Blair Saxon-Hill at Fourteen30 Contemporary

Artist: Blair Saxon-Hill

Venue: Fourteen30 Contemporary, Portland, US

Date: April 17 – May 17, 2015

Photography: images courtesy of the artist and Fourteen30 Contemporary

Fourteen30 contemporary is proud to present an exhibition of new work from Portland-based artist Blair Saxon-Hill. For the artist’s second solo exhibition with the gallery, Saxon-Hill will exhibit a multitude of collages, accompanied by sculptural works.

Continuing in her use of photogravures and her play with perception, Saxon-Hill now introduces a painterly and sculptural hand in a new series of works. In dialogue with the conventions of both trompe l’oeil and contemporary art, these works speak to the vertigo of our cultural moment.

Drawn from the antinomic relationships between screen culture and impending environmental catastrophe, Saxon-Hill privileges physical and material realities through the sheer complexity of her own material processes, emphasizing scale, scope and shifting margins. Saxon-Hill’s borrowed imagery is carefully chosen, unyoked from the trope of the “found.” The viewer experiences intersections, stacks, means of attachment, a focus on touch and consumption: these new works announce a complete cross-medium approach to viewership (and making). If contemporary culture is in an arms race for new images, Saxon-Hill steps outside of contemporary notions of ‘arms’ and becomes dazzle camouflage – thus she subverts the self-destructive trade in images through another form of (paradoxical) image.

Blair Saxon-Hill has most recently exhibited at Portland State University, Hallie Ford Museum of Art, lumber room, and Disjecta, all in Oregon. Later in 2015, she will exhibit at JOAN, a new non-profit exhibition space in Los Angeles co-founded by Summer Guthery, Gladys-Katherina Hernando, and Rebecca Matalon. Concurrent with her exhibition at Fourteen30 Contemporary, Saxon-Hill’s work will be featured in a group exhibition at Adams and Ollman in Portland, opening April 18, 3-6pm. Saxon- Hill lives and works in Portland, Oregon, where she is the co-owner of Monograph Bookwerks.