Adad Hannah
Untitled (Virtumnus and Pomona striped), 2019
Acrylique Optium peint à la main et épreuve unique pigmentée / Hand-painted Optium acrylic and archival pigment unique print
24 x 36 in
61 x 91.4 cm
61 x 91.4 cm
Series: Rodin Reworked
© Adad Hannah
[ENGLISH FOLLOWS] « Avec Rodin retravaillé, la peinture qu'Adad Hannah applique sur les photographies des sculptures d'Auguste Rodin apparaît comme une sorte de matière étrangère, interrompant les circonstances matérielles de...
[ENGLISH FOLLOWS]
« Avec Rodin retravaillé, la peinture qu'Adad Hannah applique sur les photographies des sculptures d'Auguste Rodin apparaît comme une sorte de matière étrangère, interrompant les circonstances matérielles de la sculpture et de la photographie. La peinture est visqueuse et amorphe, mais elle a aussi une force énergétique. Le résultat est que les gestes colorés de Hannah semblent interagir avec les corps en mouvement de Rodin.
Hannah travaille avec Rodin depuis longtemps. Que signifie pour un artiste contemporain "travailler avec" un artiste historique disparu depuis longtemps ? Il y a certainement un élément d'hommage à l'artiste précédent, mais cette relation soutenue va au-delà pour devenir une véritable conversation à travers le temps. Dans l'œuvre de Rodin, Hannah a trouvé une source générative (ou caisse de résonance) pour ses propres interrogations sur les images et les corps au XXIe siècle. Plus précisément, les rencontres répétées d'Hannah avec Rodin lui permettent d'explorer une tension entre images immobiles et images en mouvement, et simultanément, une tension entre corps fixes et corps en mouvement.
Dans certains des projets antérieurs d'Hannah, l'engagement avec Rodin s'est traduit par des ‘re-makes’ d'œuvres d'art spécifiques. Les Bourgeois de Séoul, 2006 (d'après le célèbre monument à plusieurs personnages, Les Bourgeois de Calais, 1889) en est un excellent exemple. La sculpture de Rodin était troublante lorsqu'elle avait été présentée pour la première fois parce qu'elle renversait si clairement la tradition du monument : les six figures masculines ne sont pas regroupées symétriquement ou installées dans des poses héroïques conventionnelles, mais sont plutôt représentées en plein mouvement - chaque figure marchant, se balançant, se pliant ou hésitante. Dans la version à images animées d'Hannah, les hommes en uniforme qui reproduisent les états corporels des bourgeois de Rodin sont des coursiers à moto, des citoyens de Séoul qui passent leurs journées à voyager à travers la ville. Dans l'œuvre d'art, alors qu'ils tiennent maladroitement les poses qui leur sont assignées, ils deviennent des monuments vivants du mouvement et de la communication urbaine du XXIe siècle.
Dans ce corpus récent, comme dans certains des projets précédents axés sur Rodin, la relation entre la sculpture et la photographie est mise en évidence, même si l'expressivité des corps en mouvement et des gestes est encore essentielle. L'historienne de l'art Rosalind Krauss a écrit que "la surface du corps, cette frontière entre ce que nous considérons comme interne et privé, et ce que nous reconnaissons comme externe et public, est le lieu de la signification de la sculpture de Rodin" (traduction libre). Cette valeur accordée à la surface du corps sonne vrai pour Hannah, mais dans les œuvres de Rodin retravaillé c'est également la surface des photographies qui est en jeu. Il est utile de savoir que Rodin lui-même a pris l'habitude de dessiner directement sur des photographies de ses travaux en cours ou terminés. Mais Hannah peint en fait sur le verre qui protège l'image, et non sur les photographies elles-mêmes, ce qui complique la question même de la surface. Les marques picturales d'Hannah ne se trouvent ni sur la surface des sculptures ni sur la surface des photographies, et la peinture semble plutôt flotter dans les airs, et entre les supports. Ces marques mystérieusement détachées ont une action vivifiante qui dynamise et réactive à la fois les sculptures et les photographies, donnant une nouvelle vie à ces vestiges du passé. »
- Johanne Sloan Département des arts visuels, Université Concordia
La sculpture figurative, en particulier celle d'Auguste Rodin, a toujours été une pratique contradictoire qui transforme le corps humain en une masse de matière inanimée tout en animant simultanément le plâtre, la pierre ou le bronze dont elle est faite. La vie humaine est distillée en une chose, et puis cette chose - par ses interactions avec les gens - reçoit la vie.
