The Real and The Fake series are a set of still-life photographs that contemplate the death of food. They are Hartʼs response to surreal trips down the aisles of her local supermarket, where the opportunity to buy anything that is not highly artificial or toxic is severely limited. The Real and The Fake photos are classical still lives of nutritionally-empty industrial snack-foods that nevertheless have appealing Platonic forms. Photos of these fake real foods are integrated with obviously simulated computer graphics of apples. In these images, the real and the fake implode.They are representations that are fake but seem real, and are real but seem fake. Their style is also a hybrid, bridging between classical still-life painting - Cezanne's apples! - and an industrial product shot.
images courtesy the artist and bitforms gallery new york
Hart’s recent solo exhibition at bitforms, When A Rose is Not a Rose, reflects on the Gertrude Stein poem of the same name (1913) and explores the artist’s own denial of death.
