They Just Behave Differently is Hill’s first solo exhibition at Denny Gallery, following her debut with the gallery in the group exhibition, Metamodern, in 2015. That exhibition theorized that she is part of a distinct contemporary moment by oscillating between modern and postmodern tendencies- expressing both humor and seriousness, enthusiasm and irony, play and discipline.

Justine Hill makes abstract paintings using elemental marks and shapes that are distinguished by color, value, and opacity. Her process is to add layers, alluding both to digital painting tools and to collage. Hill makes traditional rectangular paintings and shaped canvases she calls “Cut Outs,” which are reminiscent of Elizabeth Murray, Frank Stella, and a heterogeneous set of contemporaries. The Cut Outs are first constructed in wood that Hill cuts down into various shapes and covers with canvas. She then paints the forms on the canvas while navigating their relationship to the bounding shape, its shadows, and its space in the real world. The artist personifies the Cut Outs, even more so than the rectangular paintings. Their animus led her to respond to the question of what distinguishes them from her rectangular paintings by saying, “They just behave differently.”

Justine Hill (b. 1985, Tarrytown, NY) received her MFA from the University of Pennsylvania and her BA from the College of the Holy Cross. She has had solo exhibitions at Kathryn Markel Fine Arts (New York) and Galerie Protégé (New York), and has exhibited work in Bridgehampton, Miami and New York City in several critically acclaimed group exhibitions, including Metamodern at Denny Gallery and Immediate Female at Judith Charles Gallery. Her work has been written about in Hyperallergic, The Observer, Arte Fuse, On Verge, and the Huffington Post, which named her one of “Four Contemporary Female Artists Who Are Shaping The Future Of Painting” in 2013 and one of “10 Badass Emerging Female Artist You Should Know” in 2015.

View catalog.

Purchase catalog.

PRESS

Read interview in Two Coats of Paint

Read article in New York Magazine

Read article in Artsy