Jane Hammond’s Fallen is a monumental ongoing installation on which the artist has worked continuously for seven years. This poignant memorial consists of a low rectangular platform layered with a vast multitude of brilliant fall leaves. Each leaf is unique, handmade by the artist, and inscribed by her with the name of a U.S. soldier killed in Iraq. This exhibition at FLAG begins with 4455 leaves.

As a memorial, Hammond’s Fallen is unusual in that it emphasizes the singularity of each individual by making his or her leaf unique. The light and delicate materials subvert the traditional expectations of enduring materials such as bronze and stone in favor of an expression of the fragility and ephemerality of life. The artist has said: “There is something about leaves in the autumn, at the zenith of their coloration that is transcendent: they are both dematerializing and intensifying simultaneously. As their bodies become lighter, their color is becoming more and more radiant. I’ve tried to gather leaves just at this moment when the chroma is so strong it transcends the body of the leaf and becomes a kind of pure light. It rhymes with the idea of the spirit but in a way that is accessible and earthly. It’s more Emerson than Aquinas.”

About:

Jane Hammond (b. 1950, Bridgeport, CT) is an artist living and working in New York, NY. Hammond received a BA from Mount Holyoke College, South Hadley, MA, in 1972, and an MFA from the University of Wisconsin, Madison, WI, in 1977. Her work can be found in over 50 major public collections including the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Museum of Modern Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Chicago Art Institute, the National Gallery of Art and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. Hammond currently lives and works in New York and is represented by Galerie Lelong.

Full caption:
Jane Hammond. Fallen, 2004-ongoing (detail). Color ink jet print, printed from digital file recto and verso, on archival paper, cut, with matt medium, Jade glue, fiberglass strand, sumi ink, and additional handwork in acrylic paint and gouache. Dimensions variable. Photograph courtesy of Jane Hammond. Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Purchase, with funds from Sarah Ann and Werner Kramarsky, The Schiff Foundation, Melissa and Robert Soros, Marion C. and Charles Burson, Toby Devan Lewis Foundation, The Judith Rothschild Foundation, Nora and Guy Barron, Pam Joseph and Rob Brinker, Greg Kucera and Larry Yocum, Ted and Maryanne Ellison Simmons, and The Stanley Family Fund. ©Jane Hammond

The exhibition was organized by the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York.

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