Joe Hedges: Ctrl+A

Ctrl+A

A Solo Exhibition by Joe Hedges

Bolivar Gallery, University of Kentucky

January 14 through February 12

In the exhibition Ctrl+A, Joe Hedges presents works that are informed by the history of oil painting, but refracted through a kaleidoscopic milieu of recent media technologies including digital tablets, flatscreen televisions, CRT televisions, and guitar amplifiers. The works are best described as combinatorial, featuring areas of highly rendered oil painting presented alongside, around or within consumer objects. The painted images and found objects together become specific signifiers that point to ideas and aesthetics as disparate as Dutch Golden Age painting and 1980's hypercolor. Hedges’ freewheeling practice tends to treat devices as materials while painted panels sometimes read as objects, calling to mind the tendency of the contemporary internet to layer reality and ideas. In this show, Hedges' landscapes and figurative works hang together—a nexus of human identity, the natural world and the technological landscape. Ctrl+A, refers to the computer keyboard combination used to “select all” while using text or image-editing software. Hedges' selection of—and success working through—multiple approaches to art-making creates an intriguing and at times inscrutable puzzle. The work is a testament to the variety of expressive choices available to artists today, and the persistence of human creativity and ingenuity through time. About Joe Hedges Joe Hedges is an intermedia artist who has an expansive practice that weaves together oil painting and new media installation. His projects explore the effects of digital technologies on human experience, often by surprising and unexpected juxtapositions with media objects and art history. Hedges has exhibited nationally and internationally and has led community-based public art projects in Ohio, Kentucky and Washington. Hedges is currently living in Pullman, Washington.