HALSEY MCKAY GALLERY

HALSEY MCKAY GALLERY is pleased to present an exhibition of new works by Sheree Hovsepian, her first with the gallery. Through varying processes of additive and subtractive layering, Hovsepian’s inventive approach to drawing, photography, and collage emphasize the performative and bodily implications of line and shape.

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In her new series of assemblages, gelatin silver photographs and photograms are layered into compositions and married with translucent, sheer fabric. In the darkroom, an intuitive process of blind action is applied to reveal images on photographic paper. Fabricis cut, stretched, and wrapped around these prints, creating areas of varying opacity. Darker shapes are delineated through a layering of the fabric while open areas of exposed photographs emanate a glow from within.

Where these fabric and photographic works imply volume, Hovsepian’s drawings emphasize mark. A similarly automatic approach to that in the darkroom is begun with white crayon onto white paper. These imperceptible sheets of paper are then covered in a wash of toner and coffee. As the chemical emulsions in the darkroom reveal the latent photographic images, this self-made ink bath reveals the linear forms of her blind drawing process.

Sheree Hovsepian (b. 1974) earned her MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2002. Recent solo exhibitions include Higher Pictures, New York (2017), Reveries of a Solitary Walker, Monique Meloche Gallery, Chicago (2015) and The Whole Other, Kristen Hjellegjerde Gallery, London, UK (2014). Hovsepian’s work was also included in the recent exhibitions New Photography, 2016 Next Wave Art, Brooklyn Academy of Music, and Photography Is Magic, Aperture Foundation (2016). Her work is held in the permanent collections of The Art Institute of Chicago and The Studio Museum in Harlem, among other institutions. Hovsepian lives and works in New York City.