Hard Ground

Hard Ground brings together work by seven New York-based artists who employ processes of erosion, subtraction, and compression. Using an economy of means, the works hold residues of action in tension with a distillation or displacement of matter. Sculptures by Matt Browning, for example, each emerge from a single block of Douglas fir, whittled down to expose interlocking wooden forms. Dora Budor’s frottages result from rubbing sandpaper and Lexapro against the walls and floors of her studio as a form of automatic drawing. Kern Samuel quilts together steel plates whose surfaces are etched with marks of their handling, while Maria VMier’s gnarled bronze door knockers invite visitors to bang on the walls of the institution—generating a luster born from accumulated touch. Some works amplify density, honing in on a core; in others, reduction unveils the trace of an image. Diverging from a logic of assemblage and juxtaposition, these practices query how correlations between productivity, value, and surface are forged.