Hills Snyder: Flaternité
November 11, 2004 – January 8, 2005 Reception Saturday November 13, 6 – 8 PM  Finesilver Gallery  816 Camaron
San Antonio, TX 78212 / 210 354 3333
 
The title of Hills Snyder’s exhibition Flaternité is derived from a motto that appeared during the French Revolution: Liberté, Equalité, Fraternité.
His associative use of the term conflates this relic from the Age of Enlightenment with the notion of an eternal Flatland in which sameness is
fore-grounded at the expense of eccentricity. The exhibition will feature works arranged around a central theme which only emerges when the
individual works are considered as a whole: Eiffel tower, guillotine, bathtub, bucket... One work titled Gesture is offered in an edition endless
and can only be purchased by making a $250 contribution to theHalo Trust which works to remove land mines and other debris of war.  
http://www.halotrust.org/

Freud to Martha Bernays, after climbing the Eiffel Tower: “One climbs up 300 steps, it is very dark, very lonely, on every step I could have
given you a kiss if you had been with me, and you would have reached the top quite out of breath and wild.”

Quoting Bret McCabe:
“The ebullience with which Snyder’s work is made translates into comic relief on the wall — the imposing, frightful economy of death symbolized
by the guillotine becomes something that looks like it could be made out of Legos. But how these works are comical is less interesting than why
Snyder may have created and exhibited these images in this manner. The best answer to that question runs through Site, the white bathtub with
circular cutouts revealing red beneath them. It is, without a doubt, an allusion to Jean-Paul Marat's bathtub, where the revolutionary was slain.
But its layers of meaning are more provocative than mere postmodern synecdoche. This transforming — or in the case of Marat, nearly
transubstantiating — power of visual iconography is at the core of Snyder's work. He fuses historical and visual elements to precipitate powerfully
daunting ideas that linger once you see beyond his humor.”

http://www.finesilver.com/

Flaternité 

Double Lunette, 2001
acrylic sheet, birch support, wall cutouts
120 X 43 X 1 1/8 inches

Out of Breath and Wild, 2004
acrylic sheet
126 X 63 X 1/8 inches

Bouquet, 2004
pencil and enamel on birch
11 X 71/2 X 1/2 inches

Back To Basics, 2001
acrylic sheet, birch support, wall cutout
135 X 29 1/2 X 1 1/8 inches

Gesture, 2004 (edition endless)
7 X 10 inches
cut sheetrock, dust remains

Site, 2001
acrylic sheet. birch support
22 1/2 X 59 1/2 X 5/8 inches