Art and the City | HillRag
By Phil Hutinet
December 11, 2024
HEMPHILL presents “TWO X”, a group exhibition exploring the interconnectedness of art across generations. Running through December 21, this show invites viewers to reflect on how the dialogue between works by artists from different times can illuminate the shared essence of artistic expression.
Instead of adhering to conventional categorizations like period or style, “TWO X” focuses on pairings that highlight the personal and communal resonance of art, asking visitors to consider the broader narrative of creativity that connects us through time and across cultures. The exhibition aims to foster an appreciation for art’s enduring role in human experience, regardless of its context or origins.
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The math is a bit more complicated in "Two X" than the Hemphill Artworks group show's title suggests. The selection presents 14 artists (six of them deceased) paired as seven duos. Several of the contributors, however, are represented by multiple works. Also, some of the pieces -- all made between 1960 and 2024 -- speak articulately to ones to which they're not officially linked.
Wayson R. Jones's "Kinshasa," for example, is an abstract 3D painting, rendered in two tones of blue, that's offered in dialogue with an untitled Leon Berkowitz picture whose soft, flat hues flow from blue to red to yellow. But the craggy relief forms in Jones's painting suggest the wave and criss-cross patterns in two white-on-white Robin Rose sculptural pictures. And Rose's icy palette harmonizes with the minimalism of a Ruri Yi painting that neatly arrays 12 lozenges in close shades of white and off-white.