Imaginary Monuments

Imaginary Monuments
Aimée Burg, Mark Dixon, 
Thale Fastvold, and Emily Hass
Curated by Fritz Horstman
April 25 – May 31, 2015

May 31, 2015
music, poetry dance performances

Imaginary Monuments, an Ortega y Gasset Projects exhibition curated by Fritz Horstman, brings together five artists who create paintings, sculptures, and photographs that monumentalize a possible or desired – though absent or disappearing – object or idea.  This urge to create imaginary monuments, or document real ones, seems to stem in part from the artists’ recognition and celebration of the precariousness of contemporary culture and current historicizing trends.  There is a theme of slowing things down, of cementing a fleeting moment – an urge to resist the ever speeding now.   Because we are venturing into the imaginations of these artists, into less-than-real or no-longer-real spaces, the work often contains fragments of narratives, and often tends towards the mysterious.  

Aimée Burg lives and works in New Haven, CT.  Her installations combine a natural history museum with sci-fi sets, placing herself in the past looking at the future looking at our past.  (BFA Pratt; MFA Yale)

Mark Dixon is based in Glenside, PA.  His paintings and drawings are of his neighborhood at the edge of Philadelphia.  They depict neglected monuments and spaces. (BFA University of Delaware; MFA Maryland Institute College of Art)

Thale Fastvold,  is an artist, curator and writer living in Oslo, Norway. Working with photography and installations, her art practice researches concepts such as liminality in time and space and the Earth’s place within the Universe. (BA Istituto Europeo di Design, Rome; MA Art History and Literature, University of Oslo)

Emily Hass lives and works in Manhattan.  She paints in gouache and ink on paper, investigating the architecture of Berlin in the 1930s, specifically where persecuted Jews, artists, and intellectuals lived.  (BA Hampshire College; M.Ed in Psychology, Harvard University; M.Des Design, Harvard University)

Fritz Horstman is an artist and curator based in Bethany, CT.  He focuses on unusual and quiet instances of nature and culture overlapping, often producing scientific-like tools and images.  He has been a member of Ortega Y Gasset Projects since 2014. (BA Kenyon College; MFA Maryland Institute College of Art)

Ortega Y Gasset Projects is a gallery and curated project space in the Gowanus neighborhood of Brooklyn. Comprised of artists currently living in Connecticut, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, New York, Ohio, and Tennessee, OyG operates as a cross-country collective and an incubator for dialogue and artistic exchange. 

Please email fritzhorstman@gmail.com with any questions.