Rodin retravaillé d'Adad Hannah est un nouvel ensemble d'œuvres réalisées en collaboration avec le Musée Rodin, Paris. Cette série s'appuie sur l'intérêt qu'il porte à l'œuvre du sculpteur français Auguste Rodin (1840-1917) en relation avec l'interaction entre la sculpture et le corps humain, et les façons dont nous observons et interagissons avec l'art.
Hannah a exploré ces idées dans ses « conversations » avec l'art de Rodin pendant plus d'une décennie avec des projets tels que L’âge de bronze( 2004) tourné au Musée des beaux-arts du Canada, Les bourgeois de Séoul (2006) produit en Corée du Sud, Les Bourgeois de Calais : Crated and Displaced (2010) fait à Calais, Unwrapping Rodin (2010) qui a fait l'objet d'une exposition itinérante des œuvres de Rodin organisée par le Musée des beaux-arts de Montréal et le Musée Rodin, Paris, et Les Bourgeois de Vancouver (2015), une collaboration avec le cinéaste québécois Denys Arcand.
Rodin était un collectionneur passionné de photographies, dessinant et peignant souvent sur des images de son propre travail. Ces photographies à la plume, au crayon ou à la gouache servaient à réimaginer une œuvre, à tester une idée avant de la rendre en plâtre en préparation pour le bronze ou le marbre. Rodin utilise également des pigments brillants dans ses esquisses, bien que ses sculptures finales soient presque toujours monochromes.
Tout comme Rodin utilisait les photographies d'autres personnes pour imaginer d'autres façons de voir ses sculptures, Adad Hannah utilise des couches peintes suspendues devant les photographies qu'il a prises des plâtres de Rodin. En superposant des images fixes avec des feuilles de verre peintes, Hannah souligne comment la lumière et la couleur modifient notre perception de la sculpture tout en explorant les distinctions entre la présence symbolique d'une sculpture et l'aspect physique organique du corps humain. Ces œuvres mettent aussi l'accent sur le lien entre le passé et le présent - initiant une conversation entre les sculptures du 19e siècle de Rodin et les pratiques photographiques et de fabrication de marques actuelles.
Ayant étudié la gravure et la peinture au début de sa formation artistique, ce nouveau corpus d'œuvres réunit les premières pratiques artistiques de Hannah avec les œuvres performatives photographiques et vidéo qu'il a produites au cours des quinze dernières années dans le monde. Le verre peint est suspendu au-dessus de la photographie, créant un jeu de couleurs, réflection, de translucidité et d'opacité. Cette interaction obscurcit, met en valeur et active les corps gelés de Rodin lorsque le corps du spectateur se déplace autour de l'œuvre d'art.
---
“With Rodin Reworked, the paint that Adad Hannah applies over photographs of Auguste Rodin’s sculptures comes into view like some kind of alien matter, interrupting the material circumstances of both sculpture and photography. The paint is viscous and amorphous, but it also has an energetic force. The result is that Hannah’s lively gestures of pigment appear to interact with Rodin’s gesturing bodies.
Hannah has been working with Rodin over an extended period of time. What does it mean for a contemporary artist to “work with” a long-deceased historical artist? There is certainly an element of paying homage to the earlier artist, but this sustained relationship goes beyond that to become a genuine conversation across time. In Rodin’s work, Hannah has found a generative source (or sounding board) for his own, twenty-first century interrogation of images and bodies. More precisely, Hannah’s repeated encounters with Rodin allow him to explore a tension between still and moving images, and simultaneously, a tension between still and moving bodies.
