Charles Hickey. Bulb and Seed

About

Monte Vista Projects is pleased to present Bulb and Seed, the first Los Angeles solo exhibition of Charles Hickey.

Working entirely with the 3D Pen, Hickey champions the genre of still life through painting and sculpture. In his 3D pen paintings, Hickey employs the tool's voluptuous mark-making to capture movement and time, etching the hand's motion in seductive plastics. The plastics and basic functions of the pen are identical to those of a 3D printer, and each work created with this tool pays tribute to the precision and rhythmic skill of 3D printing. When the tool is placed in the human hand, the mark-making changes, producing delicate wobbles and waves that record the hand's path and serve as a memento mori, documenting the passage of time.

Hickey utilizes the full breadth of the still life genre, using it both as an armature on which to explore the technical craft of the 3D pen and also as a tool to play with the loaded potential of objects and symbolism as a means of communication.

When drawing fruits and vegetables using the 3D pen, the drawings engulf the objects they represent, coating them in perfect plastic and leaving them to decay. The fruits and vegetables are rendered inedible and stripped of their ability to provide physical sustenance, while the plastic drawing freezes the object in time with melting rhythmic marks. The plastic's glossy and alluring surface mirrors the sheen of the fruits and vegetables, inviting desire while denying fulfillment and function.

About Charles Hickey:

Charles Hickey (he/him) is a Los Angeles based interdisciplinary artist from Atlanta, Georgia. Working primarily with digital modeling and digital fabrication, Hickey creates still lives, drawings, and 3D pen sculptures to explore movement and aging of the body. Engaging with how we see and how we represent objects in space, he pulls from the traditions of still life painting and sculpture, using the genre as a means to experiment and communicate.

Hickey received a M.F.A. in Studio Arts from Syracuse University in 2020 and a B.F.A. with a concentration in sculpture from Winthrop University in 2017. His work has been shown at Field Projects and The Invisible Dog Art Center in New York City, the Everson Museum in Syracuse, NY and the Olive Tjaden and Experimental Galleries at Cornell University. He has had solo exhibitions at Random Access Gallery in Syracuse, NY and The Novella Project curated by DJ Hellerman in Savannah, GA.