February 7 – March 25, 2014
RECEPTION: Friday, February 7, 6pm – 8pm

PORTER BUTTS GALLERY
UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN
207 E. Buffalo St.
Madison, WI 53706

Significant Other, the conceptual sequel to Patrick Earl Hammie’s 2008 project Imperfect Colossi, presents a female and a male figure locked in a physical dialogue, hefting weight, and relocating the perceptions of ruined and objectified bodies that recall and carry on complex legacies of suffering and struggle. Drawing on the emotive qualities of Romanticist painting and its use of heroic proportions to engage with political and humanistic expression, he imagines bodies as occasions for us to encounter difference toward considering their capacity for establishing new narratives. Perhaps more than any other form of image-making, figurative paintings have often been interpreted as a reflection of the values of period in which it is produced. Hammie’s work investigates the expectations built into this canonical genre, probing and dismantling the idealizing impulses that have historically shaped it. He focuses specifically in his practice on constructions of gender and race, putting pressure on these categories as a means of expanding understanding of identity.