Andrew Hazewinkel

The following text is drawn from the exhibition catalogue accompanying Over You/ You: 31st Biennial Of Graphic Art Ljubljana curated by Nicola Lees.

The polychrome terracotta bust of Niccolò da Uzzano, attributed to the Renaissance master Donatello (c.1432), is a highly naturalistic sculptural portrait that has been reproduced in plaster, hundreds if not thousands of times. These casts have been subsequently copied by generations of art students learning to render a faithful likeness.

For his installation 12 figures (after Niccolò): Studies in Collective Anxiety, Andrew Hazewinkel has recast twelve versions of an 1885 copy of the famous portrait. In doing so he employs a deliberately imprecise casting technique drawing attention to both the expressive potential and historical development of reproduction technologies.

Working with a pliable silicone mould, he intentionally misaligns its three parts and subjects each casting process to a set of external physical pressures. This produces a result in which each head bears its own characteristic imprint of the mould’s seams, suggesting  a glitch in the process of faithful reproduction.

Evoking geological fault lines, these ruptures impart each head with a sense of violence and speak to the flexibilities and imperfections inherent in mass reproduction techniques, as well as handmade efforts. This field of versions considers the complex authority associated with the notion of the original, which is recast here as a fixed, fractured image.