Drew Hammond | Metonymic Narrative in Contemporary Art

Wydział Malarstwa i Rysunku Uniwersytetu Artystycznego im. Magdaleny Abakanowicz w Poznaniu ma zaszczyt zaprosić  na wykład  Drew Hammonda

Metonymic Narrative in Contemporary art

01.04.2021, 5.p.m.

The Faculty of Painting and Drawing of the Magdalena Abakanowicz University of the Arts Poznan is delighted to announce the lecture of Drew Hammond

Metonymic Narrative in Contemporary art

a) there is usually no immediately discernible formal relation between the materialized art work and the narrative without reference to the narrative

b) The art work and the narrative operate in tension with each other, a tension between materialized work as metonym with no immediately discernible formal relation, and dematerialized narrative that imparts a hermeneutic of the materialized aspect of the work-as-metonym.

c) contrary to tendencies of the 90s such as Relational Aesthetics and other theories and tendencies rooted in the radical relativism of postwar French thought, this new work poses a radical reassertion of authorship.

d) this reassertion of authorship is so extreme that it extends even to the referent, which also is contrived by the artist who imposes his/her narrative on it (colonization of the referent by the artist’s contrivance is new in art history). 

e) the result of this way of making art is that it invests the materialized work with an immensely greater representational range.

Born in London in 1957, Hammond studied Philosophy of Aesthetics under José-María Sánchez de Muniain at the University of Madrid (1975-1976), and Chinese Aesthetics and Neo-Confucian Thought under Wing-tsit Chan of the Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures at Columbia University, where he entered the PhD. program (1976-1982). During the eighties and nineties, as a successive resident of five countries in Latin America, he wrote art criticism for El Diario de Caracas and other publications under the pseudonym, M.T. Han. In 2006, he was appointed a Visiting Lecturer in Contemporary Art for Global Architecture History and Theory program of the University of Toronto’s Faculty of Landscape, Architecture and Design. And in the following year, he directed a graduate seminar in Beijing, in the Theory of Perspective in Classical Chinese Art for the University of Michigan’s Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning. Also in 2007, he was appointed to lecture in the Chinese language on Contemporary Western Art 1962-2005 at the Graduate Faculty of the China Art Academy in Beijing, and continues to lecture annually on contemporary art for the Executive Masters Program in Art Market Studies (EMAMS) of the University of Zürich. As former Senior International Correspondent for The Art Economist, Hammond specialized in presentation strategy in contemporary art. Now a resident of Berlin, he serves as a curatorial consultant to Heldart, a non-profit art organization that makes site-specific contemporary exhibitions. Most recently, he has lectured at the Deutsche Bank Kunsthalle (Berlin) on Seeing as Process: Veronika Kellndorfer and Steve Rowell, (a cooperation with the Senate Chancellery Berlin as part of the City Partnership Berlin—Los Angeles). He has also lectured for the Institute for Cultural Diplomacy in Berlin, The Chinese academy of Art in Beijing, and for The University of Santo Domingo, in the Dominican Republic. Besides having published numerous exhibition catalogues and essays in books on artists’ works, he also has published in Texte zur Kunst, Flash Art, Art investor, The Art Newspaper ( China). and other periodicals dedicated to art topics.

Concomitantly with his art activities, Hammond has also published essays on Kubrick and Tarkovsky, and worked in a variety of capacities in the film industry, serving as script and editorial consultant to several motion picture production companies including Donald Cammell’s Perpetual Motion Pictures (Perpetual Mopic) Ltd. (London); P.E.A. Films, Inc. (Los Angeles) Cineville, LLC, (Los Angeles); and NeoFilm GmbH (Cologne).

He has written or modified unproduced or uncredited screenplays with several directors including Donald Cammell, Marc Forster, Martin Donovan, Giuseppe Tornatore, and others.

’The sealed studio’ talks

The lecture of Drew Hammond is the forth one from the series of talks initiated and moderated by Prof. Dominik Lejman, II Studio Painting course director organized by Faculty of Painting and Drawing, University of the Arts, Poznań with support of Dr hab. Tomasz Kalitko, the dean of the Faculty of Painting and Drawing

The series of on-line lectures is dedicated to encounter with the  critical thought of the most renowned contemporary theoreticians, art critics, curators and artists. At the time of the pandemic solitary confinement, we believe that with our effort, the forced physical distance can be reshaped into the advantage of the greater proximity in exchange of ideas.   

’The sealed studio’ talks

Wystąpienie Drew Hammonda jest czwartym z cyklu wykladów on-line inicjowanych i moderowanych przez Prof. Dominika Lejmana, kierownika II Pracowni Malarstwa zorganizowanych przez Wydział Malarstwa i Rysunku Uniwersytetu Artystycznego w Poznaniu pod opieką dziekana Wydziału Malarstwa Dr hab. Tomasza Kalitki

Cykliczne wykłady on-line zadedykowane są przybliżeniu myśli krytycznej najbardziej znaczącyh, współczesnych teoretyków, krytyków sztuki, kuratorów i artystów. W czasie pandemicznego odosobnienia, wierzymy, że dzięki naszym wysiłkom wymuszony dystans fizyczny może przeistoczyć się w korzyść zbliżenia wymiany myśli.

Dominik Lejman 2021