Kristen Hatgi Sink:

Honey

Kristen Hatgi Sink: Honey introduced new work by the Denver-based photographer. Sink created a series of videos featuring honey—dripping and pouring over composed objects and human subjects. In these videos, flowers, fruit, and a young woman remain nearly motionless as the substance runs over their respective delicate forms. Their inertia and Sink’s composition and use of a cold, bright light recall traditional styles of painting such as the portrait or the still-life. In the middle of the gallery, and in contrast to the videos’ delicate imagery, sat an austere, glass vitrine containing honey. A simple, geometric basin resembling a minimalist sculpture, the tank was the setting for multiple performances that took place throughout the duration of the exhibition.

Honey furthered Sink’s experimentation with natural materials through the medium of photography. The substance of honey represents wealth, nutrition, sexuality and love, health and healing, and sacred love. Its chemical properties make it a natural preservative and as such, it can also be associated with death. More recently, honey has become a symbol of environmentalism, as the threats to bees’ existence have become better understood. Sink’s use of honey suggests many of these meanings and the contradictions that exist among them.

Kristen Hatgi Sink was born in 1984 in Denver, where she currently lives and works. She earned a BFA at the Art Institute of Boston. Her work has been exhibited at venues across the country and abroad, including at the Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art; Denver Art Museum; Japanese Paper Museum Ino, Japan; and Cohju Contemporary Art, Japan.