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Troposphere

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Date: 
Thursday, 11 May 2023 to Saturday, 24 June 2023
Opening: 
Thursday, 11 May 2023 - 5:00pm to 8:00pm

April 26, 2023 – Hollis Taggart is pleased to present Troposphere, the Vienna-based artist André
Hemer’s second solo show with the gallery. Continuing his ongoing engagement with nature, the nine
new canvases and new video work in the exhibition reflect the artist’s deep study of the sky as well as
his fascination with documenting light. New to this body of work is Hemer’s experimentation with
oval-shaped canvases, which, combined with his masterful fusion of digital media and painting,
create a stunning portal-like effect of bursting open his iridescent compositions of glowing sunset
colors to the viewer. Troposphere will be on view on the second floor of Hollis Taggart from May 11
through June 24, 2023, with an opening reception on Thursday, May 11, from 5-8PM.
André Hemer (b. 1981, New Zealand) has honed a practice that explores the intersections between
digital media and painting. His interest in sampling and transacting digital media – including
photographs, digital scans, and film taken in various locations – is born out of a desire to synthesize
the concerns of the post-internet age with more traditional methods and techniques. Hemer’s process
often involves scanning physical objects, such as three-dimensional paint forms or flora and fauna, en
plein air to capture these objects against the sky and their surrounding environments. The resulting
scans are printed on canvas and function as an underlayer onto which paint is applied or the original
sculpted paint is overlaid, creating a dialogue between material and image.
Unlike Hemer’s previous bodies of work which used source material from one location over brief
moments of time, the works in Trophosphere are amalgamations of images of the sky from various
places the artist has worked over the past year, including New Zealand, Sicily, Thailand, Indonesia,
Vienna, and New York. Reflecting Hemer’s ongoing fixation with capturing how light changes over
time and space, Hemer has now collapsed these variables into ethereal canvases that transcend these
specificities and offer universal skyscapes.

While in Italy, Hemer spent time considering the intertwining of painting, light, and architecture
during the Renaissance, and was impacted by the theatricality of the art and architectural spaces
from that period. Offering a heightened contrast of the close-up foreground of flora and paint against
the scanned ambient background skies, the oval-shaped works in Troposphere transmute into virtual
windows and allude to these ceiling frescoes and shaped canvases of the Renaissance. Hemer’s work
has also become more representational, with the artist’s digital en plein air process more apparent in
Troposphere than in previous works.
For the month before the exhibition’s opening, Hemer has been working from a studio in the
Brooklyn Navy Yard, enabling him to incorporate the scenes and sounds of New York City into his
newest work. Troposphere also premieres a new video work that includes sound captured at the Navy
Yard, from birdsong to the ambient noise of the former shipbuilding hub.

“For my generation, the primary concern has been the way in which digital media and interfaces have
affected our way of being in the world,” says Hemer. “The complexity of transacting our ideas through
multiplicities of form is ironically what has always bought me back to painting as a medium through
which to express those ideas—perhaps because these ‘old’ objects have a wonderful way of capturing
complexity in a simpler form. Troposphere corresponds to the way in which I see our way of being
and seeing materiality in the contemporary age; where the constant transaction between digital and
physical materiality is what constitutes a new way of seeing (and being) in the world.”

About Hollis Taggart
Founded in 1979, Hollis Taggart presents significant works of American art, showcasing the trajectory of
American art movements from the Hudson River School to American Modernism and the Post-War and
Contemporary eras. Its program is characterized by a deep commitment to scholarship and bringing to the fore
the work of under-recognized artists. The gallery has sponsored several catalogue raisonné projects, most
recently for the American Surrealist artist Kay Sage, and has been instrumental in advancing knowledge of such
artists as Alfred Maurer, Arthur B. Carles, and more recently, Theodoros Stamos, Marjorie Strider, and Michael
(Corinne) West. In the summer of 2019, the gallery announced the formal expansion of its primary market
business and focus on the presentation of contemporary work. It continues to expand its roster of
contemporary artists, focusing on emerging and mid-career talents. With more than 40 years of experience,
Hollis Taggart is widely recognized by collectors and curators for its leadership, expertise, and openness, on
matters of art history, market trends and opportunities.

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For press inquiries, please contact Aga Sablinska at aga.sablinska@gmail.com or 862-216-6485.

Artist:

Telephone: 
212-628-4000
Venue ( Address ): 

521 West 26th Street, First Floor 

Hollis Taggart , New York

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