Anna Kustera Gallery is delighted to present Speak to my ass, the octopus is sick, the solo debut exhibition in New York by Chicago-based artist Molly Zuckerman-Hartung.

In recent critical assessment of her work, Zuckerman-Hartung was described as having, “gathered up her courage and screwed it to the continued project of rethinking abstraction. . . her work affirms a hysterical, endless rallying of imaginative combinations and assemblages. . . While prodigiousness in abstraction is not an uncommon aim of contemporary painters or cultural aggregators, Zuckerman-Hartung’s work is noteworthy in that it is based on carefully considered principles, not just attitude or cool disinterest. As a result, her engagement with the medium’s mercurial language is anxiously and seriously dialectical.” [1]

Zuckerman-Hartung continues to challenge the boundaries of traditional two-dimensional painting, incorporating collage and sculptural technique, building works from the wall out and the ground up. In sensibility and in fact, Zuckerman-Hartung’s work has close kindredness with Mary Heilmann, Isa Genzken, Charline von Heyl and Rebecca Morris, four artists whose work could be described in “bad is beautiful” terms. Zuckerman – Hartung’s questioning of materials, use of color, and even siting of her paintings defy convention in its rethinking of abstraction.

Molly Zuckerman-Hartung was born in 1975 in Los Gatos, California, and grew up in Olympia, Washington. She received her BA in 1998 from the Evergreen State College in Olympia and her MFA in 2007 from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago . She is a co-founder of Julius Caesar, an artist-run exhibition space in Chicago and is currently an adjunct instructor at the School of the Art Institute and Northwestern University. Zuckerman-Hartung has participated in numerous group exhibitions and will be featured in a solo exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago in 2012.

Speak to my ass, the octopus is sick is presented in cooperation with LINN | PRESS Art Advisory Services (linnpress.com)