Five Feet Under the Surface of a Pond
Fritz Horstman
There will be two bodies of work. 13 photographs will act as a frieze along the top of the gallery, and 5 sculptures made of tree sections will be presented at the front of the space. The photographs were taken with an underwater camera and represent the change in the physical conditions within a pond over the course of an entire year. The sculptures are sections of trees from which specific rings have been removed, and then filled with a foreign material.
Human society spends a lot of time and energy combating its natural origins. When an aspect of humanity bears too many markers of a natural process we either privatize it or ritualize it. Over time those aspects are elaborated upon in the form of clothes, ceremonies, laws, and other modalities. Those privatized and ritualized aspects are the grounds for culture's existence.
It is this membrane between nature and culture that I am interested in exploring. It is a virtually indefinable territory, because it permeates every corner of our lives. The modes of presenting my findings are diverse, reflecting the ubiquity of the subject. I employ drawing, photography, installation, objects, sound, and video.
I am exploring the underlying principals of how human culture is constructed, and how it relates to the natural systems that are in place. I see ecology as the system through which an organism interacts with its environment. In that sense, my work is entirely ecological. -- Fritz Horstman, 2011