In some of Hannah’s past projects, the engagement with Rodin resulted in outright re-makes of specific artworks. The Burghers of Seoul, 2006 (based on the famous multi-figure monument, The Burghers of Calais, 1889) is a prime example of that impulse. Rodin’s sculpture was disturbing when it first appeared because it so clearly subverted the monumental tradition: the six male figures are not grouped symmetrically or settled into conventional heroic poses, but instead are represented mid-movement – each figure striding, swaying, bending or hesitating. In Hannah’s moving-image version, the uniformed men replicating the Rodin burghers’ bodily states are motorcyle couriers, citizens of Seoul who spend their days travelling through the city. In the artwork, as they awkwardly hold their designated poses, they become living monuments to twenty-first century urban movement and communication.
In this recent body of work, as with some of the earlier Rodin-oriented projects, it is the relationship between sculpture and photography that comes into focus, even while the expressivity of moving/gesturing bodies is still key. The art historian Rosalind Krauss has written that “the surface of the body, that boundary between what we think of as internal and private, and what we acknowledge as external and public, is the locus of meaning for Rodin’s sculpture.” This value accorded to the surface of the body rings true for Hannah, but in the Rodin Reworked artworks it is also the surface of photographs which is at stake. It’s useful to know that Rodin himself developed a habit of drawing directly onto photographs of his works-in-progress or finished works. But Hannah is actually painting on the glass protecting the image, and not on the photographs themselves, and what this does is complicate the very question of surface. Hannah’s painterly marks lie neither on the surface of the sculptures nor on the surface of the photographs, and instead the paint seems to hover mid-air, and between media. These mysteriously detached marks have life-like agency, that energizes and re-activates both sculptures and photographs, giving new life to those remnants of the past.”
- Johanne Sloan Department of Art History, Concordia University
Figurative sculpture, especially the work of Auguste Rodin, has always been a contradictory practice that turns the human body into an inanimate lump of material while simultaneously animating the plaster, stone, or bronze it is fashioned out of. Human life is distilled into a thing, and then that thing - through its interactions with people - is given life.
Adad Hannah’s Rodin Reworked is a new body of works produced in collaboration with the Musée Rodin, Paris. This series builds upon his interest in the French sculptor Auguste Rodin’s (1840-1917) oeuvre in relation to the interplay between sculpture and the human body, and the ways in which we observe and interact with art.
Hannah has explored these ideas in conversation with Rodin’s art for more than a decade with projects such as Age of Bronze (2004) shot at the National Gallery of Canada, Burghers of Seoul (2006) produced in South Korea, Les Bourgeois de Calais: Crated and Displaced (2010) made in Calais, Unwrapping Rodin (2010) which was included in a touring show of Rodin’s work organized by the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts and the Musée Rodin, Paris, and The Burghers of Vancouver (2015), a collaboration with Quebeçois filmmaker Denys Arcand.
Rodin was an avid collector of photographs, often drawing and painting on top of images of his own work. These photographs with pen, pencil, or gouache on them were used as ways to reimagine a work, to test an idea before rendering it in plaster in preparation for bronze or marble. Rodin also used bright pigments in his sketches, though his final sculptures were almost always monochromatic.
Just as Rodin used other people’s photographs to imagine other ways his sculptures could be viewed, Adad Hannah uses painted layers suspended in front of photographs he took of Rodin’s plasters. By overlaying still images with painted glass sheets Hannah emphasizes how light and colour alter our perception of sculpture while exploring the distinctions between the symbolic presence of a sculpture and the organic physicality of the human body. These works also focus on the connection between the past and the present - initiating a conversation between Rodin’s 19th century sculptures and current photographic and mark-making practices.
Having studied printmaking and painting early in his art training, this new body of work brings together Hannah’s earliest artmaking practices with the performative photographic and video works he has spent the last fifteen years producing around the world. The painted glass floats above the photograph, creating an interplay of colour, reflection, translucency, and opacity. This interplay obscures, highlights, and activates Rodin’s frozen bodies as the viewer’s own body moves around the artwork.
de la série "Rodin Reworked"
Rodin Reworked
“With Rodin Reworked, the paint that Adad Hannah applies over photographs of Auguste Rodin’s sculptures comes into view like some kind of alien matter, interrupting the material circumstances of both sculpture and photography. The paint is viscous and amorphous, but it also has an energetic force. The result is that Hannah’s lively gestures of pigment appear to interact with Rodin’s gesturing bodies.
