Janet Loren Hill Debuts Her Surrealist Textile Paintings At KAPOW, by Christina Elia
Exhibition Reviews
May 26, 2023
The mixed-media artist's debut New York solo exhibition with the gallery explores the pitfalls of human perception through a selection of binocular-shaped pieces.
For her New York solo show Origin Story, multimedia artist Janet Loren Hill has transformed KAPOW's intimate Tribeca space into a wonderland of multicolored surrealism. Still, as the series's signature binocular shape signals, there's much more to this exhibition than meets the eye. Interweaving fantasy and satire, Origin Story grapples with the concept of identity and, in the process, asks the audience to ponder: what lengths will we go to defend the myths we sell to others, and to ourselves?
As the gallery's third exhibition since acclaimed art dealer Kourosh Mahboubian started the project, Origin Story marks an important juncture for both Hill and KAPOW. Mahboubian first encountered the artist's work at the 2022 SPRING/Break Art Show, and together, the two hatched up the idea for this show, which expands upon Hill's practice utilizing man-made mechanisms and their correlating shapes, like the rainbow parachutes we play with in preschool, to extrapolate on larger societal structures.
Origin Story spans eight textile paintings of various scales and media, including foam, fabric, beads, and even plastic teeth. Hill also crafted two toilet paper-tube binoculars lined on the inside like disco ball kaleidoscopes so viewers can activate her pieces through an actual distorted viewpoint, thereby demonstrating the fallibility of human awareness. One wall teems hypnotically with teeth – a repetitive wallpaper reading "Keep it under your hat, tittle-tattle lost the battle" – alongside sculptures of teeth, made from materials like mosaic, wood, and New York dirt, chattering atop a motorized plinth. In this context, however, the lighthearted toy carries a more sinister connotation.
Janet Loren Hill's show narrates a succession of conflicts between the Hammerhead People, an imaginary society divided into opposing sects: those who seek to understand the world through tolerance and reason versus those who naively parrot the lies we've become accustomed to accepting. The latter have swapped their Hammerheads for jagged crowns of chattering teeth and, determined in their quest for destruction and conformity, connive to lure others into accepting a similar fate. It's an apt representation of political polarity in the United States, where patriots delude themselves into defending the country's founding lore of liberty and equality rather than confronting a horrific past filled with indigenous bloodshed, slave labor, and exploitative immigration policies.
Binocular Viewpoint: Some Kind of Origin Story, the exhibition's centerpiece and largest work, anchors viewers in a feminist dystopia, as a series of struggles between the Chattering Teeth and remaining Hammerheads unfolds across the composition. We see some Chattering Teeth huddled together, arms stretched in celebration, and another propped on a floating throne. One group corners a Hammerhead on the edge of a cliff, taunting the lone figure who tries to avoid plummeting to their death, illustrating what's at stake if we don't debunk falsehoods and dissect their roots. Hill is simulating how the fault lies not only with repressive, patriarchal systems, but also the people who uphold the establishment rather than dismantle it.
Origin Story also subverts viewers' conceptions of nature, its symbolic association with femininity, and what's often perceived as its inherent virtue. Hill reappropriated images of flowers, trees, and other plant-based motifs from assorted historical propaganda programs, including Nazi Germany's Lebensborn, a eugenics campaign encouraging SS soldiers to impregnate unmarried German women to advance the "Aryan race." Further source material ranges from posters promoting China's One-Child Policy to Qanon Instagram posts, all indicating a concentrated effort to oppress women's bodily autonomy and normalize state-sanctioned violence as the "natural order."
Hill started wrestling with these themes when she and her spouse were considering conceiving a child, right as the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade. Given the inopportune timing, the artist began to ruminate on the precarity of starting a family in an age when extremist dogma takes precedence over a pregnant person's health and safety. Perhaps, for some, it's easier to surrender to the prevailing ideology instead of examining it, which is why works such as You Are A Void, The Void Is Everything depict Chattering Teeth with rounded bellies who go as far as to rid themselves of their corporeality altogether, emerging from a grove of trees with only their crowns intact.
Deep shades of purple, gray, and blue also evoke a uniquely somber mood in Binocular Viewpoint: Just Outside of Your Peripheral, the only work in the exhibition completely devoid of figures or traditional symbols. Here, Hill transports us to a gloomy Bavarian Forest – a reference to her own German heritage – and forces us to reckon with the darkness consuming the canvas. What decisions could've possibly isolated someone to this point of no return? A swirl of blood-orange pigment in the background indicates a deadly sludge bubbling beneath the surface, the metaphorical burden of toxic beliefs.
Origin Story also hammers home the point that this is a generational problem. Subtle clues throughout the exhibition — like the neon-tufted border on one of the binocular viewpoints, which features fabric from the artist's grandmother's skirt – situate Hill in a longstanding feminist art movement combining the personal and the political. These endless Easter eggs prompt viewers to peek even closer at her visceral scenes, to meditate on each layer as an individual experience. There's a clear cautionary tale present within the works, of course, but also a sense of solace, of renewal. It's never too late to understand our own origin stories, Hill seems to suggest, as long as we wake up and realize where to look.
The exhibition Origin Story is on view at Kapow Gallery in New York until May 27th, 2023.
Written by Christina Elia.
Featured image: Installation View of Janet Loren Hill's Origin Story. All images courtesy of Kapow and the artist.
