Tommy White
Untitled, 2012
Graphite, oil and ink on paper
12 x 9"

Hilary Harnischfeger and Tommy White are the kind of artists who are perpetually in process…endlessly engaged in explorations of material, source, fabrication, and methodology. These elements become the substantive ingredients of their work and shouldn’t be separated from its meaning.

As artists who are married to each other it is easy to see a shared approach. Harnischfeger’s chunked-up ornamental solids and White’s dismembered reassembled collage drawings have much in common. Layers and gnarls appear in both bodies of work. Heaps, mounds, deposits, and fragments take shape with differing results.

Harnischfeger is a former Houstonian and received a BFA in painting from the University of Houston. She moved to New York to attend Columbia University where she earned an MFA in 2003, and later received the Marie Walsh Sharpe Foundation Space program award. This will be her second solo show in Houston. Her work has been exhibited both nationally and internationally, and she is represented by Rachel Uffner Gallery in New York.

White has shown his work in many cities including Boston, Portland, and Berlin. This will be the first time it is exhibited in Houston. He is represented by New York gallery Harris Lieberman and is a recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, and a Robert Rauschenberg Foundation Award. Both artists divide their time between Brooklyn and Ohio where they teach at Denison University.