Greg Hayes: Everything, So It Seems

Greg J. Hayes: Everything, So It Seems | October 5 - 20, 2017

I am a visual artist committed to building a more complex photographic idea. The materials I use are varied: film, a camera, its accessories, a different camera and its accessories, pen and ink, paper, software, collaborative energy, wood veneer, instructions to the photo lab technician, time, light, remnants of composite vinyl decking, distances across the ocean, lists, and so on. My work derives from a multi-faceted practice that both uses and examines photography, though not exclusively, to engage questions about the conditions of perception. My conceptual goals largely determine the form of my artwork, thus I incorporate drawing, writing, sculpture and video into a mostly photographic practice.

In Everything, So It Seems, I use the photograph and related materials (envelopes, postcards, framing supplies) to question – sometimes to the point of absurdity – the photograph’s relationship to promise, truth, and expectation. If, for instance, a camera, by way of its apparatus and material sensitivity to light, records all the happenings in front of its lens over a period of time, does the photograph it makes contain all of that time? Likewise, does a postcard image represent more than it depicts (a picture of the Eiffel Tower is a picture Paris, and perhaps all of France)? If this is true, how many postcards will it take to collect all the time in the world?

At once, my artwork seeks to challenge ways of knowing and reading an image, and to impel a reconsideration of time spent. By upsetting the program of photography, I am repurposing its usual service of representation in order to investigate how meaning is communicated.