Gildar Gallery presents A Tented Sky, a solo exhibition by Kristen Hatgi Sink, running through March 27th, 2015. This latest series of photographic works marks a distinct evolution in Hatgi Sink’s work. Both sumptuous and disruptive her images indulge in excess while indicating that not all is well in paradise. Referring to a line by the lyric poet Edna St. Vincent Millay, A Tented Sky presents a captive world, where femininity and nature are caught in a cycle of desire.
The stage is set to resemble familiar still life depictions of youth, fragility and beauty. However the objects of attraction find themselves struggling against their roles in this exploitative fantasy. Familiar metaphors comparing supplicated feminine sexuality and natural commodities, such as ripe fruit, fresh meat and raw honey are presented in such suffocating abundance that the expected stoicism of the image’s subjects is shaken. Jarred into awareness of their own implicated position, the women in Hatgi Sink’s images express various stages of reaction within a voyeuristic frame they cannot seem to escape.
As in the poem Renascence from which the title is drawn, within Hatgi Sink’s A Tented Sky, the protagonists wrestle with their own awakening. Some of the models attempt to dismantle the signs surrounding them, tearing, ripping and crushing these natural objects controlling their image. Others seem to seek escape through darker self inflicted means. However, like Millay’s first person narrator, a number of these young women appear to eventually embrace or succumb to their fate, consumed by a male-dominated fantasy. Perhaps as Eve eating the apple, newfound awareness has also brought with it self-consciousness.
After the first bite there is clearly no return to subjugated ignorance, nor a direct path towards liberation. The resulting ambivalence of this provocative collection of images may prove the most unsettling vision of all.
Kristen Hatgi Sink Is a visual artist and photographer, who received her BFA from the Art Institute of Boston at Lesley University in 2008. Her work has been exhibited in New York, Boston, Washington DC, Kochi Japan, Canada, and Denver. She will be featured in forthcoming exhibitions at the Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art and the Denver Art Museum. Kristen lives In Denver Colorado with her husband Mark Sink in a 1900 house, which they are currently remodeling. The Month of Photography Denver is a biennial celebration of fine art photography with hundreds of collaborative public events throughout Denver and the region. Learn more here. The Gildar Gallery is a contemporary art gallery in Denver. With a spirit of collaboration, the gallery actively works to cultivate the careers of emerging local and national artists and to expand the legacies of important historical and established figures from within Colorado and well beyond. The gallery has received a number of accolades for its unique vision including receiving 5280 Magazine’s distinction as Top Gallery in 2012, as well as multiple positive reviews for exhibitions in the Denver Post and The Westword including its 2014 Best Emerging Artists Show and the readers’ choice award for Best Solo Exhibition.
FESTIVAL
As part of Denver’s Month of Photography
A Tented Sky by Kristen Hatgi Sink
From February 26th to March 27th, 2015
Gildar Gallery
82 S. Broadway
Denver, CO 80209
