HALLOW GEFFERT

THEY

Hallow Geffert was born in 1994 in Dallas, Texas. They are a multidisciplinary conceptual artist. Their work actualizes interior psychic spaces as exterior dimensional entities. Each work is a portrait of an intense emotional state. Namely, psychological breaks and nervous system responses caused by high stress, trauma, and abuse are materialized into visual understandings. These cognitive events are interpreted through a spiritual lens, where out-of-body experiences become cycles of life and death, and nonhuman creatures are born in the body.

Predominately, they work with performance, video, and installation. Materials are mainly selected based upon their conceptual function, such as wood ash and used underwear. Because of this demand, material investigation is a large part of their practice. Their work is made dynamic by the interaction of body and space. Though stationary- through this encouragement the work becomes kinetic, with the visitor’s body acting as the moving part. By allowing the viewer to be directed by the work, the work is also given agency. Destabilizing power dynamics is very important, predominately in relation to objecthood and personhood. Sculptures take on life, and performers become objects devoid of psyche, or vehicles for a possessive force. Personal relationships, the home and body, and cycles of violence define the conversation. Heaviness and emptiness are fundamental qualities to these spaces, used both in a spiritual and physical sense. They are aesthetically influenced by horror movies and games, theatre and stage sets, and dreams. This combination of escapism and confrontation create a destabilized, uncanny energy around the works. The gaze and voyeurism are essential discomforts that call attention to the viewer’s position as all powerful, and yet passive.