New Thick

October 25th – November 17th, 2019

Opening reception Friday, October 25th, 7 – 9 PM

The Royal is pleased to present New Thick, a group exhibition curated by Barry Hazard and Katie Hector which includes the work of Jonathan Hartshorn, Katie Hector, Valerie Hegarty, Kate Klingbeil, Ming-Jer Kuo, Erin Loree, Calli Moore, Armita Raafat, Kris Rac, and Denise Treizman.

The work of Hartshorn, Hegarty, Kuo, Raafat, and Rac closely examines and unpacks the cultural significance and coded hierarchies embedded within the physical landscape. This collection of artists reinterprets quotidian imagery, architecture, and memorials to disrupt the romantic, political, and ideological signifiers they contain. Meanwhile, Hector, Klingbeil, Loree, Moore, and Treizman represent a camp of scientists eager to forge formal Frankensteins, alien material combinations, and hybrids that exemplify human curiosity at play. These artists offer glimpses into futuristic utopias as they negotiate between faux and folly via their falsified surfaces.

This collection of two and three-dimensional artwork exploits the schism between painting and sculpture, image and object, artwork and viewer. In an era wherein boundaries and labels prove increasingly problematic this exhibition chooses to examine work that breaks from categories and unpacks notions of optical and conventional perceptions.

The technical manipulation of industrial, found, and traditional materials demonstrates each artists’ allegiance to process. The work included in New Thick is neither transforming or transitioning to become something other than it is. Instead, it revels within the realm of ambiguity and captures the distinct quality of “in-betweenness” exploiting the viewer’s instinctual desire to codify the unknown.