The Engender Project: Gary Hill

Baró is pleased to announce its new exhibition, from 10 November,  presenting the solo shows by Gary Hill. In 'The Engender project', where he uses the exhibition space as a recreation of his studio combining video installations and his latest projects in progress.

 

‘The Engender Project’, a solo show by Gary Hill who recreates his studio environment inside the gallery space and shows his recent works from the series ‘Gated Pronouns’. By creating this space, he breaks the individual vision and gives a rise to the place in which communication converges, as well as the possibility of understanding the artist's process and thinking.

Gary Hill’s (Santa Monica, 1951) artwork identity is immediately associated with language, as most of the time, he works with words, both written and spoken. In his lately series 'Gated Pronouns', Hill presents drawings that discusses new pronouns that typically underline nonbinary as they, but there is a fluid spectrum from She to He, and everything in between. To redefine the way of thinking about gender, Hill uses the Boolean algebra upon the pronouns. After the mathematical procedure, the resulting pronouns refer to identities that waver on the spectrum. The words are no longer pronounceable, they only can be read or, better still, decoded. Gender then refers to aspects that are both masculine and feminine and other parts are undefined or unfixed. In a rather strange way, the visualization of the pronouns begins to reflect the complexity and depth of the issue.
“(...) The series has a working title of “Gated Pronouns” which refers to the methodology I’m using. That is to apply Boolean Logic, digital functions upon the pronouns as written on the page. It’s worth noting that the concept involves applying a digital system upon gender which could be viewed as an “analog” element of identity. I am working with pairs of pronouns taken from the spectrum, the most obvious being SHE and HE. Each pair is laid out using a bold font and all in capital letters. The two words are always centered and then are processed using a set of 5 logic functions: XOR, AND, OR, A-B and B-A.

No longer are the “pronouns” pronounceable per say, they can only be “read” or better yet decoded. After the mathematical procedure, the combined words/pronouns begin to take on a Hieroglyphic appearance. In the examples I’ve included, note the SHE/HE that has been AND gated. Wherever and only where parts of the letters both exist will there be a positive, 1, or true output. In other words, in this case, the process suggests a different way of thinking about gender in which certain aspects of a particular person are both male and female which could be denoted as “they” parts and other parts are undefined (perhaps). In a rather strange way, the visualization of the pronouns through gates begins to mirror the complexity and depth of the question once one enters the dialogue surrounding the question.” Gary Hill, 2022.