Artist’s work tries to make sense of what is missing
As its title would suggest, artist Hannah Gaskill’s “Not not violent” deals in negative space.
The show, housed in the Bunker Projects gallery in Garfield through the end of July, tinkers with absence and imprint, inviting viewers to wonder what has gone missing and what was never there in the first place. With soft pink hues and meticulously tousled textures, Ms. Gaskill pictures trauma as a kind of disappearance.
“The way I wanted this show to exist was in a way that I could be removed and everything would still make sense,” she said. “A lot of the show is about the removal of my body.”
The exhibition’s sweet feminine colors and fabrics give the illusion of an intimate space, something like a young woman’s bedroom. But Ms. Gaskill deftly upends any sense of comfort.
“Moment 1” and “Moment 2” look like rumpled bedsheets with tiny white flowers tucked in the ridges. Looking at the wallmounted sculptures from a distance, you might imagine the artist lumbering off to breakfast without making her bed. But the delicate floral details show attentiveness to what she leaves behind. Ms. Gaskill decorates and immortalizes her moment of departure.
In “Puddle for mom,” a bouquet of roses floats precariously in a net hanging from the ceiling. Beneath it is a puddle of blue paint with pink block letters floating on top, a kind of acrylic alphabet soup called “Puddle not for dad.” The two pieces tease one another, leaving empty space between at eye level. You are left
to imagine the blue paint and pink letters slipping through the mesh while you weren’t looking.
Even when her work circles painful themes and experiences, Ms. Gaskill approaches it with a sense of humor. An installation called “Five years ago and five years from now” stages a funereal scene featuring a body-sized pillow decorated with a bikini-clad anime character. Tiny sculptures of teeth, each painted with a grim smiley face, are assembled on a mantelpiece. Their messy black grins look like they could have been drawn by a child with a permanent marker. You can almost picture them hoisting themselves out of fleshy pink gums, happy to be free.
When asked about the things that inspired and provoked her while creating “Not not-violent,” Ms. Gaskill provided an assortment of images: a wayward mascara brush she spotted on the floor of a bar, a child’s humorous imagining of an older sister, and some items given to her by past boyfriends. These pictures, and much of the work on display at Bunker Projects, dissect the ways that people look at womenand the ways women are transformed by the gaze of others.
Ms. Gaskill wants to make one thing clear: “This show was meant to be about me. It’s not about men. It’s not about mistreatment. It’s about myself.”
“Not not-violent,” a solo exhibition by Hannah Gaskill, continues through July 31 at Bunker Projects gallery, 5106 Penn Ave., Garfield (15224). Hours: noon-4 p.m. Sundays. Information: www.bunkerprojects.org.