DAVID HILLIARD
HE LOOKED AT ME LIKE THAT
Project Space
Exhibition Dates:
June 23, 2023 - August 18, 2023
Artist Talk:
Saturday, June 24 @ 11:00am
Rivalry is thrilled to present He Looked at Me Like That, a solo presentation of works by David Hilliard that consider and celebrate the queer male gaze. The presentation, Hilliard’s first solo exhibition with the gallery, will be on view from June 23-August 18, 2023. Join us for an Opening Reception for this exhibit on Friday, June 23, 2023 from 5:00-9:00 PM. This exhibition will be on view in tandem with In Time: Barbara Bosworth + Emily Sheffer.
Hilliard’s photographs –predominantly diptychs and triptychs– offer viewers fabricated scenarios drawn from a world that begins with our realities, but moves beyond. Photographs within this exhibition highlight heteronormative social frameworks, with specific regard for the gaze. Under Hilliard’s directorial vision gazes are exchanged. Through the carnival worker with a come hither stare or the averted eyes of a flexing locker room jock, Hilliard builds moments that explore the melding of observations and fantasy through highly constructed photography.
Photographs in this exhibition manipulate physical space to signify emotional distance, while the focal point within each frame of the multi-panel works shift, propelling the viewer’s eye across the composition. The audience tunes into a scene in flux within this artwork, each built upon the juxtaposition of a number of single frames and the mise en scène of his characters, props, and landscape. This pictorial unevenness is heightened by the artist himself occupying charged and ambiguous situations to create a picture, using his camera as a means by which he prolongs contact with strangers, creating pockets of artificial intimacy, and extending them into perpetuity.
WORKS
“
I don’t know, but I do know that’s not the way he was looking at me until I made a picture of him. So for the fraction of a second it’s a love affair: he looked at me like that.”
INSTALLATION VIEWS
About the Artist
David Hilliard (b. 1964) lives and works in Boston. He received his BFA from Massachusetts College of Art in 1992, and his MFA from Yale University in 1994. His work has been exhibited in numerous institutions including Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; The Kemper Art Museum, St Louis; Miami Art Museum; Addison Museum of American Art, Andover; Florida Museum of Photographic Arts, Tampa; and DeCordova Museum, Lincoln, MA. Hilliard’s work is represented in many public collections including Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Art Institute of Chicago; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; Los Angeles County Museum of Art; and Philadelphia Museum of Art. Hilliard was the recipient of a Fulbright Grant and a Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship, and he was awarded the Bok Center Award for Excellence in Teaching by Harvard University in 2012. He has been a visiting lecturer at numerous schools, including Harvard University; Dartmouth College; Art Institute of Boston; and the Massachusetts College of Art & Design.