Kim Hoeckele. Rosy Crimson, 2016–18. Live performance, pink LED lights and fixtures. Courtesy of the artist.
Kim Hoeckele. Rosy Crimson, 2016–18. Live performance, pink LED lights and fixtures. Courtesy of the artist.
Kim Hoeckele. Rosy Crimson, 2016–18. Live performance, pink LED lights and fixtures. Courtesy of the artist.
Kim Hoeckele. Rosy Crimson, 2016–18. Live performance, pink LED lights and fixtures. Courtesy of the artist.
Kim Hoeckele. Rosy Crimson, 2016–18. Live performance, pink LED lights and fixtures. Courtesy of the artist.
Kim Hoeckele. Rosy Crimson, 2016–18. Live performance, pink LED lights and fixtures. Courtesy of the artist.
Kim Hoeckele. Rosy Crimson, 2016–18. Live performance, pink LED lights and fixtures. Courtesy of the artist.
Kim Hoeckele. Rosy Crimson, 2016–18. Live performance, pink LED lights and fixtures. Courtesy of the artist.
Kim Hoeckele, Back in S-Curve with marble fragments (attributed to Praxiteles or Klein), 2018. Kleroterion Hand with slate and cork ground, 2018. Head of a Woman with marble fragment (Wounded or Repose), 2018. Draped Woman (Loose Folds), 2018. Legs in Contrapposto with birch and oak stage, 2018. All works archival pigment prints. Courtesy of the artist.
Kim Hoeckele, Back in S-Curve with marble fragments (attributed to Praxiteles or Klein), 2018. Kleroterion Hand with slate and cork ground, 2018. Head of a Woman with marble fragment (Wounded or Repose), 2018. Draped Woman (Loose Folds), 2018. Legs in Contrapposto with birch and oak stage, 2018. All works archival pigment prints. Courtesy of the artist.
Kim Hoeckele, Back in S-Curve with marble fragments (attributed to Praxiteles or Klein), 2018. Kleroterion Hand with slate and cork ground, 2018. Head of a Woman with marble fragment (Wounded or Repose), 2018. Draped Woman (Loose Folds), 2018. Legs in Contrapposto with birch and oak stage, 2018. All works archival pigment prints. Courtesy of the artist.
Kim Hoeckele
Several years ago, I was re-reading The Odyssey, and I misplaced my copy. I unknowingly picked up a wildly different translation of the epic—the stylistic choices between translations conveyed a difference in tone and meaning, making it difficult to pick up where I'd left off. A recurring phrase in the text, 'dawn's rosy fingers', falsely led me to believe I had found my place—where in fact, this mnemonic device was meant to aid an orator. In being lost, I became curious about the nature of translation.

This became the starting point for my performance work, Rosy-Crimson. I annotated each occurrence of 'dawn's rosy fingers' across multiple translations of The Odyssey. In oral tradition, the phrase was meant to act as a trigger, to help the storyteller to remember. The phrase arrests a listener in time; dawn is a state of anticipation, not quite in the past, not yet tomorrow. I became interested in both the formal use of the phrase 'dawn's rosy fingers' as a mnemonic tool, as well as the suspension of time that the language implies.

I arranged the collected text-as-found-object into a fitful plot that disrupts dialogue and confounds meaning. For the opening of Volumes, actors will perform reassembled iterations of 'dawn's rosy fingers' throughout the museum. They will experiment with volume, pitch, pace, intensity, and silence, all of which alter what meaning is conveyed. Through performance the phrase stalls meaningful exchanges between actors, emphasizing broader slippages in communication intrinsic to human interaction.

In my current photographic work, epoch, stage, shell, I am also working from found material. Volumes were the catalyst. I was drawn to the rich photo-etchings in a complete set of The Book of Knowledge, an early 20th century encyclopedia. As I collected this material, I began to examine, question, and draw new formal and symbolic connections between the encyclopedia's hundreds of historical and ethnographic images.
I am responding to this material through layered, collaged photographs, mimicking the language of symbols, patterns, and gestures as 'signals' linking deep history to the present. In the process of making, I am considering whose voices and bodies are given historical preference and how my visual responses reinforce, subvert, and question entrenched symbols. I am photographing my body as a proxy, and then manipulating the photographs by hand before re-photographing them. Uneven paper cuts and the illusion of three-dimensional layers on the surface are evidence of my process of making. The final photographs both mask and expose my interventions.
I love the phrase "multitudes upon multitudes" as a means to consider Volumes. The overwhelming resources for information freely available make it easy to overlook that all of it is subjective, telegraphed from voices or algorithms of power. To maintain steady criticality requires a multitude of time and diligence.

Data—analog or digital, text, image, or object, ancient or technological—is material to mine. I think a lot about breakdowns in communication: fissures between individuals, and mutations of knowledge over larger timescales. My work makes no claims to synthesize new truths; rather I create alternative propositions, which emphasize the elasticity of understood knowledge.
prev Kim Hoeckele (b. 1980, Atlanta, GA) earned an MFA from Hunter College (2012) and a BFA from Georgia State University (2003). Hoeckele has exhibited work in solo or two-person exhibitions at Nurture Art, Brooklyn, NY (2016) and Pelham Arts Center, Pelham, NY (2014). She has exhibited internationally in group exhibitions at Hercules Art, New York, NY (2017); Westchester Community College, White Plains, NY (2016); Changjiang Museum of Contemporary Art, Changjiang, China (2015); Brooklyn Arts Council, Brooklyn, NY (2013); Family Business, New York, NY (2013); Platform Stockholm, Stockholm, Sweden (2013); Smack Mellon, Brooklyn, NY (2011); and the Museum of Contemporary Art of Georgia, Atlanta, GA (2009), amongst other venues. Hoeckele has been artist-in-residence at the Lighthouse Works Fellowship (2018) and the Constance Saltonstall Fellowship for the Arts (2017). She was born to Queens natives from Maspeth and Rockaway and currently lives and works in Ridgewood, Queens. next
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