John Hitchcock

Geboren 1967 in Lawton, Oklahoma

1990 B.F.A. Cameron University

1997 M.F.A. Texas Tech University

1998-2001 Assistant Professor, University of Minnesota, Morris

2001-Present Assistant Professor of Art, University of Wisconsin-Madison

Gruppenausstellungen:

2003 South African Museum, Cape Town, South Africa
2003 Museu de Arte de Brasilia, Brasilia, Brazil
2003 The Photography Institute, Nathan Cummings Foundation, New York
2002 Exit Art, New York
2002 IV International Biennial of Photography, Reus Catalonia, Spain
2000 Museum of Contemporary Art, Santiago de Chile
1997 Institute of American Indian Art Museum, Santa Fe, New Mexico
1997 Seacourt Collaborative Press, Bangor, Ireland

Lebt und arbeitet in Madison, WI, USA

Consuption

Consumption is a multi media interactive environment consist-ing of screenprinted flags, Give-Away art works, and sound. The installation examines how landscape (actual, political, social, visual, representational, or nonrepresentational) and culture shapes a persons' artistic viewpoint. The Give-Away refers to a traditional honor dance performed at Native American pow-wows or social gatherings where money or gifts are presented to visitors, family members, and singers at the drum as an
offerring. Most cultures have some social ties with sharing and giving gifts as part of its traditions. As a visitor to Darmstadt, I have brought small screenprinted North American Bison prints as a small token or a curio of visual images and language for exchange. The Give-Away also refers to mass marketing imagery that inundates our contemporary culture such as advertising on billboards, small printed bills, television, junk e-mails, pop up advertising, and now pop under ads on the web.

My current art deals directly with issues of consumption in North America. After the death of my grandparents from cancer, I began this series of prints, digital photos, installations, and drawings. The work asks questions about the quality of the United States Department of Agriculture commodity foods distributed by the government for food assistance to indigenous lands, welfare programs, and to third world countries. In my installations and prints, I appropriated the silhouetted logo from the commodities (a cow from a can of beef and a chicken from a
package of powdered eggs) to question notions of assimilation and control. These explorations have lead to broader questions about the proliferation of images in popular culture and mass electronic media that inundates our lives daily. What are the societal, psychological, and physiological consequences of globalization? What have we learned from progress? I examine these issues by re-contextualizing images from culture, electronic media, and food to question social and political systems.

Installation und Aktion im Garten Kärnbach/Borngässer

im Emser 17