Hannah has been working with Rodin over an extended period of time. What does it mean for a contemporary artist to “work with” a long-deceased historical artist? There is certainly an element of paying homage to the earlier artist, but this sustained relationship goes beyond that to become a genuine conversation across time. In Rodin’s work, Hannah has found a generative source (or sounding board) for his own, twenty-first century interrogation of images and bodies. More precisely, Hannah’s repeated encounters with Rodin allow him to explore a tension between still and moving images, and simultaneously, a tension between still and moving bodies.
In some of Hannah’s past projects, the engagement with Rodin resulted in outright re-makes of specific artworks. The Burghers of Seoul, 2006 (based on the famous multi-figure monument, The Burghers of Calais, 1889) is a prime example of that impulse. Rodin’s sculpture was disturbing when it first appeared because it so clearly subverted the monumental tradition: the six male figures are not grouped symmetrically or settled into conventional heroic poses, but instead are represented mid-movement – each figure striding, swaying, bending or hesitating. In Hannah’s moving-image version, the uniformed men replicating the Rodin burghers’ bodily states are motorcyle couriers, citizens of Seoul who spend their days travelling through the city. In the artwork, as they awkwardly hold their designated poses, they become living monuments to twenty-first century urban movement and communication.
In this recent body of work, as with some of the earlier Rodin-oriented projects, it is the relationship between sculpture and photography that comes into focus, even while the expressivity of moving/gesturing bodies is still key. The art historian Rosalind Krauss has written that “the surface of the body, that boundary between what we think of as internal and private, and what we acknowledge as external and public, is the locus of meaning for Rodin’s sculpture.” This value accorded to the surface of the body rings true for Hannah, but in the Rodin Reworked artworks it is also the surface of photographs which is at stake. It’s useful to know that Rodin himself developed a habit of drawing directly onto photographs of his works-in-progress or finished works. But Hannah is actually painting on the glass protecting the image, and not on the photographs themselves, and what this does is complicate the very question of surface. Hannah’s painterly marks lie neither on the surface of the sculptures nor on the surface of the photographs, and instead the paint seems to hover mid-air, and between media. These mysteriously detached marks have life-like agency, that energizes and re-activates both sculptures and photographs, giving new life to those remnants of the past.”
- Johanne Sloan Department of Art History, Concordia University
Figurative sculpture, especially the work of Auguste Rodin, has always been a contradictory practice that turns the human body into an inanimate lump of material while simultaneously animating the plaster, stone, or bronze it is fashioned out of. Human life is distilled into a thing, and then that thing - through its interactions with people - is given life.
Adad Hannah’s Rodin Reworked is a new body of works produced in collaboration with the Musée Rodin, Paris. This series builds upon his interest in the French sculptor Auguste Rodin’s (1840-1917) oeuvre in relation to the interplay between sculpture and the human body, and the ways in which we observe and interact with art.
Hannah has explored these ideas in conversation with Rodin’s art for more than a decade with projects such as Age of Bronze (2004) shot at the National Gallery of Canada, Burghers of Seoul (2006) produced in South Korea, Les Bourgeois de Calais: Crated and Displaced (2010) made in Calais, Unwrapping Rodin (2010) which was included in a touring show of Rodin’s work organized by the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts and the Musée Rodin, Paris, and The Burghers of Vancouver (2015), a collaboration with Quebeçois filmmaker Denys Arcand.
Rodin was an avid collector of photographs, often drawing and painting on top of images of his own work. These photographs with pen, pencil, or gouache on them were used as ways to reimagine a work, to test an idea before rendering it in plaster in preparation for bronze or marble. Rodin also used bright pigments in his sketches, though his final sculptures were almost always monochromatic.
Just as Rodin used other people’s photographs to imagine other ways his sculptures could be viewed, Adad Hannah uses painted layers suspended in front of photographs he took of Rodin’s plasters. By overlaying still images with painted glass sheets Hannah emphasizes how light and colour alter our perception of sculpture while exploring the distinctions between the symbolic presence of a sculpture and the organic physicality of the human body. These works also focus on the connection between the past and the present - initiating a conversation between Rodin’s 19th century sculptures and current photographic and mark-making practices.
