The Georgia Museum of Art is presenting the collaborative exhibition A Year on the Hill: Work by Jim Fiscus and Chris Bilheimer through March 8 on the Patsy Dudley Pate Balcony.
The artists recently gifted many of the works from the exhibition to the museum, prompting a reshowing. The exhibition was displayed in 2011 at UGA’s Lamar Dodd School of Art.
The works in the exhibition are large digital prints measuring up to 8 feet in height. The artwork depicts plant and animals found in and around the Hill, a neighborhood in Athens where all of the work on the project was completed. In addition to the autobiographical exploration of rebuilding after profound change, this collaborative project recomposes nature and explores the role of photography in imposing meaning on our surroundings.
Fiscus, an award-winning advertising and editorial photographer whose clients include Levi’s, Showtime and ESPN, seeks to erase the boundaries between commercial and fine art photography. Bilheimer, a Grammy-nominated graphic artist who designed packaging for R.E.M. and Green Day, embraces the randomness unavoidable in even the most structured settings. The collaboration is the result of the pair’s personal friendship and time together in Athens. The project lasted between the end of 2009 and fall 2010.
The show features images focusing in on raw emotions, yet zooming out to open up onto wide horizons, according to Asen Kirin, an associate professor of art and associate director at the art school and curator for the exhibition.
“These photographs are as local as the Hill in Athens and as universal as the essential need to redefine and affirm one’s place in the world,” he said.
