Today we published Xue Tan’s review of Hiram To’s recent “Garlands” exhibition at Amelia Johnson Contemporary. So I’d like to take the chance to mention another exhibition involving Hiram: “Twin Peaks 20th Anniversary”, a recent group exhibition at Menier Gallery in London, took a fond look back at David Lynch’s surreal soap opera of American Gothic, one of the few (some would argue only) enduring television programs of the PoMo era, when Baudrilliard was King and Brian de Palma still meant something. Hiram’s contribution to the exhibition is a tense re-situation of Twin Peaks scenography in an Asian/Chinese context, gaining a creepy morbidity through its wooden surface/skin, playing on Twin Peaks’ alpine setting but also the seductive and corrupting ‘soul’ of photography, it’s narcissism and superficiality – themes too, of Twin Peaks.
Image: Hiram To “Handcut Sandy”
2012, ink on wood photographic print and frame, 50 x 33 inches (127 x 83.82cm)
(courtesy the artist)
