Mary Hill

Underdonk is pleased to announce Unlikable Female Characters by Mary Hill in our new location in Williamsburg off McCarren Park in Brooklyn, NY.

The drip, the splatter, the jab, the line, the poke, the push.

In Unlikable Female Characters, Hill's ceramics use the language of painters that loomed large in 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 surfaces that delude and deny, as all paintings do. 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.

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, Mary'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, Stattbad-Wedding in Berlin, and most recently at the Hammer Museum (through her work with KChung Radio), the Torrance Art Museum, and Commonwealth & Council in Los Angeles. She also teaches at artist-run space Machine Project and is co-curator of the arts website and radio show The Monthly on KChung.