Location

Hemphill opens Franz Jantzen: Ostinato on Saturday, January 14, 2012, with a public reception from 6:30–8:30pm. The exhibition will remain on view through March 10, 2012.

In music, “ostinato” is the repetition of a note, motif or phrase wherein no one element is more important than any other. In common use, the term can include slight variations in repetitions to aid the development of the piece as a whole. This musical tool is the backbone of Jantzen’s newest body of assemblages, which range in subject matter from a Santeria altar, to the historic Loew’s Theater, and the artist’s own bathtub.

With the camera positioned at a set height and angle, Jantzen takes hundreds of photographs of a chosen space or object, capturing every inch of detail through indiscriminate, repetitious exposures. He then arranges these images to compose a final work that rests between representational and abstract. Jantzen’s source photos capture tremendous amounts of visual information. Yet, his discombobulated re-assembling of the pieces abstracts the subject matter as a whole, sometimes rendering it unrecognizable to the viewer.