Hidden Threads
A multidisciplinary group exhibition explores the spontaneous side of memory.
HOT•BED is pleased to present Hidden Threads, a group exhibition curated by Bryan Hoffman that explores the subconscious memories that inform our identities. As we navigate daily life, sensory stimuli may provoke unrelated recollections or emotions from the past. The work in the show is inspired by these involuntary memories, also known as mind-pops, which form the hidden threads that weave together our everyday experiences. Inspired by this idea, artists Katee Boyle, Carlos Alejandro, Alex Griffin, and János Korodi are exhibiting works spanning painting, photography, videography/projection mapping, sculpture, installations, and works on paper. In addition to their individual pieces, Boyle, Alejandro, and Nelson have also contributed new collaborative projects created especially for this exhibition. This is the first exhibition that will utilize the entirety of HOT•BED’s space, including its main gallery and MICRO•GALLERY. Hidden Threads will flow through the gallery, intensifying as it goes, while acting as a subconscious space that visitors are invited to explore. Staff will intentionally provide little direction, as to ensure total autonomy over how deeply visitors would like to dive into the recesses of the space and mind. Hidden Threads will be on view from September 11 – November 12, 2021 with an opening event on September 11, 2021 at 6-10 pm EST. To RSVP, please visit the site.
Mind-pops occur without effort or exerted influence, often during habitual activity. Everyone experiences these moments — when you taste, see, hear, smell, or touch something and suddenly a rush of memory surfaces. These memories can be powerful catalysts for creative expression or harmful triggers for negative emotions. What it shows us is that our subconscious often knows the meaning of an experience, even if consciously we don’t, Professor Lia Kvavilashvili of the University of Hertfordshire told Scientific American. Inspired by this phenomenon, each artist in Hidden Threads references or explores the idea through their own distinct style and conceptual lens.
Korodi considers memory by portraying the visceral experience of moving through space and time. His never-before-exhibited Transfer series (2020) continues his work with street views in a new medium; the artist takes images from Google Maps and prints them onto raw plywood sheets using a dye sublimation process. The romantic yet ghostly works retain the patterns and textures of the wood, with the street view images superimposed on top of them, mirroring the way memory is layered over the present. Korodi will also be showing works from his Motion and Bridges in Motion series.
Boyle gives us an intimate window into the place where past, present, and future are always meeting, fighting, coexisting, and collaborating. Her work resonates with a tug of memoir, the desire to move forward but always with a strong gravitational pull of the past. For Hidden Threads, Boyle has teamed up with Alejandro and Matt Nelson of N.E. Thing Productions on a series of flip book video projections, which expand upon the narrative of Boyle’s paintings and sculptures. The projections — shot by Alejandro and featuring Boyle — will be exhibited mapped over Boyle’s installation pieces, on top of horticulture displays designed by curator Bryan Hoffman, and against the walls of the gallery, creating an immersive experience that echoes the disarray of the subconscious.
In addition to the projections, Alejandro also contributes individual works to the show, including photographs and enlarged negatives hung in a line to mimic the setup of a dark room. By utilizing the traditional medium of analog photography — including a variety of uniquely complex techniques for developing and printing his images — Alejandro reflects on memory, artistic craft, and what is lost or preserved in the passage of time.
Griffin paints landscapes and architectural spaces in a raw, fuzzy style that mimics the haze of the past, but retains its emotional resonance. Though the pieces are often somber and visually sparse, Griffin gives structure to memory, making it visible in new ways. Rather than striving for photorealistic perfection, the artist captures what it feels like to almost grasp a memory before it slips back into the subconscious layers of the mind. (Griffin and Boyle have previously shown work together at Scarlett Thicket Farms in Chester County.)
Altogether, the exhibition presents a rich and layered depiction of memory and its elusive mind pops. In probing the possibilities of this complex, confounding, and distinctly human experience, Hidden Threads asks us to consider what we know we know, as well as that which we can only hope to catch a glimpse of someday. For more information and additional updates on Hidden Threads, please visit the site.
