Andrew Hladky
Memories fade, soil deepens
June 3–July 2, 2023

Memories fade, soil deepens presents paintings made of oil paint and bamboo sticks that are built into high sculptural relief, growing out towards the viewer like living organisms. They play between flat image and sculptural form, exploring the point at which images break down and the materials and processes that make them become impossible to ignore.

At times of joyful abandon, or during bouts of illness or depression, we can lose track of our conscious selves—the images we carry of who we are dissolving into the mysterious physical workings of the unconscious body. The paintings in Memories fade, soil deepens aim to echo this sense of dislocation. Surface imagery shows the nostalgic, fragmentary landscapes of memory. Underneath, the sculptural build-up churns, worms of paint overflowing the illusion and causing it to give way to the tumult and exuberance of its material form.

About the artist:

Andrew Hladky is a British/American artist currently living in the DC area. Since moving to the US in 2015, he has held solo exhibitions around the country, at Rockville, Maryland; Tulsa, Oklahoma; Arlington, Virginia; and Raleigh, North Carolina. Hladky is the winner of the Bethesda Painting Award (2022), and the London Art Award at the London Festival Fringe (2010). He is the recipient of an AHCMC Artists and Scholars Project Grant, and he has been awarded many fellowships and residencies in support of his work, including a Pollock-Krasner Fellowship at Vermont Studio Center, a Charm City Fellowship at Millay Arts, a fellowship at Yaddo, and the Salzburg Künstlerhaus/VCCA Exchange Residency in Salzburg, Austria.