Joe Hedges
Madeleine Stowe
18″ x 12″
oil on board with ipad
A portrait of the actor Madeleine Stowe. Viewers are invited to navigate Madeleine Stowe’s imdb page.
Experiments in representational painting and new media. I call them Hypercombines. Call it “intermedia” if you like–exploring the space between the polls of new and seemingly old approaches such as oil painting.
This piece was initially for an exhibition about the actor Madeleine Stowe at Pique Gallery gallery in Covington, KY (near Cincinnati, OH), curated by Chris Reeves. From the curator:
In this exhibition 13 artists from near and far have created short films, texts, drawings, and objects all based on the actor Madeleine Stowe (Last of the Mohicans, Twelve Monkeys, tv’s Revenge). If you are asking “who is that again?” that is something of the point. In a 2017 New York Times article, “I Ignored Trump for a Week, Here’s What I Learned,” Farhad Manjoo cites a figure pertaining to the media coverage value of “1,000 of the world’s best known figures.” Donald Trump’s earned media value averages at about $817 million dollars a month, “about 100 million more than the next 1,000 famous people put together.” The 1,000th most-mentioned celebrity in the database was Madeleine Stowe.
Stowe, in this context, is 800 thousand times less likely to be featured in media than someone like Trump. This, it would seem, is cause to attempt to rectify that, for what kind of world are we looking at when Donald Trump is a barometer of visibility. This exhibition exists to shift Stowe’s ranking, not only as an act of minor resistance, but to consider on a larger scale how we might replace Trump’s value, coverage earned or otherwise, with one of our making? While Madeleine Stowe may be the subject of this exhibition, it may also be about how small change, minor gestures, and miniature movements can possibly have a real effect.
Artists include: Britni Bicknaver (Cincinnati), Caitlin Ryan (Chicago), Chris Little (Minneapolis), David Corns (Cincinnati), Hanna M. Owens (Chicago) Jesse Malmed (Chicago), Jimmy Schaus (Chicago), Joe Hedges (Pullman, WA) John Szczepaniak (Los Angeles), Lauren Sudbrink (Chicago),Loraine Wible (Philadelphia), Nellie Kluz (Chicago),
Sidney Cherie Hilley (Cincinnati)Organized and with an essay in a free takeaway publication by: Chris Reeves
Opening July 21 – Closes August 30
Pique Gallery, 210 Pike St. Covington, KY piquewebsite.com
