Hilary Harkness: Relentless Yet Dispassionate

Hilary Harkness, Red Sky in the Morning, 2010-11, oil on panel, 37 x 42 inches (
Hilary Harkness, Red Sky in the Morning, 2010-11, oil on panel, 37 x 42 inches (courtesy The FLAG Art Foundation, photo by Genevieve Hanson)

David Cohen reviews an exhibition of paintings by Hilary Harkness on view at the FLAG Art Foundation, New York, through May 18, 2013.

Cohen writes that Harkness' "newer work dispenses with the assured absurdist humor of her trademark strategy and puts her in uncharted water in which human foible takes over from inhuman gesture. Meanwhile, the display of her cutaways of battleships, mansions, and even an auction house with their stylized, weirdly good-humored depravity confirmed to this now hardened fan (note the skepticism in the earlier reviews reposted below) her unexpected capacity to build distinct mood within each work despite the seeming ubiquity of her aesthetic and moral world view."