Hilary Harkness, Peter Saul on ARTNET.COM

31 January 2017

Review by Laura van Straaten A Generational Battle of Subversive Wit at Tribeca's "Piss and Vinegar" on ARTNET.COM.

“Piss and Vinegar: Two Generations of Provocateurs,” now showing at the New York Academy of Art in Tribeca, is totally worth it, even if just for one artwork: a painting by artist Hilary Harkness.

First, the show. The exhibition aims to contrast an earlier generation of artists who use shock in their work with a younger generation of contemporary artists who use shock to different ends. As the show was being assembled, the curators realized the older generation was all men and the second, all women...

Hilary Harkness, Peter Saul at the New York Academy of Art

19 January to 5 March 2017

Included in group exhibition Piss and Vinegar at the New York Academy of Art, NYC, NY.

Curated by Peter Drake, Dean of the Academy, and gallerist George Adams, Piss and Vinegar unites two generations of provocateurs: five men who came of age in the 1960s and five contemporary female artists. Robert Arneson, Robert Colescott, R. Crumb, Peter Saul, and Robert Williams, whose satirical, sarcastic prints and paintings demonstrate influences from psychedelia to MAD Magazine, will be shown with Nina Chanel Abney, Sue Coe, Nicole Eisenman, Natalie Frank, and Hilary Harkness, whose work explores the same subversive wit and dark, maniacal spirit. Each artist moreover brings to the table serious technical skill and art historical fluency, in the service of pushing the boundaries of “good taste.” No one subject or affiliation unites the two groups, but the exhibition particularly highlights the choice these artists made to pursue uncomfortable and ostensibly unpopular themes, and to risk having their work called vulgar or grotesque...

Hilary Harkness at the Bruce Museum

24 September 2016 to 2 January 2017

Included in group exhibition Her Crowd: New Art by Women from Our Neighbors’ Private Collections at the Bruce Museum, Greenwich, Connecticut.

Only yesterday, it seems, one was hard-pressed to name more than a handful of successful women artists; now the list would be extensive, and the choices rich and varied. Although numerous recent exhibitions have featured women’s art, scant attention has been paid to the collecting of art created by women. In fact, private collections are in the process of being dramatically transformed. Greenwich and nearby communities in Fairfield and Westchester counties are home to a number of the finest contemporary collections, and thus to some of the most exciting art being made today.

Her Crowd will offer the rare opportunity to see what some of America’s most influential collectors of contemporary art consider beautiful, important, and compelling...

Hilary Harkness in The Huffington Post

5 February 2015

Interview with David Galensen Inside New York’s Art World: An Interview with Hilary Harkness in The Huffington Post.

The art world is occupied by a huge range of artists - emerging and established - who are being captured by all forms of media, including social. Just as technology has given artists additional outlets for making and sharing work, it has provided writers with access to artists and artworks across the globe and expanded the dialogue. It can be overwhelming to keep track of it all, but it’s also an exhilarating moment...

Hilary Harkness at FLAG Art Foundation

25 October 2014 to 31 January 2015

Included in group exhibition Disturbing Innocence at FLAG Art Foundation, NYC, NY.

Disturbing Innocence features over 50 historical and contemporary artists whose use of dolls, toys, mannequins, robots, and other surrogates forms a deep and powerfully expressive genre. The exhibition poses profound questions surrounding social constructs of youth, beauty, transformation, violence, sexuality, gender, identity, and loneliness. Inspired by Eric Fischl’s own childhood in suburban Long Island, NY, and his early career as an artist working in New York City in the 1980s, Disturbing Innocence presents a subversive and escapist world at odds with the values and pretensions of polite society.