Kelly Hain, Ilana Harris-Babou, Sarah Pater Curated by Ali Osborn
June 18 - July 17, 2022
PULP is pleased to present Light Accumulation, a three-person exhibition that addresses the fragility of concepts like “cool and collected”, “peace and quiet”, “happiness and wellbeing”. The selected artworks present scenarios wherein a tenuous equilibrium has been reached by the steady accrual of ballpoint pen strokes, performed labor, or subjects painted in illusionistic space. In each piece there is the implication that the balance might be easily tipped—the dream turned nightmare, the uncanny rendered real—by the addition of a single extra snail, another tap from a bird at the window pane, or a final swing of the ceramic hammer.
The three artists use a range of media and approaches to arrive at their enigmatic tableaux. Sarah Pater paints facsimiles, at once pristine and unsettling, of familiar forms caught in flattened, near-abstract space: snails crawling across a cool, dark countertop; tapered candlesticks standing, frozen out of time, on an impeccably smooth table cloth. Ilana Harris-Babou sculpts dysfunctional ceramics and films scenes that parody home improvement language to discuss reparations and systemic racism. In Kelly Hain’s drawings—there are traditional works on paper and an animated film—black and white worlds undergo such continuous change (from fire, flood, or refraction) that transformation appears as a harmonious constant.
Light Accumulation is curated by Ali Osborn, an artist and educator based in Brooklyn, NY.
And in our front room space: Series of 10 graphite drawings on antique ledger paper by Dean Brown, Director of Pulp.