Having studied printmaking and painting early in his art training, this new body of work brings together Hannah’s earliest artmaking practices with the performative photographic and video works he has spent the last fifteen years producing around the world. The painted glass floats above the photograph, creating an interplay of colour, reflection, translucency, and opacity. This interplay obscures, highlights, and activates Rodin’s frozen bodies as the viewer’s own body moves around the artwork.
« Avec Rodin retravaillé, la peinture qu'Adad Hannah applique sur les photographies des sculptures d'Auguste Rodin apparaît comme une sorte de matière étrangère, interrompant les circonstances matérielles de la sculpture et de la photographie. La peinture est visqueuse et amorphe, mais elle a aussi une force énergétique. Le résultat est que les gestes colorés de Hannah semblent interagir avec les corps en mouvement de Rodin.
Hannah travaille avec Rodin depuis longtemps. Que signifie pour un artiste contemporain "travailler avec" un artiste historique disparu depuis longtemps ? Il y a certainement un élément d'hommage à l'artiste précédent, mais cette relation soutenue va au-delà pour devenir une véritable conversation à travers le temps. Dans l'œuvre de Rodin, Hannah a trouvé une source générative (ou caisse de résonance) pour ses propres interrogations sur les images et les corps au XXIe siècle. Plus précisément, les rencontres répétées d'Hannah avec Rodin lui permettent d'explorer une tension entre images immobiles et images en mouvement, et simultanément, une tension entre corps fixes et corps en mouvement.
Dans certains des projets antérieurs d'Hannah, l'engagement avec Rodin s'est traduit par des ‘re-makes’ d'œuvres d'art spécifiques. Les Bourgeois de Séoul, 2006 (d'après le célèbre monument à plusieurs personnages, Les Bourgeois de Calais, 1889) en est un excellent exemple. La sculpture de Rodin était troublante lorsqu'elle avait été présentée pour la première fois parce qu'elle renversait si clairement la tradition du monument : les six figures masculines ne sont pas regroupées symétriquement ou installées dans des poses héroïques conventionnelles, mais sont plutôt représentées en plein mouvement - chaque figure marchant, se balançant, se pliant ou hésitante. Dans la version à images animées d'Hannah, les hommes en uniforme qui reproduisent les états corporels des bourgeois de Rodin sont des coursiers à moto, des citoyens de Séoul qui passent leurs journées à voyager à travers la ville. Dans l'œuvre d'art, alors qu'ils tiennent maladroitement les poses qui leur sont assignées, ils deviennent des monuments vivants du mouvement et de la communication urbaine du XXIe siècle.
Dans ce corpus récent, comme dans certains des projets précédents axés sur Rodin, la relation entre la sculpture et la photographie est mise en évidence, même si l'expressivité des corps en mouvement et des gestes est encore essentielle. L'historienne de l'art Rosalind Krauss a écrit que "la surface du corps, cette frontière entre ce que nous considérons comme interne et privé, et ce que nous reconnaissons comme externe et public, est le lieu de la signification de la sculpture de Rodin" (traduction libre). Cette valeur accordée à la surface du corps sonne vrai pour Hannah, mais dans les œuvres de Rodin retravaillé c'est également la surface des photographies qui est en jeu. Il est utile de savoir que Rodin lui-même a pris l'habitude de dessiner directement sur des photographies de ses travaux en cours ou terminés. Mais Hannah peint en fait sur le verre qui protège l'image, et non sur les photographies elles-mêmes, ce qui complique la question même de la surface. Les marques picturales d'Hannah ne se trouvent ni sur la surface des sculptures ni sur la surface des photographies, et la peinture semble plutôt flotter dans les airs, et entre les supports. Ces marques mystérieusement détachées ont une action vivifiante qui dynamise et réactive à la fois les sculptures et les photographies, donnant une nouvelle vie à ces vestiges du passé. »
- Johanne Sloan Département des arts visuels, Université Concordia
La sculpture figurative, en particulier celle d'Auguste Rodin, a toujours été une pratique contradictoire qui transforme le corps humain en une masse de matière inanimée tout en animant simultanément le plâtre, la pierre ou le bronze dont elle est faite. La vie humaine est distillée en une chose, et puis cette chose - par ses interactions avec les gens - reçoit la vie.
