CORY REYNOLDS | DATE 8/19/2019

Feminist, queer, prophetic and imperative: Harmony Hammond, 'Material Witness'

"Presence II" (1971) is reproduced from Harmony Hammond: Material Witness, Five Decades of Art, published to accompany the game-changing septuagenarian's first career retrospective, on view through September 15 at The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum in Connecticut. "Her visual work, which she refers to as 'the painting body,' radiates a 'felt content' that bridges hard-lived awareness and feminist and queer ideologies with abstract and material concerns," essayist Amy Smith-Stewart writes. "In doing so, Hammond imbues her works with tenderized moments, infused with fingering and fixing, as she deftly juxtaposes, mediates, integrates and interweaves orthodoxly antagonistic forces like art-craft, painting-sculpture, wall-floor, angle-curve, part-whole, self-collective, inside-outside, male-female, to herald a handmade abstract expression that is percipient in its ability to maintain emblematic elasticity. In a century where historical dualities are becoming more fluid, an examination of Hammond's life work feels not only prophetic, but also imperative." To read Holland Cotter's glowing review of the Aldrich show, continue to The New York Times.