Instagram has developed into one of the primary grassroots venues for artists as well as collectors, museums, advisors and curators to publicize artworks. In its functions as a medium, exhibition space and artistic sketchbook, it has been tool and content of diverse artistic approaches, fueling an ambivalent stance on and diverse – and even critical – receptions of social media. Recent artistic approaches using Instagram as platform and/or medium are for example Amalia Ulman’s Instagram performance “Excellences and Perfection” from 2014, Richard Princes disputed appropriation of portrait photographs “New Portraits” from 2015 and Steven Shores Instagram series “American Surfaces”, that originated as a book in the 1970s and was continued as a digital variation on Instagram.
In @joryhull the Brooklyn based photographer Jory Hull reflects on the agency of Instagram in contemporary visual culture. The show links the photo-sharing platform Instagram as a virtual sketchbook with Jory Hull’s physical artworks. It also highlights the transient nature of Jory’s artistic process and shows how the continued exploration of views and narratives in his environment help inform the final work he produces.
Jory Hull is not bound to any given medium, rather he transitions to whichever material is best suited for rendering the images he creates. His œuvre includes painting, assemblage, video, and photography. His work investigates and challenges our common views of everyday objects by altering their contexts and narratives. @joryhull is decidedly ambiguous in that it shows Jory Hull’s works as they would be hung in his studio, as thoughts in an ever-changing contextualization, and also as finalized works. The primary source of the artworks in the exhibition is the Instagram feed of Jory Hull. The show supplements this with selected works from Jory’s projects including My Mind is Racing, Fly Over State and Twin Infinitives. The breadth of work shown gives insight into the visual sound that Hull is in tune with.