Rodin retravaillé d'Adad Hannah est un nouvel ensemble d'œuvres réalisées en collaboration avec le Musée Rodin, Paris. Cette série s'appuie sur l'intérêt qu'il porte à l'œuvre du sculpteur français Auguste Rodin (1840-1917) en relation avec l'interaction entre la sculpture et le corps humain, et les façons dont nous observons et interagissons avec l'art.
Hannah a exploré ces idées dans ses « conversations » avec l'art de Rodin pendant plus d'une décennie avec des projets tels que L’âge de bronze( 2004) tourné au Musée des beaux-arts du Canada, Les bourgeois de Séoul (2006) produit en Corée du Sud, Les Bourgeois de Calais : Crated and Displaced (2010) fait à Calais, Unwrapping Rodin (2010) qui a fait l'objet d'une exposition itinérante des œuvres de Rodin organisée par le Musée des beaux-arts de Montréal et le Musée Rodin, Paris, et Les Bourgeois de Vancouver (2015), une collaboration avec le cinéaste québécois Denys Arcand.
Rodin était un collectionneur passionné de photographies, dessinant et peignant souvent sur des images de son propre travail. Ces photographies à la plume, au crayon ou à la gouache servaient à réimaginer une œuvre, à tester une idée avant de la rendre en plâtre en préparation pour le bronze ou le marbre. Rodin utilise également des pigments brillants dans ses esquisses, bien que ses sculptures finales soient presque toujours monochromes.
Tout comme Rodin utilisait les photographies d'autres personnes pour imaginer d'autres façons de voir ses sculptures, Adad Hannah utilise des couches peintes suspendues devant les photographies qu'il a prises des plâtres de Rodin. En superposant des images fixes avec des feuilles de verre peintes, Hannah souligne comment la lumière et la couleur modifient notre perception de la sculpture tout en explorant les distinctions entre la présence symbolique d'une sculpture et l'aspect physique organique du corps humain. Ces œuvres mettent aussi l'accent sur le lien entre le passé et le présent - initiant une conversation entre les sculptures du 19e siècle de Rodin et les pratiques photographiques et de fabrication de marques actuelles.
Ayant étudié la gravure et la peinture au début de sa formation artistique, ce nouveau corpus d'œuvres réunit les premières pratiques artistiques de Hannah avec les œuvres performatives photographiques et vidéo qu'il a produites au cours des quinze dernières années dans le monde. Le verre peint est suspendu au-dessus de la photographie, créant un jeu de couleurs, réflection, de translucidité et d'opacité. Cette interaction obscurcit, met en valeur et active les corps gelés de Rodin lorsque le corps du spectateur se déplace autour de l'œuvre d'art.
---
“With Rodin Reworked, the paint that Adad Hannah applies over photographs of Auguste Rodin’s sculptures comes into view like some kind of alien matter, interrupting the material circumstances of both sculpture and photography. The paint is viscous and amorphous, but it also has an energetic force. The result is that Hannah’s lively gestures of pigment appear to interact with Rodin’s gesturing bodies.
Hannah has been working with Rodin over an extended period of time. What does it mean for a contemporary artist to “work with” a long-deceased historical artist? There is certainly an element of paying homage to the earlier artist, but this sustained relationship goes beyond that to become a genuine conversation across time. In Rodin’s work, Hannah has found a generative source (or sounding board) for his own, twenty-first century interrogation of images and bodies. More precisely, Hannah’s repeated encounters with Rodin allow him to explore a tension between still and moving images, and simultaneously, a tension between still and moving bodies.
In some of Hannah’s past projects, the engagement with Rodin resulted in outright re-makes of specific artworks. The Burghers of Seoul, 2006 (based on the famous multi-figure monument, The Burghers of Calais, 1889) is a prime example of that impulse. Rodin’s sculpture was disturbing when it first appeared because it so clearly subverted the monumental tradition: the six male figures are not grouped symmetrically or settled into conventional heroic poses, but instead are represented mid-movement – each figure striding, swaying, bending or hesitating. In Hannah’s moving-image version, the uniformed men replicating the Rodin burghers’ bodily states are motorcyle couriers, citizens of Seoul who spend their days travelling through the city. In the artwork, as they awkwardly hold their designated poses, they become living monuments to twenty-first century urban movement and communication.
