mobilemobile II, 2016, spring steel, Dibond. SFU Art Collection. Gift of the artist, 2022. Photo: Dennis Ha
mobilemobile III, 2016, spring steel, Dibond, plastic bag, hammer. SFU Art Collection. Gift of the artist, 2022. Photo: Dennis Ha
433 Eros, 2014, archival inkjet print, black glass. SFU Art Collection. Gift of the artist, 2022. Photo: Toni Hafkenscheid
Antonia Hirsch’s practice testifies to a long-standing engagement with the quantitative, spatial and syntactic systems that structure an understanding of our universe. The cosmos can be defined as a complex and organized system: the ordered universe. Hirsch’s work often relates these ordering structures to embodied and visual experience, considering how the equivocal and often ideological nature of these representational systems is expressed through a level of abstraction.
mobilemobile II and III are part of a series of mobiles using the screen forms of Apple Macintosh’s 2015 mobile devices: iPhone 5, iPhone 6, iPhone 6s, iPad mini 4, and iPad Air 2. The structures translate their modernist eponym into the present day, forming absurd, floating 3D network diagrams. Hirsch describes these works as attending “to the form and raw materiality of consumer electronics and communication technology, and screens form a central motif in my work. In the form of handheld devices, we carry them close to our bodies. They can be seen as interfaces between ostensible opposites: the inner world of emotions and the outer sphere of the social and political; between the digital and the analog, the haptic and the disembodied. As commodities, mobile devices in particular carry an affective charge and aura, thereby aligning them with the object categories of the artwork and the lucky charm: material things with an immaterial power and agency.”
433 Eros features a NASA image of the near-earth asteroid 433 Eros that is part of the Amor Asteroid group. Vaguely resembling a potato in shape, its geographical features are named after famous lovers from history and mythology such as Lolita, Casanova, and Psyche. The image is staged and framed in such a way that it functions like a black mirror, with a glass “pool” reflecting the wall-mounted photograph. 433 Eros was shown in 2014 solo exhibition, Antonia Hirsch: Negative Space, at SFU Gallery.
Antonia Hirsch (b. 1968, Frankfurt am Main, Germany) is an artist, writer, lecturer, and editor who lives and works in Berlin. Hirsch earned her Bachelor of Arts at Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design in London, England. Hirsch lived and worked in Vancouver, Canada from 1994-2010. She is the recipient of numerous awards including from the Canada Council for the Arts, the British Columbia Arts Council, and the Stiftung Kunstfonds. Her work is held in various public and private collections, including the Vancouver Art Gallery and the National Gallery of Canada (Ottawa); and has been exhibited at the Contemporary Art Gallery (Vancouver); SFU Galleries (Burnaby); The Power Plant Contemporary Art Gallery (Toronto); Salzburger Kunstverein (Salzburg, Austria); Taipei Fine Art Museum (Taipei City, Taiwan); and ZKM Centre for Art and Media (Karsruhe, Germany).