Rhia Hurt Solo Exhibition : Seeing Through at Ground Floor Gallery
June 14th-July 14th, 2019
Opening Reception: June 20th 6:30-9pm
Closing Brunch: Sunday July 14 12-3pm
Rhia Hurt’s paintings feature repeated and irregular geometric shapes. The shapes are painted in a range of colors from subtle earth tones to acidic industrial colors. They bring to mind diverse and oppositional organic forms such as stones, leaves, ponds, and cellular diagrams. For her latest show Seeing Through at Ground Floor Gallery in Brooklyn, Rhia will be showing a collection of paintings as well as creating a unique work directly on the gallery wall. I had a chance to speak with her about the process of making this piece.
Conversation with Rhia Hurt and Michael Sorgatz
I had the pleasure of seeing you work on the new wall piece for your show at Ground Floor. It’s so different in scale from your other work, it seems like it could be very challenging. How did you approach that work?
Wall painting (in progress)
It is different in scale, but I’m thinking about proportions more than size. So, no matter what scale I am working in, I have the same concerns– balance, visual weight, value, color, etc. Working larger, I definitely have to step back frequently to see the full view.
The wall drawing integrates three modes of mark making: painting directly on the wall, color field shapes painted on duralar, and sculptural elements. As far as developing the composition, I try things out with some initial shapes on the wall, and then build from there.
Example of a color field shape painted on adhesive duralar.
Can you talk me through your process with this piece? What was your starting point, and how did the work evolve?
Sure. Making this type of wall drawing involves intuition and improvisation. I first put some elements up as anchor shapes and consider how negative space flows around them. Then I look to where more forms could be added and how the structure can be built up. There’s logic to how color and value and shape can balance visually. Also there can be a feeling of tension or calm in viewing a delicate balance of forms.
The end result is a formal record of the layered steps taken to make the drawing. Some shapes show the force of gravity, and some appear to float or flow upwards. I think of the wall drawing as a sort of visual poem.
How has working in these different mediums and scales informed your work? One thing I’ve noticed in your work is that it has become so much more expansive over time.
Each unique material adds variety to edges, transparency of layers, and in some cases the ability to see around and through three dimensional objects. As a painter there came a point where I wanted to break out of the rectangular picture plane. As I did that I became more interested in how pure color, value, and shape/form can drive the work and create positive and negative space. With the wall drawings I’m considering the viewer’s experience in relationship to their body and point of view. I hope to engage the viewer in looking in a new way.
Rhia’s show runs from June 14th to July 14th with an opening reception on June 20th from 6:30-9pm.
Ground Floor Gallery
343 5th Street
Brooklyn, New York 11215
(646)801-3338