Alex Hedison

THE IN BETWEEN / 2017

From 2013 - 2017, Hedison photographed exteriors of Paris storefronts as they shifted ownership. These fresco-like surfaces are intended to shield the public viewer from the changes occurring inside the space. Every day these facades shift a bit revealing what is taking place within. Workers inside move objects and scrape away at the paint as they brush up against the glass. The traces which appear on the outside are altered moment to moment during the process of rebuilding. Reflections of a city in motion are projected onto the focal plane, revealing the lives of its inhabitants. Posters and advertisements are put up and come down, leaving behind remnants of the past, ideas long forgotten or irrelevant.

These photographs, taken from construction sites throughout the city, reveal how unintentional abstract compositions emerge over time. Hedison sees these ‘found paintings” as integral to an ongoing conversation about art, culture and self-reflection which asks the question, “What is this place, this now, this present moment and who are we in it?” By extension the viewer enters into a dialogue about Paris, a city and culture reeling from the energy of its own shifting identity, one deeply etched by the forces of old and new, remembered and forgotten, ever in transition.