Friedrich Petzel Gallery is pleased to present Experiments in Primitive Living, a new exhibition of photographs by Dana Hoey.

Insects, old women and plastic tools are the inhabitants of a potential world. Experiments in Primitive Living is a cycle of 40 photographs that imagine what we wiould be like under 5 different weather conditions – ash, freeze, thaw, flood and drought. It is a deliberately leveled archive of different photographic styles: product shot, scientific photo, portrait and epic narrative all occupy the same walls. Because the subjects in the pictures are also on equal ground – for example, the spore and the face merit the same size and resolution – the old categories serve not as aesthetic end-games but as an homage to the camera’s old ability to inform, to sell, to turn you on, or to tell a story. In this possible world, there is a power vacuum, an absence of infrastructure, and now the overlooked have stepped in. Old women may rule, silently. The small detail may outlast the large story. The icicle may outlive the guitar player.

Dana Hoey lives and works in upstate New York. She has exhibited in museums and galleries internationally, including a solo exhibition at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, D.C. This is her fifth exhibition at Friedrich Petzel Gallery.