Lot 27
(b. 1965)
Becci Gallinarum Inferiores, Fibrae Pinnarum Ceti (2011)
Medium
Silver halide print
Dimensions
18" x 12"
Signature
Signed en verso, Edition 44232

Estimate: $1,800 - $2,000

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About this Lot
Description
This item was donated by The Artist.

10% of the net proceeds of the sale of this Artwork will be shared with the Artist.

This item ships from NY 11201
The flowers depicted in the Not a Rose series are photographic documentations of sculptures composed mainly out of animal organs and posed in different natural environments. The photographs make the flowers appear to be ‘real;’ so real that it is quite difficult to see that they are, in fact, constructions. They are supposed to look like simple snapshots, or at most ‘art photographs’ of flowers. They appear convincing, in part, as a consequence of visual habit and expectation. On the one hand, beauty is certainly a universal and unitary concept; on the other, it is a social construct, one that changes depending on time and place. It is utterly useless and yet it seems to serve ulterior purposes everywhere. The doomed effort to compel these aspects to coincide, or to make one somehow exhaust the other, is at the basis of our distrust of the aesthetic concept itself, although this very tension is what I believe actually keeps it vital. ~ Heide Hatry. In this silver halide print, Heide Hatry imbues a simple photograph of a flower with newfound meaning. The “flower” is in fact a composition of animal organs strategically reconstructed. By transforming chicken beaks into an eight-pointed flower with shark fin fibers at the center, Hatry’s work challenges the boundaries between life and death in a macabre, but romantic, way. The transformation of the offal is a metaphor for life: beautiful and delicate, with the latent shadow of death. The work is somehow seductive, and it challenges the Victorian-era view of death and sex as unseemly aspects of life. Traditionally, flowers are used for pleasure, while animals are sources of sustenance. The work ultimately prompts the question: why is a flower, dead after being cut, considered more beautiful than an animal killed for food? ~ Nicole Garnett, Student at Sotheby’s Institute of Art, Master of Arts in Art Business.