by GINA HUNT

Mirroring (rv)

GINA HUNT | JUNE 2023 | Issue 24

Artist Statement

Finding expansive possibilities within a limited means fascinates me, as does the potential for a material object to incite a perceptual event that belies its inherent physical ‘facts’.

My multidisciplinary practice fuses painting, sculpture, and site-responsive installation. Research interests include histories of abstraction, theories of color and perception, and imaging technologies spanning early photographic processes to spectroscopy.

Projects explore the physical, spatial relationships largely within the bounds of painting to ask questions about the complexities and subjectivity of vision, color, and perception. Working extensively with canvas, dye, paint, scrim, and wood, the process-based works are sites of perceptual phenomena while remaining rooted in a material-based physicality. The work is produced using manual, repetitive processes which present layers of heightened optical nuances through their construction and craft. Material choices are rooted in the traditions of painting, with an understanding that canvas is a malleable textile, and a wooden stretcher can absorb color. The canvas and its wooden support become image, object, and subject. I am allowing illusion and optical phenomena to exist while exposing their parts in a very direct way.

Gina Hunt has recently presented solo exhibitions at Syracuse University, (Syracuse, New York), The Franklin (Chicago, Illinois), 65GRAND (Chicago, Illinois), Western Pole (Chicago, Illinois), STNDRD Projects (St. Louis, Missouri), University Galleries at Illinois State University (Normal, Illinois), and Virginia Commonwealth University School of the Arts in Qatar (Doha, Qatar), among others.

Her work has been included in recent group shows at The Plan (Chicago, Illinois), Tiger Strikes Asteroid (Chicago, Illinois), Cleve Carney Art Gallery (Glen Ellyn, Illinois), Heaven Gallery (Chicago, Illinois), Drew University (Madison, New Jersey), Baby Blue Gallery (Chicago, Illinois), Practise (Oak Park, Illinois), DEMO Project (Springfield, Illinois), E. Tay Gallery (New York City, New York), Elmhurst Art Museum (Elmhurst, Illinois), Hoffman LaChance Contemporary (St. Louis, Missouri), Front Room Gallery (Brooklyn, New York), and The Soap Factory (Minneapolis, Minnesota), among others.

In 2018-19, Hunt was a HATCH Resident at Chicago Artists Coalition. From 2015-2016, she received the international Artist Fellowship at Virginia Commonwealth University School of the Arts in Qatar, where she was a practicing artist and faculty member within the Painting and Printmaking Department and exhibited a solo exhibition of new paintings and sculpture. In 2016, Gina was awarded residencies at Hinge Arts (Fergus Falls, Minnesota) and the Badlands National Park (South Dakota). At both residencies, Hunt focused on creating temporary, site-specific sculptural installations integrated within landscape and architecture.

Gina received an M.F.A. in Painting from Illinois State University (2015), an M.A. in Painting from Minnesota State University (2012), and a B.F.A. in Painting, Printmaking, and Art History from Minnesota State University (2009). Her work has been featured in reviews and publications such as The Rib (Boston, Massachusetts), Gulf Times (Doha, Qatar), Salt Hill (Syracuse University), and New American Paintings.

She currently lives and works in Chicago, where she is a faculty member in the Drawing, Painting and Printmaking Department at Loyola University Chicago. Gina's artwork is represented by 65GRAND.