Rick Hock, an artist of the generation that witnessed the photographic image’s unparalleled acceptance as an art form, has spent his career making photo-based artworks that specifically address the photographic image itself. Interestingly, he has produced this in Rochester, New York, a town that for more than a century was the world capital of photography.
Hock’s work from the 1980’s has all the markers of an era when originality was questioned, if not dismissed, as increasingly impossible. Hock’s work is historical and timeless; visual poetry crafted from the visual overload that photograph has wrought. It is artwork about photography, which comments on culture and commerce; society and history; and a world embracing the next new while yearning for what once was.
Yet, this is ‘not photography for photography’s sake’ as some might assume when looking at Hock’s carefully orchestrated assemblages. Hock’s re-contextualization of images is not unlike the photo-based artworks of better-known artists such as Richard Prince and Sherrie Levine. With Hock’s works—particularly the Codex series—there is a sense of originality, even “hand-work” that sharply delineates these artworks from others of the era. For Hock the image is not an end onto itself, rather each photograph in his sequences or series—whether three or fifteen images—is the beginning of an organic yet intellectual process.
For Hock, the Polaroid transfer permits him to find, but not force, unlikely juxtapositions, within a format that is akin to any number of rarefied typologies. Yet, whether viewed as a homage to photography’s rich history, or a culture over-run with pictures, what ultimately interests Rick Hock, is, as he himself has said “…the potential for unanticipated meaning that comes from juxtaposing seemingly unrelated elements together.”
Charles Stainback
Norton Museum of Art
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