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Open a larger version of the following image in a popup: Harmony Hammond, Fraggle, 2014

Harmony Hammond

Fraggle, 2014
Oil and mixed media on canvas
123.2 x 148.6 cm
48 1/2 x 58 1/2 in
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Fraggle belongs to what Hammond calls her 'near monochrome' paintings, which simultaneously engage with and challenge the narrative of modernist painting, exemplifying art historian Julia Bryan-Wilson’s observation that Hammond works...
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Fraggle belongs to what Hammond calls her 'near monochrome' paintings, which simultaneously engage with and challenge the narrative of modernist painting, exemplifying art historian Julia Bryan-Wilson’s observation that Hammond works 'between centre and margin.' Near monochrome, Hammond insists, invites content and positions the painting as a site of negotiation between what exists inside and outside the picture plane. She often describes the painted canvases as skins, and her colour choices in Fraggle reference the human body. In this context, Hammond explains, 'the grommeted straps are wrapped around the painting as objects and body (suggesting bandage, bondage, binding) but do not cinch or constrict. The straps do not hold the painting together; the paint (and therefore the act of painting) does.' Hammond creates her paintings from the centre outwards, building the surface slowly and organically through layers of paint. She incorporates the hand-made straps into this process by placing them on the canvas and painting over them. The grommets, Hammond explains, 'Literally open up the painting surface, alluding to layers or space below.' They also reference bodily orifices, functionality, and the possibility of tying down or connecting (especially when many are run through with rope as in Fraggle). Hammond is interested in the way paint accidentally accumulates around the grommets. The shadows created by paint build-up, the straps, and rope are integral to Fraggle’s presence and three-dimensionality. Hammond’s use of these materials, uneven layering of paint, and physical manipulation of the work by scraping and incising results in 'fugitive' colour and surface that are fluid, destabilised, and difficult to locate. Fraggle’s active surface, nuanced hues, and three-dimensionality refute monochrome’s self-referentiality as espoused by the Greenbergian modernist ideal. Furthermore, as curator and art historian Tirza True Latimer writes about Hammond’s 'near monochromes' that utilise straps, 'They thematise seams in ways that evoke—not unity and purity—but the piecing together, the suturing associated with traditionally feminine creative acts.'
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Exhibitions

2025: Harmony Hammond: FRINGE, SITE Santa Fe, NM

2017: Harmony Hammond: Recent Paintings, Susanne Vielmetter, Los Angeles, CA
2016: Haptic, Alexander Gray Associates, New York, NY
2014: Temporal Domain, Peters Projects, Santa Fe, NM

Literature

“Abstract Feminine Moments: Harmony Hammond at Susanne Vielmetter Los Angeles Projects.” Blouin Artinfo, November 21, 2017.
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