Fall: Artist Eats Pho

Daniel Heyman is known for using a variety of printmaking materials and techniques in experimental ways—such as layering gouache monotype with intaglio and aquatint--to create works that combine text (often transcriptions of interviews or oral statements) with imagery such as portraits and details from landscapes. Heyman deconstructs and challenges assumptions about "political" art by combining personal stories and other elements from either his or his subjects’ histories. Often he combines his narrative with that of his subject, describing both one’s experience and his feelings upon hearing the stories. In this way, he challenges the concept of narratives and questions their power and influence. This piece, Fall: Artist Eats Pho, is taken from a series devoted to the four seasons. In Summer: Artist Sleeps 2010, Heyman is shown peacefully sleeping on a hammock outdoors, while in Fall: Artist Eats Pho 2011, Heyman depicts himself eating at a Vietnamese restaurant. The image of the artist enjoying a bowl of pho is juxtaposed with that of Hung Nguyen, a refugee from Vietnam whose harrowing story of life in Vietnam and escape to America is described in the text comprising the bottom third of the print. Winter: Artist Engages, 2012 is a double portrait of Heyman, both figures shown nude and intertwined. Behind him is a full moon and detail showing an owl and a winter landscape. Finally in Spring: Artist Contemplates (Inheritance) 2012, Heyman shows himself from the back, holding an ivory sculpture of three men fighting. In this series, Heyman uses the seasons to describe the passage from youth to adulthood, as well as to show his own journey from the carefree summer slumber to that of political awareness, to wrestling with himself, to finally contemplation of art and life itself in a protected interior space.