Aware No. 603, 2013

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Aware No. 608, 2013

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Aware No. 599, 2013

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Aware No. 598, 2013

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Aware No. 611, 2013

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Aware No. 577, 2013

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Aware No. 571, 2013

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Aware No. 612, 2013

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Aware No. 35, 2011

all images from the series Aware, 2011-present

© DAVID HANES

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DAVID HANES is a curator and artist whose practice spans performance, video, installation, sculpture, and photography in both offline and online spaces. For his Aware series, HANES surfs the net for images of art mostly existing gallery documentation. Once the images are compiled he systematically goes through them and reshapes them, reconfigures them, sculpts them in a way, using the content aware function in Photoshop.

This process of image manipulation and reconstruction enters the physical realm when select images are printed on semi-transparent polyester nylon fabric. The fabric holds the image, but also becomes a medium through which the construction of the work is further revealed. By stretching the images on painting supports, Hanes heralds back to the structures in the original content of the source images. In this return to physical form, the images straddle the space between photography, sculpture, and painting, while challenging the expectations of the constructed image and its relationship to the Internet and the illuminated screen.*

My work offers a variety of approaches to transforming art documentation’s original function of representing art in physical space. Some of my images are about erasure and others are not; the commonality all the images share is the tools I use and the processes by which I use those tools. I don’t believe the final result to be the most satisfying but it is the cumulative process of transforming the image that fascinates me. – DAVID HANES in conversation with JENNIFER CHAN 

Good news: a new solo exhibition at Birch Contemporary in Toronto opened April 17, 2014 and is running throug May 24, 2014. More images from HANES’ Aware series can be found at http://thxinternetthx.tumblr.com/.

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*press release

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