Bortolami is proud to present the first New York exhibition of works by Patrick Hill. With his new paintings and sculptures the artist creates a landscape in which hard- edged, cold and dense materials are juxtaposed with clear surfaces, soft fabrics and their effect of absorption. The opacity and heaviness of wood, steel and stone contrast with the transparency and lightness of glass and with the playfulness of dye washed fabrics. Hill employs organic and synthetic, traditional and non-traditional, decaying and enduring materials that intersect and rely on each other to create a fragile environment. Personal as well as universal human concerns of life and death, fate and chance, tension and balance are all put forward and out of degeneration and rebirth come the materialization of form.

In this exhibition, notions of permanence and impermanence are addressed. An unpredictable mobile will bring together components such as glass, concrete, steel and fabric, some of which could potentially bang and break, damaging itself or the viewer. Glass panels are dangerously held in place by fabric that is wrapped and embedded in concrete pedestals. Large sheets of steel, glass and black stone are held together in precarious balance between the various weights and placement of these materials.

For his paintings, Hill uses materials such as beet juice, crushed blackberries, fabric dye, bleach and oil paint on unprimed canvas. The process of layering fabric dye, bleach, juice and occasionally painting on the back of the unprimed canvas, allows for the ability to see both the evidence of residue and the active process of decay. Hill’s works present various options and opposing forces that point to the choices that we make, the way we look at things, and universal issues of chaos versus equilibrium.