Andrew Hazewinkel

In 2010 Hazewinkel was in the audience of Hiroshi Sugimoto’s keynote that opened the 17th Biennale of Sydney, The Beauty of Distance: Songs of Survival in a Precarious Age. While speaking about the inspiration for his Seascapes project, Sugimoto said something that remains with Hazewinkel as an enduring fascination, "I wondered if it was possible for modern people to see the landscapes that the ancients once saw. Then I realised that it must be the sea." ¹

Three years later that thought played a principal role Hazewinkel's motivation for creating Material Collision (staring together at the stars) parts 1,2,3 in which he too has tried to create an image of what the ancients may have seen. Whereas Sugimoto turned to the horizon at sea, Hazewinkel turned to the night sky.

^{Sea and Sky: The Dawn of Consciousness, MamiKatoka in Hiroshi Sugimoto Time Machine, Hayward Gallery Publishing, London and Hatje Cantz Verlag GmbH, Berlin 2024}

Comprising image details drawn from three late nineteenth century glass plate photographic negatives, screen-printed onto large sheets of carborundum sandpaper, each panel of this triptych sparkles softly like a night sky as it connects three distinct periods dispersed across a vast expanse of historical time. The periods this work connects are the first and second centuries CE in which the roman sculptures, represented here, were made; the period that followed their unearthing during which they were first photographed, late ninteenth and early twentieth centuries CE. And our contemporary period  in which Hazewinkel created this triptych, the early twenytfirst century CE.

The starry qualities of the triptych are difficult to capture in documentation images, it remains an experiential phenomenon. However, the scratches and pittings in the original glass negatives (that evidence the passage of time), have been transfered to the files that the artist has used in the screen printing process through the process of the negative's digitisation. These marks mingle with the visual effect created by the light refracting qualities of the silicon carbide particles that dust the surface of the carborndum sandpaper.

Sandpaper has been used in many sculptural practices for a very long time. Here sandpaper maintains its affiliation with histories of sculptural production whilst becoming both conceptually and materially a part of the artwork. The shift from production tool to being conceptually and physically a part of the artwwork merges with the essentiality of silicon as an ingredient in the materiality of the glass plates, from which these images were sourced, and the surface onto which the images are printed. Here two materially and processually linked substrates (the delicately dimensional surface of the carborundum sandpaper and scratched and pitted small panes of ninteenth century glass), enter a  materially semiotic exchange that on a material register, futher extends the poetic dimensions of the work.

Here we see the shoulders, necks, and the back of the heads of three male figures. Everything else is pared away. We might consider the triptych as three individual reverse portraits, or perhaps a group portrait, or a tableau in which we the viewer becomes another figure joining a group that is already staring together at the stars. In each of these possible readings we experience a sense of the timeless intimacy of the human figure. However, as we settle into the performative aspects of joining a tableau of ancient viewers, we gaze beyond the figures that stand before us, we gaze with them, and in doing so we gaze not at history, rather we gaze with history, at the stars.



^{Material Collision (staring together at the stars) parts 1,2,3 was commissioned by and presented at the National Gallery of Victoria.}