About Carlos Alejandro
Born in New York City. Grew up in public housing projects. Classically trained musician. 35 years of successful editorial, commercial, and fine art photography. Advocate for creativity, children, education and the environment.
About Katee Boyle
Katee Boyle, Scarlett Forge; Kennett Square, Pennsylvania explores a wide range of media including drawing, painting, sculpture, photography, words, sound, and installation to create the artifacts and narratives attributed to her work. A conceptually-driven expressionist, her stories stem from personal tributes to the human experience and unyielding faith in the power of emotional responses. Boyle’s work responds to the question: what does it mean to feel human, unapologetically from the female perspective. The manifestation of Her documents offers a representation of memory energized by a sense of momentum. Her work shares a strong temporal dimension – a place where the past, present, and future are always meeting, often colliding or in conflict. Boyle’s work resonates with a tug of memoir, the desire to move forward but always with a strong gravitational pull of the past. Speaking in a viscerally raw language of unbridled honesty on female invisibility and social conditioning, Boyle presents the viewer with a deconstructed female perspective on emotional life.
Boyle’s Artifacts reflect on cultural and gender-nuanced elements of life: birth, death, mother, family, discord, trust, and healing. Her work explores the mapping of connections and growth between that which is tangible and that which is most often unmentionable and fleeting. Her narratives embody the external social messages that speak to personal and private but simultaneously mingle and resonate with her audience as emotionally responsive, collectively shared experiences.
Boyle’s work is in private collections internationally. She has exhibited at SOFA Chicago, is a Winterthur Museum Maker- Creator Fellow, and a United States Artist Nominee.
About Alex Griffin
Alex Griffin creates landscapes that move among the past, present and future. Taking on multiple roles of painter, historian and storyteller, he reconstructs realities by inviting the viewer into imaginary scenes – a field, an urban landscape, a quiet walkway. His paintings have a cinematic effect and are filled with dreamlike imagery and structure. He builds up the surfaces of his canvases with layers of narratives and surrealist images. Griffin received a BFA from Virginia Commonwealth University in 2008. He lives and works in Philadelphia, PA.
About János Korodi
János Korodi was born in Budapest, Hungary in 1971. He is a visual artist, primarily a painter, and deals with different forms of printmaking, murals, and occasionally participates in interdisciplinary collaborations. By the time he received his doctoral degree in visual arts from the Hungarian University of Fine Arts, at the age of 42 in 2013, he was already in the process of relocation to the US. In the last 25 years, his works have been shown in various countries in Europe and the US. He has spent a six-months artists residency at TerraCycle Inc. in Trenton, NJ in 2015, awarded the 2010 Eötvös Scholarship of the Hungarian State–a studio residency in New York City, a 2008 scholarship at the Hungarian Academy in Rome, the 1999–2001 Derkovits Fellowship for emerging artist in Hungary, and the 1996 scholarship from the Tóth Menyhért Foundation of Kecskemét, Hungary. Korodi’s works are in permanent public and private collections internationally. He has lived and worked in Philadelphia since 2015. Through the 2000’s, Korodi has dealt with architecture and urbanism, and its visual and theoretical aspects for his Genius Loci – Spirit of the Place paintings and program, which concluded in his thesis. Later, he found his new self in “motion”, and the phenomenon of transition between places. This move colluded and bound together with the human exodus of the recent decade, as well as with his own immigration, and it reflects on the Spirit of the Place problem, too.
About HOT•BED
Established in 2017, HOT•BED is a gallery and creative lifestyle space in Philadelphia that unites art, horticulture, and design. Helmed by Creative Director, Bryan Hoffman, HOT•BED is a catalyst and a conduit for futures not yet realized. It’s a gathering place, not unlike the Paris Salons of the Nineteenth century, where visitors and artists alike have the opportunity to collaborate, exhibit, and explore new ideas in a welcoming and judgment-free environment.
