WADS (We Already Died So)
Laura Hunt and Lillian Paige Walton
February 6th, 2016 - March 13th, 2016
Opening Reception: Saturday February 6th, 2016 7:00-10:00 pm
The kind of show is made by squeezing.
-Gertrude Stein, Tender Buttons
The implication of tenderness boldly encouraged by this array of objects is unlike
the gourmand’s fetish. Any meat seen falling off bone within the gallery will be
allegorical, or rather, constitutional. (All solids melt!) Still, certain qualities conjured
by the adjectival form remain. In the sense of: bruising, crushability, a soft approach
to sexuality, and other vague emotional vectors.
If painting has been understood as a medium for expression, Laura
Hunt and Lillian Paige Walton’s efforts here establish a vulnerability to
perversions of method and form. As work, tenderness is a kind of twisted
manipulation. A plasticine tease; a glove that fits far too well.
Hunt’s paintings are all 4x4-ft, shimmering oil and acrylic on
4-way-stretch red lamé fabric. Each a seductively drawn muleta veiling a
conceptual dagger for the final third’s fatal blow.
Walton’s fuzzy sculptures need their simple plinths to “stand.” Because
the figurative embraces they describe constellate psychological complexity
without additional stability.
To consider tenderness in its more aggressive forms – the powdered
enzyme that neuters a jellyfish sting, the public offer that results in an unfriendly
takeover – is to rescue treachery from the sentimental.
Laura Hunt (b. 1985) is an artist and poet living in Brooklyn, NY. She has exhibited paintings and/or performed at Essex Flowers, White Columns, 50 Taaffe, and The Emily Harvey Foundation.
Laura Hunt
Lillian Paige Walton
