<All Work

Culture Making

It’s Still All Up To You

Curated by Eve Biddle & Will Hutnick 

November 18 – December 16, 2017

Kyle Bauer, Rachel Guardiola, Magali Hebert-Huot, Paolo Morales, Nara Park, Kyle Tata and Rives Wiley

Hamiltonian Gallery is pleased to present It’s Still All Up To You, an exhibition curated by Eve Biddle and Will Hutnick comprised of the current Hamilton Fellow cohort, that explores the ways we try to communicate and connect by obscuring, revealing, and purposefully distorting information.

Guestbook, Nara Park

Hopeless Fortunes, Paolo Morales, 2016, mixed media

The Archeologie, Rachel Guardiola, 2017, chromogenic color print, 20x24 inches

The Archeologie Detail, Rachel Guardiola

It’s Still All Up To You features 8 artists - the current Hamiltonian Fellow cohort – that address this theme in some capacity. What is revealed through a piece of art?  How much of an artist can you actually see in their work? How much do they want you to see? In some cases there is a literal obstruction, covering up, distortion and manipulation of objects and materials into another form.  And in others, there is an obtuse reveal: a teasing hint into what the artist is thinking, feeling, experiencing in their own life, giving us just enough to grab onto and apply to our own narratives. While many of the works in this exhibition are abstract, there is a palpable empathy in them, almost a call and response between the viewer and the piece. I’ll share this if you share that. Notions of time and space are conflated, thrown into a blender. We are presented with alternate realities filled with the self and a longing to connect: a deep connection towards disparate parts, to other individuals, to nature, to other cultures, with an acknowledgement of faults, an honesty viewed from a distance.

How does purposefully obscuring visual information inform how we take in other forms of information? News? Current events? Are we just being handed a quasi one-sided opinion with only our own personal context brought to the table? Throughout this exhibition there is a strong conception of self-awareness, where the artists are winking towards these ideas around obfuscation. The viewer is both IN on the joke, AND possibly part of the joke themselves.

Ultimately we all bring only ourselves and our personal vessels of knowledge to each piece - what they reveal, tell, teach, provoke will be different in all of us.  The actions you take from being inspired, being informed by partial stories, being revealed to in uncertain terms … it’s still all up to you.

Kyle J. Bauer (b. 1985, Salem IL.) moved to Baltimore after earning his MFA from Louisiana State University in 2011. His formally rigorous sculptures boast seductively attractive surfaces that alternately conceal or reveal their true nature with contrasting textures and colors.  Their intent is to captivate the viewer’s eye and command movement through visual cues in a manner akin to navigational symbols or objects from which they take their inspiration.

Rachel Guardiola (b. 1985, Bethpage, NY) is an interdisciplinary artist who often utilizes lens based technology to construct mythologies of future past terrain inspired by periods of her own navigation through extreme landscapes. She received an M.F.A. from the Maryland Institute College of Art and a B.F.A. from the Rhode Island School of Design.

Magali Hébert-Huot (b. 1987, Québec City, Qc, Canada) is a Baltimore-based artist who has a rigourous studio practice, investigating and synthesizing her interests in sculpture, architecture, and history. She received an MFA from the Rinehart School of Sculpture - Maryland Institute College of Art.

Will Hutnick (b. 1985, Manhasset, NY) is an artist and curator based in Wassaic, NY. His work explores ideas surrounding queer abstraction and interstitial spaces. Hutnick received his M.F.A. from Pratt Institute and is currently the Co-Director of Ortega y Gasset Projects, an artist-run curatorial collective and exhibition space in Brooklyn as well as the Residency Director of The Wassaic Project.

Paolo Morales is a photographer who was born and raised in New York and currently lives in Arlington, Virginia. He teaches at George Mason University and The Potomac School.

Nara Park (b. 1985, Seoul, Korea) received an M.F.A in sculpture from the Maryland Institute College of Art (Baltimore, MD). She is a DC-based artist whose work investigates our relationship to the landscape we live in and the imprint we leave in it when we’re gone.

Kyle Tata (b.1990, Baltimore, MD) uses a conceptual approach to the medium of photography to create work commenting on themes such as architecture, material history, and design. He received a BFA from the Maryland Institute College of Art.

Rives Wiley (b. 1990, Alexandria, VA) is a painter, video maker, and installation artist.  She creates socially conscious scenes that blend the real, virtual, and surreal. Rives holds BFA from Rhode Island School of Design (2013).

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Mary Ann Unger Estate

© Eve Biddle 2019