March through June

K8 Hardy

In Residence: Sep 26 – Nov 21, 2022

Exhibition: Nov 17, 2022 – Jan 8, 2023


K8 Hardy is “happy to confuse, amuse, and activate” viewers of her art, and her new work created while on residency at Artpace may do just that.   Upon entering the white cube gallery, her singular work, a painting counters with its dark organic presence.    

The monumental work, June, is suspended upon a building pilar in the center of the gallery.  It is a soft sculpture awash with splashes of blacks, blues, and a few hints of colors creating a heavy substrate to absorb light.  Periodically, a bit of glitter reflects our gaze within the gestural fluid paint strokes. 

June continues Hardy’s work in a series she began in 2020 and it is her third painting. As with each work, Hardy experiments with both material and palette. This work was designed by Hardy in the studio, constructed at a San Antonio car upholstery company, and returned to the studio for a poured paint process by the artist. Consistent within her series is the shape, with a perimeter of elongated soft round edges and small wings, and the dimensions, with a thicker cushion at the middle tapering to a comfortable softness near the edges. 

Hardy’s artistic practice evolves as she goes from one medium to another medium in her passion to push that edge of conventional norms and good taste. 

Artist

K8 Hardy

Fort Worth, Texas / New York, New York

K8 Hardy is a punk rock artist who works across a motley array of mediums, including video, photography, and sculpture. Through her art practice, she unwittingly becomes a brand, intentionally exploiting persona and pop culture. Long before the ubiquity of the selfie, Hardy was experimenting in documenting her looks and various fictional selves. Her work takes us to the edge of “good taste” and makes us question those parameters.

Hardy was born and raised in Fort Worth, Texas and came up through the Riot Grrrl scene. She has participated avidly in collaborations, activism, and collectives, like W.A.G.E. and LTTR. Her work is in the collection of The MoMA, The Guggenheim, and Whitney Museum of American Art. She has exhibited at such notable institutions as The Tate Modern, Kunsthaus Zurich, Artists Space, PS1, SFMOMA, and Dallas Contemporary, amongst others.

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Curator

Sofía Hernández Chong Cuy

Sofía Hernández Chong Cuy (MX) started her tenure as Director at Kunstinstituut Melly (formerly known as Witte de With) in January 2018, after being the curator of contemporary art at Colección Patricia Phelps de Cisneros in Caracas and New York from 2011 to 2017. In 2016-2017, she was also guest curator at the Bronx Museum of the Arts in New York. In 2013, Sofía was artistic director and chief curator of the 9a Bienal do Mercosul | Porto Alegre in Brazil, and before that, she was an agent of dOCUMENTA(13) in Kassel. In the past, Sofía has been director of Museo Tamayo in Mexico City and held curatorial positions in New York at Art in General and Americas Society. She is also a board member of Council in Paris and of Creative Time in New York. 

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