Hills Snyder: Mercury Poisoning
July 14 – August 26, 2000
Reception Froday July 14, 6 – 8 PM
Finesilver Gallery / 816 Camaron / San Antonio, TX 78212
(210) 354.3333 T / (210) 354.3393 F

Hills Snyder, a Texas based artist will make an installation of semi-site works utilizing reflected and diffused
light, sited objects of wood and Plexiglas and on site drawings cut into gallery walls.

He provides notes on his method as follows:

I use objects as components in an array of
selection and placement which is much about the how as it is about the what. Space and light are key. I am
not an object maker. I emphasize this point by mitigating my hand with an industrial process performed by
others. My hand is like a trace or remnant that only remains in the line that defines the forms.

The eccentricities of a given space and the mundane architectural details that are found in any building speak to
the placement of these components. It is not a game of hide and find. If I place an image of an umbrella such
that it just kisses the door lentil, I am not proposing a prank to undermine the rightfully royal position of your
painting over the couch. It is in no way the act of a jester in your court. It is an attempt to explore the mutual
natures of umbrella and doorway. It is the suggestion that insight and pleasure can be derived from connecting
things laterally.

Humor is one aspect among many./ It is distinct from comedy, and is concerned with a subtle negotiation between
circumstances rthat are difficult to reconcile. Maybe you heard about the young boys who built a wooden box as
an urn for their father’s ashes, only to find that the box was too small and that all the ashes wouldn’t fit. Isn’t this
a bit like sawing the feet off a body to accommodate a casket made too short? A comedic rendering of this scenario
would emphasize its’ absurdity and would equate the ineptitude of the boys’ carpentry with sawing through a corpse,
while humor is more concerned with the tenderness of their feelings iin the face of the shortcomings of their
efforts.

I love the smell of minimalism in the morning.


Mercury Poisoning

Gallery

Pennies From Heaven,  2000
23 x 17 x 1/8 inches
transparent fluorescent red acrylic sheet                                           

Mustard Seed,  2000
12 x 7 x 1/4 inches
black enamel on birch                           

Rise,  2000
dimensions variable
transparent yellow, orange and aqua acrylic sheet                                                

Lucky Penny,  2000
3/16 x 14 1/2 x 14 1/2 inches
yellow acrylic sheet                                                                   

 Asteroid,  2000
60 x 41 x 3/8 inches
blue and white acrylic sheet on birch support                                                   

Valve Room

Blind,  2000
dimensions variable
transparent yellow and yellow mirrored acrylic sheet        

Braille,  2000
dimensions variable
line cut into wall, dust remains                                                              

Access,  2000
dimensions variable
purple mirrored acrylic sheet