Karin Hodgin Jones
March 27 - April 17, 2009

The Cecille R. Hunt Gallery is pleased to present recent work by this year’s visiting artist Karin Hodgin Jones. Using a variety of media, such as motors, microcontrollers, wood, fabric, thread, solar panels and generators in her sculpture and installation work, Hodgin Jones focuses heavily on the feeble lines that connect the organic to the mechanical. Utilizing kinetics, she creates sprawling and odd installations, that both, tug, breathe and wave, all in an effort to mimic technology’s interference in our natural landscape and its altering relationship to the human body. Her interest lies in systems analysis, language translation and the role of machines in the human condition, the combination of these elements creates the context for meaning in her work. She states that: “the machine begins to stand in opposition to the body in competitive ways and casts a different light on its function.” Building on this idea, the philosopher, Martin Heidegger terms “standing reserve” as: “the relationship of the desires of humans to bring forth from the landscape energies to service the standardized grid of power.” As a point of reference for this new work, Hodgin Jones also believes as technology advances, the ways that we understand nature is inevitably altered. Interested especially in our continuation to form new and complex relationships with a variety of machines, this site-specific installation will utilize the luminosity of the gallery lighting system, to set her work in motion. Concerned with our disability to recognize the landscape for its contour, color, texture and vitality, her work intends to somehow distance the machine from the human body, but simultaneously make the elements that bind them more dependent and more visible.

Biography: Karin Hodgin Jones received her MFA from the University of Illinois, Urbana Champaign in 2008 and her BFA is from the University of Utah. She has exhibited throughout the U.S. and has received funding and support for a variety of projects. Exhibitions venues include: a solo exhibition at: Lightwell Gallery, Oklahoma University, Norman, OK; Group shows at: I Space Gallery, Chicago, IL; Krannert Art Museum, Champaign, IL; Mass Gallery in Austin, TX; New Visions Gallery, Salt Lake City, UT; Gittins Gallery, Salt Lake City, UT. IN 2005 her work was featured as one of the 9 collections in the Ninth Letter Art and Literary Journal.