Hana Lock: Rinne Jo Farb Hernandez Gallery, 02/28/2022–03/03/2022 Advisors: Shaun O'Dell, Erik Friedman Works in the Exhibit Views of the Exhibit

Artist's Statement

I have always found myself fascinated by the macabre and grotesquely beautiful. I fear death and am repulsed by decay, yet at the same time, I find them strangely beautiful and I can't help but be drawn to them. My emotions toward the morbid are a paradox; a constant cycle between attraction and repulsion. My art explores this paradox through whimsically macabre imagery and appreciates the beautiful and repulsive nature of the cycle of life, death, decay, and rebirth.

Rinne, or samsara, in Buddhism is the beginningless and endless cycle of life, death and rebirth where the soul wanders aimlessly from one life to the next. While I don't consider myself particularly religious, I think rinne exists in the sense that when something dies, the physical components of the body are broken down and eventually “reborn” as new life. I am fascinated by the concept of rinne because it raises the question of what defines life and death. Where is the line drawn between the two? Is there a difference to begin with? What does it even mean to exist?

Through the practice of drawing and painting, I explore these questions by creating works that exist in limbo. They inhabit an ambiguous region between life and death, imagination and reality, and the beautiful and the grotesque. Their status is subjective, and where the line between the two states of being is drawn will differ from person to person.