Leslie Hewitt | Forty-two | 2019

Photos courtesy the artist and Galerie Perrotin, New York

Leslie Hewitt’s Forty-two rewards time spent in contemplation. The artist’s conceptually driven practice creates a platform for dialogue across media, blurring the boundaries between photography and sculpture, video and concrete poetry. Although this media installation was originally conceived for a 2019 exhibition, Reading Room, it translates beautifully to this uncertain time in which we find ourselves, quarantined and introspective. 

Hewitt’s work often seeks to transfix audiences through site specificity, both in how objects relate to each other and to viewers in a space, and how the ideas draw on relevant historical and cultural touchpoints at the intersection of photography, poetics, modalities of power, and the trauma of our cultural heritage. This installation, ubiquitous in form and hidden in plain sight, demands a repositioning of perspectives and points to the systems that shape our cultural infrastructures. 

For Forty-two, the artist created a computer programed machine that generates concrete poetry using IBM Plex Mono typeface. Although it is software-generated, it mimics active engagement by slowly typing out (and in certain cases deleting) each word, letter by letter, on the screen via the pulse of a cursor. As each new word is added, the overall meaning transforms and shifts. The sentences it creates are legible but often enigmatic, especially without the necessary references, which pushes viewers back to the form itself—to the shape and sculptural quality of the letters as they form minimal shapes on the blank screen. 

Hewitt’s work is informed by the legacy of Minimalism and she is particularly interested in the convergence of this artistic style and the Civil Rights movement. The title of this work references the lifespan of a landmark bookstore in Harlem. Books are an important element in Hewitt’s practice, both as aesthetic form and conceptual symbol. More broadly, she is interested in systematic patterns that underlie the closure of bookstores in the 20th century. To generate the words for this piece, the artist examined photographs of the establishment’s interior and storefront and analyzed their visual language to create a vocabulary. 

Following in the framework of Minimalist artists who explored the principles and systems of mathematics, Hewitt (as a post-Minimalist artist) is driven to examine systems of knowledge in her own way. She is a problem solver. Her process mimics scientific experimentation in its rigorous and formulaic adherence to systems she constructs to test variations. Though the form may at first appear cold and clinical, the invitation to participate with its content is vibrant and human. By engaging poetry, Hewitt encourages considerations that are at once, mysterious, and familiar, playful and yet critically focused on notions of erasure and retrieval.  

Lisa Sutcliffe, Herzfeld Curator of Photography and Media Arts, Milwaukee Art Museum