Pato Hebert

Artist’s Statement

My conceptual artworks examine the spatial and ethical dynamics that operate in social structures. I am interested in our relationships to place and one another, and the ways politics and interpersonal interactions shape sites. Formally, I am often drawn to simple, vernacular materials which I seek to deploy in a fashion at once familiar yet slightly awry. Motorcycle reflectors, handwriting, plastic signs, soap bars and breath have all made appearances in my recent work. I like the potential to imbue art with the everyday, and the everyday with art. What allows for work to be both accessible and unsettling? When can an audience constitute a community, however celebratory or contested? To explore these questions I utilize sculpture, installation, photography, performance, language, light, temporality, graphic design and digital sonics.

My work also engages deeply in social practice. I am challenged and nourished by my ongoing involvement with young people, be they kindergartners learning English as a second language or college students carefully crafting progressive praxis. Since 2002 I have also served at AIDS Project Los Angeles, where I foster initiatives that utilize visual art, creative writing, comic books, billboards and multi-media storytelling. These shared efforts function as HIV prevention with the queer communities of color that are most impacted by AIDS. By supporting well-established and lesser known creative voices , we draw forth a rich confluence of collective wisdom to help us better understand the socio-cultural contexts in which desire, disparity and disease occur.

In all of my work, I seek to develop with others an imaginative sense of interconnectedness, a convergence that is simultaneously critical, visceral and compelling.

Website: patohebert.com

Biography

Select Solo Exhibitions

2010
Inordinate Coordinates, California Institute of Integral Studies, San Francisco

2009
Photographic Movements, John B. Hurford ’60 Humanities Center, Haverford College, Haverford, Pa.

2008
Trust, Danforth Art Gallery, University of Maine at Augusta, Augusta, Maine

Select Group Exhibitions

2010
Writ Large, Pitzer Art Gallery, Claremont, Calif.

2009
Funktified, University Art Gallery, Staller Center for the Arts, Stony Brook University, Stony Brook, New York

2008
California Biennial, Orange County Museum of Art, Newport Beach, Calif.

2007
FR8, Angel’s Gate Cultural Center and the Port of Los Angeles, San Pedro, Calif.

Select Community-Based Artwork

2010
A Test of Language, Plasencia Elementary School, supported by LACMA, Los Angeles

2009
Stand Reflected, University of Maine at Augusta, Augusta, Maine

2008
Boulevard Without Borders, with artists Brian Moss and Sylvia Sukop, supported by the City of Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs, Los Angeles

2007
Let’s Flip the Script, AIDS Project Los Angeles, Los Angeles

Select Awards and Residencies

2010
Artist/Activist in Residence, supported by the Cooper Foundation, Swarthmore College, Swarthmore, Pa.

2009
People/Places/Things, En Foco, New York

2008
Excellence in Photographic Teaching Award, Center, Santa Fe, N.M.

EDUCATION

1999, M.F.A.
University of California, Irvine

1997, B.A.
Stanford University, Palo Alto, Calif.