Underdonk

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In Unlikable Female Characters, Mary Hill’s ceramics use the language of painters that loomed large in the twentieth century to underscore their aesthetic dominance. As they fall apart and begin to point to other more obscured histories – these small works become melancholy and rebellious. Recognizing the trauma of exposure to art history and the masochism of still wanting its approval, Unlikable Female Characters is a modest show that questions its own modesty.

Hill’s slip cast paintings and still lifes present us with seductive surfaces that delude and deny, as all paintings do. Using texts to prop up forms, Hill references the legacies that we are born of – specifically, the Feminist as unlikable female character. A painting show that eradicates paint is like a history that eradicates women. Hill constructs the lie and then puts a finger through it.

The hole, the rip, the crack, the wrinkle, the dent, the give.

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Mary Hill was born in Tampa, FL and currently lives and works in Los Angeles, CA. In 2012 she received her MFA from CalArts. Her work centers on the body, mortality and the resistance of the object. Relying heavily on mold-making and life-casting, Hill’s sculptures regularly present themselves as approximations of the real – even as they move toward the absurd. She has shown at Vox Populi AUX space in Philadelphia, Washington Project for the Arts in DC, Pocket Utopia and the Errant Garrison in Brooklyn, and at the Stattbad-Wedding in Berlin. Most recently, her work has been exhibited at the Hammer Museum (through her work with KChung Radio), the Torrance Art Museum, and Commonwealth & Council in Los Angeles. She also teaches at the artist-run space Machine Project in Los Angeles and is co-curator of the arts website and radio show The Monthly.