Exhibitions

Painting begins in the body. Through the effect of gesture on material the invisible takes form.

However, a painting is not merely the thoughts, fears, loves, and intentions of its maker— it’s not a transcript. It’s a counterpoint to the painter in a constantly circulating loop. In process and in completion, the painting informs the painter as the painter informs the painting. For the artist, this continuous circulation can induce alternating feelings of disembodiment and hyper-awareness. It’s easy to get lost. No wonder there are so many self-portraits; an anchor outside of the self, of the self, keeps one afloat.

Paint is both material and illusion, object and air. In paint's ability to be translucent, layered, thin, thick, rough, or slick, Heidi Hahn and Bridget Mullen find a collaborator. In the accumulation of color into unnamable hues, in gradations that defy the flatness of the plane, and in alternating incidentally overlapping layers and intentionally sumptuous strokes, figures are formed and caressed into place.

Hahn builds a literal system of maker and subject, each chasing its own creation into a mode of painting that represents its construction and imagined pretense. Each painting comes with a built-in viewer that is both the subject being painted and the painter. Depicting figures mutated from abstract under-paintings, Mullen’s work moves between polarities of known and nameable, found and inscrutable. The steady hum of repetition gives the impression of familiarity, but the ambiguity of figures and forms never allows it.

In the strange loop of painting, the painter conjures and snags images that resound in the body a feeling of likeness.

Heidi Hahn received her M.F.A. from Yale University in 2014, and is currently an acting Professor of Painting and Drawing at Alfred University, NY. She has been the recipient of several awards, residencies, and fellowships, including the Jerome Foundation Grant, Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture Residency, Madison, ME; and the Fine Arts Work Center Residency, Provincetown, MA, among others. Her work has been collected by the Kadist Foundation, Paris, France; and has been exhibited in numerous solo and group exhibitions throughout the world including the Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art, Kansas City, KS (2018); V1 Gallery, Copenhagen, Denmark (2018); Anton Kern Gallery, New York, NY (2018); and Premier Regard, Paris, France (2013). Her work has also been reviewed in numerous publications, including The New York Times and Art in America.

Bridget Mullen holds an MFA from Massachusetts College of Art. She has been awarded residencies at MacDowell, The Jan Van Eyck Academie, Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, The Fine Arts Work Center, and Yaddo among many others. Her recent solo exhibitions include Helena Anrather, New York, NY; Annet Gelink, Amsterdam, Netherlands; and recent group exhibitions include Wild Palms, Düsseldorf, Germany; DC Moore, New York, NY; Thierry Goldberg, New York, NY; and L21, Mallorca, Spain. Her work is in the collections of the Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen in Rotterdam, Netherlands and the Anderson Museum of Contemporary Art in Roswell, NM. She was awarded studio space from the Sharpe-Walentas Studio Program from 2017-2018 and participated in the Shandaken Paint School from 2018-2019. Her work has been featured in Juxtapoz, Maake Magazine, and ArtMaze. She lives and works in Brooklyn, NY.