Carl E. Hazlewood

an excerpt from On Longing, Susan Stewart p. 14

“The Sadness Without an Object- The functions that the everyday and its concomitant languages, inhabitants, and temporalities serve are at least two. First, they quantitatively provide for history; second, they qualitatively provide for authenticity. The temporality of everyday life is marked by an irony which is its own creation, for this temporality is held to be ongoing and nonreversible and, at the same time, characterized by repetition and predictability. The pages falling off the calendar, the notches marked in a tree that no longer stands- these are the signs of the everyday, the effort to articulate difference through counting. Yet it is precisely this counting that reduces difference to similarities, that is designed to be “lost track of.” Such “counting,” such signifying, is drowned out by the silence of the ordinary.”

This is the best of Facebook, where you go to see things you wouldn’t otherwise.

I’ve included Hazlewood’s work, Untitled (Black & White Between Here and There) made of softly worn carpet remnants, gold thread, assortment of checkered tiles and push pins, in my artist as curator project at Vertigo Art Space in Denver, Colorado. This piece (not included in the images above- you’ll have to come to the gallery to check it out yourself) eloquently reflects and crosses multiple aesthetic categories from reductive minimalism, the performative and goes back and forth between both hard and soft everyday materials. Similar to most of the artists I’ve curated into this exhibition; Hazlewood is an interdisciplinary artist whose process and resultant work reflects a constant scrabble to root itself on unstable ground.

“For a culturally complex ‘black’ person from the Caribbean there were, inevitably, demanding questions concerning painting’s relevance. As a curator and someone interested in theoretical aspects of art, it seemed necessary to take all these polemical ideas into consideration. But working now, in photography and multimedia installations, interest lies in paring down complexities to essential practical ideas; particularly those basic ones that concern the visual and establishing an assertive abstract image. New constructions are made mostly of paper, twine, canvas, and other material attached directly to the wall. Unframed, the bounding edges are unrestricted, left free to respond to the visual ‘pressures’ of what happens within the piece.” –Carl E. Hazlewood

I give a very special thanks Hazlewood for allowing me to include this piece in the group exhibition, be a cloud not a grid¹ .

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other notes and links on Carl E. Hazlewood:

Bischoff, Dan. Aljira co-founder returns with works reflecting his life at Newark art center, The Star-Ledger http://www.nj.com/entertainment/arts/index.ssf/2013/10/aljira_newark_art_work.html#incart_more_entertainment

“Temporality and Objects” is a homecoming in a way. Thirty years ago, two Guyanese immigrants — Victor Davson and Hazlewood — founded Aljira: A Center for Contemporary Art in downtown Newark. It has since become one of the longest-thriving art spaces in the city, bringing an international elan to downtown contemporary art, but also giving Newark the sort of artistic outpost (in good times and bad) that anchors a city’s arts community.

IN THE EXHIBIT

This is the first one-man show by Hazlewood in Aljira’s history and it’s about time.

The foldings and hangings carry can unexpected resonances. Many seem to refer to intimacies, sexual and otherwise. There’s a small photo in the show of bed covers folded back; there’s another, even smaller, of Hazlewood’s bare chest, with the faint trace of scar tissue making tracks over his heart. (Hazlewood underwent a life-saving heart operation when he was a boy.).

a quote from Holland Cotter, New York Times on Untitled (Black & White Between Here and There) that was included in a 2013 exhibition at 5 Myles Gallery, Brooklyn, New York.

“Olu Oguibe and Carl E. Hazlewood…The two artists in this show make work very different in theme and tone but complement each other. The sculptures by Olu Oguibe, who was born in Nigeria and lives in the United States, is a response to rampant gun violence in both countries. In one piece, a carved African mask lies atop a sarcophagas of ammunition crates. Carl E. Hazlewood’s cut paper and cloth wall pieces are, by contrast, ethereal, though one particularly beautiful example is as gray and grave as a monument etched with constellations.”

http://www.vertigoartspace.com/ComingSoon/

http://theresaandersonart.com/be-a-cloud-not-a-grid-2/

http://theresaandersonart.com/on-longing-and-objects/