Note

ARTIST’S QUESTION

Interdimensional Art

A. M. HOCH, Mitosis (Second Stage); installation with oil on canvas with grommets, mirror, rolodex with embedded text and photos; 96 x 138 inches, 1990

A. M. HOCH, Mitosis (Second Stage); installation with oil on canvas with grommets, mirror, rolodex with embedded text and photos; 96 x 138 inches, 1990

The tenuous rigging of memory and language, perception and imagination that holds a life together has always been the source of fascination for me—perhaps because my own rigging has always seemed particularly precarious. Whether using imaginary boats as models for the impossibly delicate messiness of being, or the imagery of chromosomes and cellular mitosis as a metaphor for the primal drama at our core, the drive to create a vivid portrait of a self remains an enduring force in my life and work. When I envision an authentic representation of a human being, it isn’t bounded by a contour; for me, a self can’t be described by a solid mass with a distinct beginning and end, but rather as a mysteriously balanced system of weights and forces—a mesmerizing tangle of idiosyncrasies and yearnings and questions.

Though imagist theatre has deeply influenced me—its psychological intensity and use of unconventional narrative—the essence of painting remains at the core of my work. Regardless of the materials or technologies, it is the human imprint on these materials—the deeply personal marks made by the human hand impelled by the heart and an open mind—that is the crucial element for me. Though I have worked with a great variety of media over the years, the question at the heart of my work has remained constant: What is the essence of a self? What, at core, is the most honest and expansive representation of a human being, given that with every breath we are dissolving and reforming?

A. M. HOCH, Mitosis: Formation of Daughter Cells, interdisciplinary installation at the Beall Center for Art and Technology, Irvine, California, 43 x 60 feet, 2004

A. M. HOCH, Mitosis: Formation of Daughter Cells, interdisciplinary installation at the Beall Center for Art and Technology, Irvine, California, 43 x 60 feet, 2004

The notion of “embedded narratives” has been key in the development of my interdimensional installations, in which painting/sculptures incorporate the space around them, while embedded videos and language (written or aural) are portals into other spaces and dimensions. Often I use original writings as the backstory for my assemblages and installations; though it isn’t necessary that the viewer reads those texts to experience the visual components, they are a layer of my work that is essential for me.

Combining painting, sculpture, audio and video digital technologies, and original text—in real or surreal domestic interiors, in black box theaters, in urban sites, galleries or just in my own studio—I want the space enveloped by my installations to feel like the center of the atom: an extreme amount of energy compressed into a very small space, a place where our mundane laws of space and time break down, and the raw energy of memory and the imagination cracks open.