Passing is a solo project by Rhys Hecox that explores liminal spaces and the act of copying and pasting. Through a 16mm film installation made specifically for SPRING/BREAK Art Show 2016, Hecox creates an immersive environment that questions where we are situated in place and time. Rather than showing the end result of copying-pasting, Passing offers a transitory "between-ness."
Viewers are invited to sit between the images in this two-channel film and, in a sense, become part of the film. They experience action and reaction; cause and effect; copy and paste. The characters and settings in the film, and the 16mm film medium, suggest an "other" place and time, but without suggesting specifics.
Each image in the film encapsulates a beginning, middle and end within a singular moment, creating suspense and also discomfort. Where does the viewer fit metaphorically within this transitory space? What becomes of his identity? Why do ambiguities in place and time cause such unease? The idea of liminality is compounded because these images are themselves of liminal spaces and shown in a temporary exhibition in an interim artspace in a building in transition.
Hecox is an experimental filmmaker working in analog and digital. His films are poetic meditations on the passage of time. He explains, "Film operates at a sensory level, unlocking subconscious thoughts and feelings in its primal imagery. Visual imagery can create an almost dream-like state that doesn’t allow the viewer to intellectually interpret their feelings and thoughts, and instead – when done correctly – forces their subconscious to the surface and towards the desired place of enlightenment."
Rhys Hecox
Passing, 2016
16mm film
Runtime: 8 minutes
Passing premiered at SPRING/BREAK Art Show on March 1, 2016 and was inspired by SPRING/BREAK's 2016 theme of ⌘Copy⌘Paste.
SPRING/BREAK Art Show, NYC's curator-driven art fair during Armory Arts Week
Room 4124
Skylight at Moynihan Station
421 Eighth Avenue
New York, NY
www.springbreakartshow.com
VIP Vernissage: Tuesday, March 1, 5-9pm
Hours: Wednesday-Sunday, March 2-6, 12-8pm; Monday, March 7, 12-6pm
Tickets available through Artful.ly
Artwork for sale through www.springbreakartfair.com
Rhys Hecox (b. 1980, Michigan) is an experimental filmmaker and artist based in New York. Working in analog and digital, he is interested in creating tone poems through film and summoning sensations through images and shared experiences. Hecox is currently working on a feature-length film that visually explores the complexity of "toska," a Russian word that roughly translates as "sadness, melancholia and lugubriousness." He received his BA from the University of Michigan in Film Studies in 2008.
