Private Eye
April 23, 2019 – May 11, 2019
In Private Eye, Christian Hincapié and Iris Ward Loughran search the streets of New York City for signifiers of time’s passage. As they investigate the visual and material phenomena of urban life, each artist approaches their work with a discrete system for documentation and a unique practice of altering found objects.
Christian Hincapié uses rubbing as a form of documentation. This technique is typically associated with sacred objects, such as gravestones or engraved brass plaques, but Hincapié creates rubbings to preserve sidewalk cement. Wet cement in New York is like fly paper– it lures passerbys, who scrawl nicknames, hearts, and messages in the quick-drying surface. In 7th Street Birthday (Happy Bday Pete, et al.) Hincapié documents these collective, impermanent carvings (which are often destroyed during periods of roadwork or sidewalk repair). Hincapié’s rubbings offer a lasting tribute to ephemeral moments of urban life.
Iris Ward Loughran uses photography to document urban phenomena. In Unintentional Mural Bed-Stuy, Loughran finds the precise angle at which a crumbling wall’s intersection with hanging cables and a weed-topped curb suggests an elegant and intentional composition. In the work X-Marks the Spot, a contorted street sign rests on the approximate starting point of the journey that Robert Smithson chronicled in his essay, ‘A Tour of the Monuments of Passaic, New Jersey’. Loughran encountered the sign as she attempted to walk the same path as Smithson. In X-Marks the Spot, the sign’s form and the significance of its placement blur the line between found and created art.
With levity and intent, Hincapié and Loughran also transform found objects into allegories of urban experience. In Gate Weaving, Loughran employs paracord to replace the broken links of a chain link fence. The result reads as a futile fix by a playful urban survivalist. In Rainbow Moved Next Door, Hincapié mends a storefront curtain found in the Bronx with Phragmites, a plant that is invasive to New York City. Layering the curtain with flyers and signage gathered from the area, Hincapié creates a complex portrait of a distinct place and time.
Curated by Anne Patsch
Christian Hincapié (b.1989, Pereira, Colombia) is a multidisciplinary visual artist whose practice includes drawing, painting, sculpture, printmaking and photography. He received a full-tuition scholarship to Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art, and – upon earning his BFA in 2013 – the Toni and David Yarnell Award for Excellence in Art. He was an Ellen Battell Stoeckel Fellow at the Yale Summer School of Music and Art in 2012. Hincapié’s work has been exhibited by the Public Art Fund, High Tide Gallery, La Mama Gallery, Mana Contemporary, and the Colombian Consulate in New York. He is currently pursuing a Masters of Fine Art at Mason Gross School of the Arts at Rutgers University.
Iris Ward Loughran (b.1990, San Mateo, CA) is an artist, urbanist, and educator. She graduated in 2012 from University of California San Diego with a BA in Urban Studies and Planning and a Minor in Visual Arts. Her research on participatory planning and community engagement, coupled with her involvement in on-campus activism, inspired her to pursue a career in community organizing. After a brief stint organizing in Brownsville, Brooklyn, she is now exploring intersections of art and social justice. Loughran currently lives and works in Brooklyn, NY, where she is inspired by urban landscapes, her multi-racial identity, womanhood, and place-making. She is a Teaching Artist with Groundswell Community Mural Project, and is currently pursuing a Masters of Fine Art at Mason Gross School of the Arts at Rutgers University.