Jeffrey Uslip is the Curator-At-Large of LA><ART, Los Angeles. Most recently he curated Leslie Hewitt: Make It Plain and Lovett/Codagnone: Driven By Love at LA><ART, November at Harris Lieberman, Francesca DiMattio at Salon 94, Log Cabin at Artists Space and co-curated Civil Restitutions with Simon Preston at Thomas Dane, London.
Los Angeles-based artist and activist Patrick "Pato" Hebert works with materials ranging from domestic ribbons to public billboards to explore the ways human connections can be translated into visual art. This notion, defined by Herbert as an "aesthetics of interconnectedness," is poetically articulated in a recent work titled Hopes and Fears.
Using Yoko Ono's seminal Wish Tree as a point of departure, Hebert invited both students and faculty from the University of Augusta to anonymously write their hopes and fears on commemorative ribbons, read them aloud and then tie them to branches of campus trees. This project served as a therapeutic device, evoking feelings of empathy and commonality throughout the student body.
Hebert's Tocado series consists of detailed C-prints that document the smears and footprints left on a club floor after a night of dancing. These portraits are haunting visual manifestations of Walter Benjamin's dictum "to live is to leave a trace." In this body of work, originally inspired by the baby-powdered floors in dance clubs, Hebert substitutes spices and ground materials such as turmeric, paprika and chalk. He leaves the viewer to encounter large-format, performance-based photographs of phantom experiences.
Hebert, a faculty member of Art Center College of Design, is also the Associate Director of Education at AIDS Project Los Angeles. His community-based activism is deeply rooted in his artistic practice. He installed advertisements depicting the phrase "HIV is still here. SO ARE WE" on bus stop benches and other urban sites, encouraging HIV testing and awareness in communities where the HIV-positive population remains high. While his work as a whole is predicated on interconnectedness, it’s in this intersection of activism and artistic practice that Hebert achieves his most significant connection by promoting social change in both the public and private spheres.
