases or images and materials associated with artistry or femininity and divorcing them from their traditional application, Hoerdemann makes an effort to rediscover them through renewed aesthetics of balance, color, and form. Appropriated artworks become textural layers as letters overflow with cut floral elements. These floral illustrations are inspired from her childhood memories; redolent with the scent of wisteria, peonies, and fresh cut roses from Hoerdemann’s Mother and Grandmother’s gardens while the images are from her travels and around California, her new home.
Simultaneously, her work reimagines curse words and other derogatory names she was called in her past and showcases them in a new light as a way to assert ownership over them. This is particularly the case in the One Word Poems, compiled from a list of words Hoerdemann remembers being called in her life. Some that appear are complimentary, some far less so, but all have been repurposed and reimagined. The collaged elements are tucked within a cut out Futura font, chosen for its boldness and symmetry present in other artistic works from Barbara Kruger, Wes Anderson, and Ed Ruscha, but also the font found in many of the vintage cookbooks and advertisements used as source materials.
Hues and Palettes are large scale collages on paper and wood that are an exploration of color themes and re-contextualizing images of femininity composed from magazine cutouts, advertisements, and pages from Grandmother’s vintage cookbooks. The collages on paper bring together images that connect back to a particular color whose name changes one’s perception of that color while the collages on wood incorporate appropriated palette colors from recognizable and influential female artists’ paintings. In both series, Hoerdemann uses the application of embroidery thread to negate and challenge traditional notions of womanliness, a material closely associated with being feminine.
Emily Hoerdemann is a Los Angeles-based artist working primarily in collage, incorporating painting, and photography. Her work melds text, paint, and process in colorful collages with select pop references, slang words and catch phrases, paired with fashion or fine art cut-outs. Her work draws on her obsession with organization and as a result, each work is a delicate placing of aesthetics and color.
