Tique | art paper asks six questions to an artist about their work and inspiration.
This week: Dominique Hurth.
How do you describe your own art practice?
Through the formats of the exhibition, the archive, the reading, the edition or the lecture-performance I’m interested in the representation of historical events. It usually all starts with an image (textual or visual), which leads to a long process of reading it, finding it, questioning it, re-captioning it before reconstructing parts of this captured “moment”. Finally, and despite the fact that my process has a strong iconographic background, this image dissolves within a sculpture or an installation, believing in the form containing disputing narratives and voices.
Dominique Hurth - Séance de lecture 2013-2015
Performance in an architectural setting and a large printed sheet that envelops four instances of printed matter.
Video still, HD, 32 minutes on a loop
With the support of the FNAGP, Paris.
What was your first experience with art?
While music was always in the background as a child, I do remember quite well a visit to the Stedelijk Museum as 4-5 year old, the exhibition spaces stuck in my mind. So my first experience with (visual) art is primarily as an exhibition-goer, looking at a lot of art as a child and building my own art history through that.
Dominique Hurth - Operant chamber and teaching machine 2015
curtain, mdf, watercolors, digital prints, lights, filmed on Super 8
What is your greatest source of inspiration?
I like the idea of stumbling repeatedly upon something more than inspiration. Yet travels, the desert, architecture, literature, language and music often bring me somewhere often unexpected.
Dominique Hurth - Covering2010
Hand-sawn golden lamé, metal pole, 360 x 250cm
c-print on alu-dibound, 70 x 100cm
Installation view : Bonnefanten Museum, Maastricht, 2010
What do you need in order to create your work?
Time and space, a great deal of solitude, and long-term dialogues with peers.
Dominique Hurth - Language in the darkness of the world through inverse images 2012
artist book, 224 pages printed on Risograph (b/w), dustjacket and cover printed on Offset, in a limited edition of 100
What are you working on at the moment?
I’m completing an installation that investigates the early collection of photography at the Smithsonian in DC. While in their archives working on another piece three years ago, I stumbled upon four boxes of unorganised cyanotypes taken by the first curator for photography. The work reconstructs parts of the first exhibition they made, and relates to a wider question on a national collection today, the notion of the capturing an image as a historical event and collecting at wide. The installation will find a form in a new book next year, 4 years after first engaging with it. And a LP of spoken words should come out soon too.
Dominique Hurth - When words are not given to the grids (measures 1-6) 2017
Detail of measure 1, wooden beams, rope, 185 x 143 x 80 cm
What work or artist has most recently surprised you?
Vivian Suter pavilion at Documenta 14. Magical. Real. Overwhelming.
Dominique Hurth - Failed suprematist futures Detail of installation
2010
Material : paper, 360 x 260 cm, 2 drawings each 40 x 50cm, and one newspaper edition
Installation view : Fundacio Antoni Tapies, Barcelona, 2011