In this recent body of work, as with some of the earlier Rodin-oriented projects, it is the relationship between sculpture and photography that comes into focus, even while the expressivity of moving/gesturing bodies is still key. The art historian Rosalind Krauss has written that “the surface of the body, that boundary between what we think of as internal and private, and what we acknowledge as external and public, is the locus of meaning for Rodin’s sculpture.” This value accorded to the surface of the body rings true for Hannah, but in the Rodin Reworked artworks it is also the surface of photographs which is at stake. It’s useful to know that Rodin himself developed a habit of drawing directly onto photographs of his works-in-progress or finished works. But Hannah is actually painting on the glass protecting the image, and not on the photographs themselves, and what this does is complicate the very question of surface. Hannah’s painterly marks lie neither on the surface of the sculptures nor on the surface of the photographs, and instead the paint seems to hover mid-air, and between media. These mysteriously detached marks have life-like agency, that energizes and re-activates both sculptures and photographs, giving new life to those remnants of the past.”
- Johanne Sloan Department of Art History, Concordia University
Figurative sculpture, especially the work of Auguste Rodin, has always been a contradictory practice that turns the human body into an inanimate lump of material while simultaneously animating the plaster, stone, or bronze it is fashioned out of. Human life is distilled into a thing, and then that thing - through its interactions with people - is given life.
Adad Hannah’s Rodin Reworked is a new body of works produced in collaboration with the Musée Rodin, Paris. This series builds upon his interest in the French sculptor Auguste Rodin’s (1840-1917) oeuvre in relation to the interplay between sculpture and the human body, and the ways in which we observe and interact with art.
Hannah has explored these ideas in conversation with Rodin’s art for more than a decade with projects such as Age of Bronze (2004) shot at the National Gallery of Canada, Burghers of Seoul (2006) produced in South Korea, Les Bourgeois de Calais: Crated and Displaced (2010) made in Calais, Unwrapping Rodin (2010) which was included in a touring show of Rodin’s work organized by the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts and the Musée Rodin, Paris, and The Burghers of Vancouver (2015), a collaboration with Quebeçois filmmaker Denys Arcand.
Rodin was an avid collector of photographs, often drawing and painting on top of images of his own work. These photographs with pen, pencil, or gouache on them were used as ways to reimagine a work, to test an idea before rendering it in plaster in preparation for bronze or marble. Rodin also used bright pigments in his sketches, though his final sculptures were almost always monochromatic.
Just as Rodin used other people’s photographs to imagine other ways his sculptures could be viewed, Adad Hannah uses painted layers suspended in front of photographs he took of Rodin’s plasters. By overlaying still images with painted glass sheets Hannah emphasizes how light and colour alter our perception of sculpture while exploring the distinctions between the symbolic presence of a sculpture and the organic physicality of the human body. These works also focus on the connection between the past and the present - initiating a conversation between Rodin’s 19th century sculptures and current photographic and mark-making practices.
Having studied printmaking and painting early in his art training, this new body of work brings together Hannah’s earliest artmaking practices with the performative photographic and video works he has spent the last fifteen years producing around the world. The painted glass floats above the photograph, creating an interplay of colour, reflection, translucency, and opacity. This interplay obscures, highlights, and activates Rodin’s frozen bodies as the viewer’s own body moves around the artwork.
de la série "Rodin Reworked"
Rodin Reworked
“With Rodin Reworked, the paint that Adad Hannah applies over photographs of Auguste Rodin’s sculptures comes into view like some kind of alien matter, interrupting the material circumstances of both sculpture and photography. The paint is viscous and amorphous, but it also has an energetic force. The result is that Hannah’s lively gestures of pigment appear to interact with Rodin’s gesturing bodies.
Hannah has been working with Rodin over an extended period of time. What does it mean for a contemporary artist to “work with” a long-deceased historical artist? There is certainly an element of paying homage to the earlier artist, but this sustained relationship goes beyond that to become a genuine conversation across time. In Rodin’s work, Hannah has found a generative source (or sounding board) for his own, twenty-first century interrogation of images and bodies. More precisely, Hannah’s repeated encounters with Rodin allow him to explore a tension between still and moving images, and simultaneously, a tension between still and moving bodies.
