Hanna Hur & Michael Kennedy Costa
Trapdoor
February 12 - March 11, 2017
Documentation by Milano Chow, Scott Eastwood, Allen Brewer, Sean MacAlister, and Darya Diamond.
Trapdoor, 15:08, 2017
67 Steps is very pleased to present Trapdoor, our inaugural exhibition by Hanna Hur and Michael Kennedy Costa. The artists’ dialogue began in spring 2016 with Hur’s written responses to a selection of Kennedy Costa’s drawings. The writings evoke Hur’s internalization of Kennedy Costa’s imagery, spanning direct observation, diaristic notation, borrowed scripts, and poetry. This ongoing exchange forms the basis for the exhibition. Kennedy Costa continues this engagement through a performance of Hur’s writings, spending a full night in the exhibition space and waking each hour to record one reading.
Mesh screens line the gallery walls, holding Kennedy Costa’s drawings in a curving sequence. On modest sheets of A4 paper, images imbued with sex, entropy, and urgency are inscribed in serpentine ink lines that point to a psychic space of slippery historical reference and stylized futurist speculation. Hur responds with knotted string, hanging without tension, limp and easy. Her floor drawing and coloured light bathes the room, oozing a generous, disembodied spirit. A saturated and charged site develops – a cave, a nest – wherein two artists, like parallel sleepers, independently and interdependently recall a fever dream.The podcast features the performed writings.
Hanna Hur (b.1985, Toronto) works in drawing, painting, and sculpture. Recent and forthcoming exhibition sites include The Sunroom, Richmond; L’inconnue, Montreal; Eduardo Secci Contemporary, Florence; Audain Gallery at Simon Fraser University, Vancouver; Roberta Pelan, Toronto; Tomorrow, New York; Shanaynay, Paris; Daniel Faria Gallery, Toronto; and YYZ Artists’ Outlet, Toronto. She lives and works in Los Angeles. Michael Kennedy Costa (b. 1982 in Northampton, MA) lives and works in Los Angeles. He received his MFA from Virginia Commonwealth University in 2011. He has recently exhibited at Chapman University in Orange,Jonathan Hopson Gallery in Houston, and at Bikini Wax in Mexico City. He has also recently given readings at Motel Gallery in Brooklyn, Chin’s Push in Los Angeles, and Central Park Gallery in Los Angeles.