Kristen Hatland: Ebb & Flow

Calmly situated in a world both abstract and representational, this new body of photographs by Kristin Hatland fluently moves through the familiar and its more surreal inversions.  A pair of ice skates sit at rest with their laces cast behind as if animated in full flight. A record of that flight is captured in a roughened patch of ice.  Two wiry trees sit on a moody landscape evoking notions of mind and memory drawn from the artist’s Norse heritage. An oncoming wave confronts the viewer in counterpoint to a rocky snow-topped mountain inviting you on.

In each image, we witness the poetics of impermanence as one state moves towards another. Patterns etched in ice are there for but a moment. Sand shaped by the waves tells a story and then washes away to speak a new tale. Like the various shapes of water, Hatland’s images speak of the fluid quality to our capacities for memory and imagination.