In some of Hannah’s past projects, the engagement with Rodin resulted in outright re-makes of specific artworks. The Burghers of Seoul, 2006 (based on the famous multi-figure monument, The Burghers of Calais, 1889) is a prime example of that impulse. Rodin’s sculpture was disturbing when it first appeared because it so clearly subverted the monumental tradition: the six male figures are not grouped symmetrically or settled into conventional heroic poses, but instead are represented mid-movement – each figure striding, swaying, bending or hesitating. In Hannah’s moving-image version, the uniformed men replicating the Rodin burghers’ bodily states are motorcyle couriers, citizens of Seoul who spend their days travelling through the city. In the artwork, as they awkwardly hold their designated poses, they become living monuments to twenty-first century urban movement and communication.
In this recent body of work, as with some of the earlier Rodin-oriented projects, it is the relationship between sculpture and photography that comes into focus, even while the expressivity of moving/gesturing bodies is still key. The art historian Rosalind Krauss has written that “the surface of the body, that boundary between what we think of as internal and private, and what we acknowledge as external and public, is the locus of meaning for Rodin’s sculpture.” This value accorded to the surface of the body rings true for Hannah, but in the Rodin Reworked artworks it is also the surface of photographs which is at stake. It’s useful to know that Rodin himself developed a habit of drawing directly onto photographs of his works-in-progress or finished works. But Hannah is actually painting on the glass protecting the image, and not on the photographs themselves, and what this does is complicate the very question of surface. Hannah’s painterly marks lie neither on the surface of the sculptures nor on the surface of the photographs, and instead the paint seems to hover mid-air, and between media. These mysteriously detached marks have life-like agency, that energizes and re-activates both sculptures and photographs, giving new life to those remnants of the past.”
- Johanne Sloan Department of Art History, Concordia University
Figurative sculpture, especially the work of Auguste Rodin, has always been a contradictory practice that turns the human body into an inanimate lump of material while simultaneously animating the plaster, stone, or bronze it is fashioned out of. Human life is distilled into a thing, and then that thing - through its interactions with people - is given life.
Adad Hannah’s Rodin Reworked is a new body of works produced in collaboration with the Musée Rodin, Paris. This series builds upon his interest in the French sculptor Auguste Rodin’s (1840-1917) oeuvre in relation to the interplay between sculpture and the human body, and the ways in which we observe and interact with art.
Hannah has explored these ideas in conversation with Rodin’s art for more than a decade with projects such as Age of Bronze (2004) shot at the National Gallery of Canada, Burghers of Seoul (2006) produced in South Korea, Les Bourgeois de Calais: Crated and Displaced (2010) made in Calais, Unwrapping Rodin (2010) which was included in a touring show of Rodin’s work organized by the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts and the Musée Rodin, Paris, and The Burghers of Vancouver (2015), a collaboration with Quebeçois filmmaker Denys Arcand.
Rodin was an avid collector of photographs, often drawing and painting on top of images of his own work. These photographs with pen, pencil, or gouache on them were used as ways to reimagine a work, to test an idea before rendering it in plaster in preparation for bronze or marble. Rodin also used bright pigments in his sketches, though his final sculptures were almost always monochromatic.
Just as Rodin used other people’s photographs to imagine other ways his sculptures could be viewed, Adad Hannah uses painted layers suspended in front of photographs he took of Rodin’s plasters. By overlaying still images with painted glass sheets Hannah emphasizes how light and colour alter our perception of sculpture while exploring the distinctions between the symbolic presence of a sculpture and the organic physicality of the human body. These works also focus on the connection between the past and the present - initiating a conversation between Rodin’s 19th century sculptures and current photographic and mark-making practices.
Having studied printmaking and painting early in his art training, this new body of work brings together Hannah’s earliest artmaking practices with the performative photographic and video works he has spent the last fifteen years producing around the world. The painted glass floats above the photograph, creating an interplay of colour, reflection, translucency, and opacity. This interplay obscures, highlights, and activates Rodin’s frozen bodies as the viewer’s own body moves around the artwork.