Patrick Harkin

Lives and works in Richmond, VA

Artist statement

Working with photography, sound, light, sculpture and film Patrick Harkin creates large scale installations and sound interventions that explore and critique historical photographic conventions and the role of photographic imagery within mass media culture. His theatrically staged work investigates themes of commodity criticism and concepts of ideology under contemporary image mediated culture. Cycles of building, destruction, and rebuilding related to the natural elements, especially water and wind, are spotlighted in his work, which stems from his upbringing within coastal flood zones and a close relationship to rising sea levels. Harkin’s contentious relationship with photography and a desire to create new modes of perception are central to his conceptual practice. Harkin considers carefully the materials he works with, as the materiality of the work holds an insistent conceptual presence. Harkin delves into the depths of photography and its broader social, ideological, environmental implications. Harkin’s artistic process is in a way a feedback loop: he creates images that create and demonstrate a new relationship with our perception and our things. He confronts the underlying mechanisms of control, which hide so well within the contemporary photographic apparatus. He received his MFA from Virginia Commonwealth University in 2017 and his BFA from the University of Florida in 2015. Recent exhibitions of his work have taken place at Hamiltonian Gallery (D.C.), Virginia...

Artwork