Leslie Hewitt

Leslie Hewitt (b. 1977, United States) currently lives and works in New York City. Her work combines still life compositions comprised of political, social, and personal materials, which result in multiple histories embedded in sculptural, architectural, and abstract forms. She studied at Cooper Union, New York; Yale University School of Art, Connecticut; and New York University, where she was a Clark Fellow in the Africana and Visual Culture Studies programs. She exhibited in the 2008 Whitney Biennial and received the 2008 Art Matters Research Grant, Netherlands. Recent and forthcoming exhibitions include the Menil Collection, Houston; LA><ART, Los Angeles; the Museum of Modern Art, New York; Deutsche Bank Kunsthalle, Berlin; and the Power Plant, Toronto. Hewitt has held residencies at the Studio Museum in Harlem, New York; the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, Harvard University, Cambridge; and the American Academy, Berlin, amongst others.

Riffs on Real Time, 2002–2009
10 traditional chromogenic prints, 101.6 x 76.2 cm each

Courtesy of the artist and Sikkema Jenkins & Co., New York.

Leslie Hewitt’s Riffs on Real Time is a part of the artists’ ongoing exploration of the destabilization of the photographic document. Her photographs tend to rest in sturdy wooden frames that at times lean against the wall and invite viewers to experience a unique space between photography and sculpture. Mundane objects and structures open into complex systems of knowledge. This perceptual slippage is what attracts Hewitt to both the illusions of film (still photography and the moving image) and the undeniable presence of physical objects (the sculpture). Exploring this as an artist and not as a historiographer, Hewitt draws parallels between the formal appearance of things and their significance to collective history and political consciousness in contemporary art.

 

Riffs on Real Time (2002–2009), Installation view Hasselblad Center, GIBCA 2015. Photo: Hendrik Zeitler