NOT A ROSE: A NEO-CONCEPTUAL ART PROJECT announces the launch of Heide Hatry: Not a Rose at the Frankfurt Book Fair, October 10-14.
Published by Charta, this breakthrough book contains 81 photographs and essays by 101 prominent intellectuals, writers, scientists and artists, including: Karen Duve, Bazon Brock, Jonathan Safran Foer, Martin Gessmann, Siri Hustvedt, Rick Moody, Kate Millett, Lucy Lippard, Steven Pinker, Avital Ronell, Stanley Rosen, Peter Singer, Klaus Theweleit and Luisa Valenzuela.
The German book launch will be accompanied by an art exhibition opening with a panel discussion between the artist and Prof. Martin Gessmann on October 7, 5pm at the DAI (German American Institute) in Heidelberg.
Breaking new ground in ideas and materials, Heide Hatry’s NOT A ROSE: A NEO-CONCEPTUAL ART PROJECT defines neo-conceptual art as an embodied experience expressing the current zeitgeist: humanity’s destruction of nature and the paradigm shift.
“Humans eat animals,” says the artist. “inedible parts are just thrown away. I use that garbage for my art and transform what we associate with disgust into objects of rare beauty.”
This multimedia project of the New York based German artist is her most ambitious, incorporating all media — sculpture, literature, photography, film, video, live performance, painting and installation.
“My work is about enlightenment,” says Hatry. “In my Skin work, it was making people aware that we always surrounded ourselves with animalskin. I made an entire room out of pigskin; people walked in and were disgusted, but, you know, tents were made out of animalskin as well.”
Hatry has created her astonishing botanical garden out of society’s waste; Latin names (which are derived from the animal parts used) for all these unique flowers sprouted out of the artist’s fertile imagination serve to both classify and label a new genus. The process of making and preserving these organic formations –– through preserved in digital prints, wet and dry sculptures, video and installations –– was a four-year project.
“Why would we want to make something permanent, that considering that everything is ephemeral?” Hatry asks. “Because I want people across the globe to embody the duality of life, as my botanical garden where beauty and ugliness are two sides of the same flower.”
