kNOW you WON’t
Brittni Ann Harvey, Manal Kara, Nicholas Sullivan, and Brandi Twilley
Curated by Philip Hinge
August 31st-October 13th, 2019
The problems you choose to ignore and the ones you don’t are in persistent disorder. Solutions are hard to come by and it’s getting late. If you don’t deal with it soon, you’ll suffocate. Luckily, with enough concentration even the most pressing issues can disappear, effervescently floating away on unfamiliar tides.
Stepping off the elevator and walking through the door, reality’s dust settles into a dreamy haze, forming a crust on things we once recognized. If you squint hard enough, you can find familiarity in the permutations of this newly conjured formality. The chandelier is only illuminated if light is reflecting off of its thick carapace, which entombs a dull pink gourd. The paintings of dreaming girls are inexplicably covered in bugs. Should you mention that to someone? A pair of spiked hands rests on the windowsill, menacing but too heavy and limp to be bothered to lift a finger. Everything is different, and you’ve started to forget what was bothering you.
Pushing past these shapes and images is the skyline. It’s right there but it is out of reach. If you could walk through walls you would fall, and if you could teleport you wouldn’t be here anymore. So instead you decide to shrink into the comfort of a warmly lit cat tree, which sits firmly against the expanse of the city. It is cozy, and you imagine you could live the rest of your days happily in this feline’s complex of twisted rope and faux fur.
You can do better, wait, kNOW you WON’t.
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Philip Hinge (b. 1988, Seattle, WA) received his MFA in Painting from Virginia Commonwealth University and his BFA from Maryland Institute College of Art. Hinge has shown his work at a variety of venues, including; Connersmith (Washington DC), Freddy (Baltimore, MD), Brennan & Griffin (NY, NY), The Breeder (Athens, Greece), Peter Blum Gallery (NY, NY), Marinaro (NY, NY) and GCA (Brooklyn, NY). In February 2017 he launched a project space/gallery called Catbox Contemporary, in his apartment in Ridgewood, NY. In 2019, Hinge started darkZone in the basement of his childhood home in New Jersey. In May, Hinge opened A.D. in lower Manhattan, NY with Nick Irzyk and Nicholas Sullivan. Hinge lives and works in Ridgewood, NY.
Brittni Ann Harvey (b. 1992) lives and works in Tiverton, RI. She received a BFA from Rhode Island School of Design. Her process includes painting, textiles, and assorted industrial processes. She has recently shown at Kristen Lorello Gallery, and will be attending the Kesey Farm Poetry Workshop in September.
Manal Kara is a Moroccan-American self-taught interdisciplinary artist and poet living and working in Gary, IN and Chicago, IL. Their work engages the poetics of desire, interspecies exchange, and the futurity of human sexualities in a post-natalist discourse under the conditions of extractive capitalism and anthropogenic climate catastrophe. They have exhibited work extensively in Chicago and New York as well as internationally in Istanbul, Vienna, and Berlin.
Nicholas Sullivan (b. 1987) is an artist living and working in Brooklyn, NY. Sullivan earned his M.F.A. in Sculpture from Massachusetts College of Art and Design, Boston, MA, and his B.F.A. in Sculpture from the University of Massachusetts Amherst, Amherst, MA. Recent exhibitions include Comfort Animal, A-L Gallery, Seoul, SK; The Pit Presents: Step Sister, The Pit, Los Angeles, CA; Neu, No Place Gallery, Columbus, OH; O, Catbox Contemporary, Ridgewood, NY; The World Without Us, Brennan & Griffin, New York, NY; Gist & Gesture, Kavi Gupta, Chicago, IL; Foster Prize Exhibition (curated by Kijidome), Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston, MA.
Brandi Twilley (b. 1982, Oklahoma City, OK) lives and works in Brooklyn, NY. She received her MFA from Yale University, New Haven, CT in 2011 and has exhibited work at The Museum of Sex, New York, NY; Hood Gallery, Brooklyn, NY and Kate Werble Gallery, New York, NY. Her work has been reviewed by Artforum, The New York Times, Hyperallergic, and The New Yorker among others.
