What is my work about?
In my work I use ubiquitous motifs and found material to extrapolate a propositional set of art objects. Paintings mimic props, postcards, bulletin boards, album art, community murals, design samples and other familiar forms, and a reference to decorative and folk art objectifies the act of painting, much like Skechers Shape Ups do the calves, thighs, ass of their wearer. I am interested in finding ways to access free time and free space by walking through the cityscape. My work is about moving with and through designations of outside space, studio space, and exhibition space, as well as those of art-work, work-work, and off-work. These contexts provide a landscape in which I can brace double meanings, push low into high, and ?work?. Through this mimicry and objectification, my work investigates the structural conventions of painting and the performative role of the artist.
Artist Statement
My current work, “The Sun Set,” an open-ended collection of paintings and sculptures, is an exercise in branding with emphasis on my role as artisan. I use and reuse an iconic sun motif, positioning paintings that function as contained environments next to scavenged domestic objects culled from walks in my urban environment. These objects become a means of both reiterating the motif and rupturing it. The paintings themselves could have been acquired curbside. Colors are distinct and traffic-friendly. Rubble has become fixed, and vines have grown, as if slower, private, or unnoticed natural forces have taken hold. I am trying to blur distinctions between the interior and exterior environment, between universal symbols and particular experience, between capturing a quality of timelessness and asserting the act of logging time through repetition.
Skechers Shape Ups are also a recurring motif. Following a fascination with Skechers’ ability to stratify walking into productive and non-productive spheres, I attached fragments of the shoes to canvas, creating a ground on which a painting could inherently “work”. The shoes became a permission-granting device for painting production. With a narrow palette of green and blue, the paintings evoke the alien, the mystical, the martial, the siren, and the post-apocalyptic.
“Walls” is an ongoing series of site-specific hand-built concrete works. Their rectilinear magnitude references the monochrome as well as the sidewalk, and their presence and gesture depict their own weight and production process. This process inherently promotes collapse. Shown together with the Skechers paintings, the show was an attempt to conflate the claims of advertising with the claims an artist(or gallery) can make about their work(the show).
CV
Education
2010 MFA Columbia University
2006 BFA Rhode Island School of Design
Exhibitions
2013
Skechers Shape Ups Work, Night Gallery, Los Angeles, CA
2011
Swiss Gallery, with Jason Loebs and Walter Smith, Cleopatras, Brooklyn, NY
LA, switzerland, with Georgie Nettell and Walter Smith, Night Gallery, Los Angeles, California
2010
Who Are Old Forest?, with Georgie Nettell, LIMAZULU, London, UK
Selected Group Exhibitions
2014
Ck1 Daily, Night Gallery, Los Angeles, CA
New Dawn, curated by Leidy Churchman, Silberkuppe, Berlin, GE
Edge of Continuation, Pablo’s Birthday, New York, NY
Hot House,presented byBlackrock, Night Gallery, and Knowmoregames, 418 East 115th st., New York, NY
Whitney Houston Biennial: I’m Every Woman, 20 Jay st. Brooklyn, NY
Private Life II, Top 40, Los Angeles, CA
2013
Sneakerotics, Edouard Malingue Gallery, Hong Kong
Hides on All Sides, Torrence Shipman Gallery, Brooklyn, NY
2010
Mortal Mirror, Bodega Gallery, Philadelphia, PA
BYTS, AKV St. Joost Academie, s’Hertogenbosch, Holland
Columbia MFA Thesis Show, Fisher Landau Center, Long Island City, NY
Private Life, Night Gallery, Los Angeles, CA
2009
H.T.A.D.I.T.F., curated by Per Billgren, 25 CPW, New York, NY
The Soft Edge, Camel Art Space, Brooklyn, NY
Whitney’s Biennial, (Curated by Whitney), Cream Projects, Brooklyn, NY
Cutting Edge Framing, 11 NE 39th St, Miami, FL
Bibiolgraphy
2013 Hailey Loman, SKECHERS SHAPE-UPS WORK, WORK at Night Gallery, Los Angeles, SFAQOnline.com, June 2013
Sunset Park, collaboration with Gucciino Glow Co., E.L. Wire, oil,
self-hardening clay on canvas, 2014