Opening Reception:
October 12th, 6-8pm
Viewing Room, New York

Coca-Cola, the leading soda company, is both refreshingly tasty, and without moderation, terrible for you. Warhol famously wrote that everyone, varying in cultural and socioeconomic status, enjoys Coca-Cola and it is a great equalizer.

KT Hickman has decided to use Coca-Cola as her sole subject for these paintings on display, formally experimenting with its instantly recognizable logo in various ways, such as distorting, warping, and stretching. The iconic brand becomes an obsessive placeholder for serialization, utilized so she can paint without worrying about contriving a new scenario every time she wants to generate a new work. Coke becomes her grid, allowing everlasting reiteration. One forgets the specifics of the multinational corporation and starts to just see typography pushed to its limits. Her signature straight-from-the-tube colors, divergent textures, and decidedly non-precious handling of materials take center stage, and a unique aesthetic converging Camp, Pop, Expressionism, and Conceptualism leaves the viewer open to sensations neither overly refined or over-determined.

– Alex Bienstock

This will be Hickman’s first solo show at a New York gallery.