CURRENTLY ON VIEW

Exhibition "Bookends" at David B. Smith Gallery in Denver, CO. February 15 to March 16, 2019.

PRESS RELEASE

Returning for her first solo exhibition with David B. Smith Gallery, New York based artist Justine Hill continues her dialog with abstracted landscapes.

Presented in the gallery’s project room, Bookends tests the boundaries of the rectangular canvas, challenging what Hill views as the three classic component parts of paintings: figure, landscape, and background. Identified as independent from one another yet essential to the whole, the perimeter of each element is both distanced and linked by negative space. Eluding containment, occasionally spilling onto walls and across channels, Hill’s energetic figures and marks defy the stability of the loose rectangles that strive to contain them.

Each piece in Bookends has three primary elements that pull together to prop up the whole as a sturdy, self-sufficient work. The literary concepts of beginning, middle, and end are likened to the figure, landscape, and background, with each fulfilling a singular assigned role. Boundary is playfully stretched and distorted with bursts of colors and movement in Hill’s enigmatic trio of works, blurring the elemental structures of painting and marking the next chapter in her investigation of landscape.