July 6, 2021 / August 12, 2021

FRIENDS AND STRANGERS

Blake Daniels, Daniel Morowitz, Billy Sullivan, and Scout Zabinski

G/F & 1/F, 159 Hollywood Road
Central Hong Kong
Open: Tuesday – Saturday, 11 AM – 7 PM

Over the Influence is excited to introduce four New York-based artists who explore the diaristic potential of figuration to Hong Kong: Blake Daniels, Daniel Morowitz, Billy Sullivan, and Scout Zabinski.

Depicting themselves (real or imagined) their friends, or their lovers, the show is aptly titled, Friends and Strangers.

This will be the Asia debut for all the participating artists.The artist’s painterly language is grounded in Minimalism and Pop- the works can be seen as an offspring of these two art genres paired together. The abstract vivid paintings in Today are specially created for HK, each work a visual conversation as viewers enthusiastically strive to unlock the story behind each painting.

ARTIST

Blake Daniels

combines landscape painting with personal narratives and collective mythologies to create an unfurling cosmology that reimagines queer bodies as mystical stewards of the environment, capable of great spirituality and expressions. He references literary traditions, magic realism, science fiction, and queer cultural practices in the paintings. The Ohio River Valley and the Highveld of South Africa feature prominently in the artworks, grounding the surrealist environments with familial roots of places that are cherished. Daniels constructs worlds that explore the shifting contours of the human body, our deep intimacy with nature, as well as the anxious devotion we have towards history.

Daniel Morowitz

leans towards surrealism and abstract figurative in his paintings. The work Chimera, 2020 perfectly exemplifies the dual nature of coexistent realities that a queer individual navigates daily: the danger of the real world and the limitless potential of imagined queer spaces. The importance of the human gaze is highlighted here, for most people try to mask their true nature, the tension of being neither here nor there, and wanting so much to belong. Morowitz’s paintings shine light on the queer identity as it is socially coded to exist hidden in plain sight, and yet coexist between oppression and desire— a chimeric blending of coexistent realities and desires.

Billy Sullivan

was raised in New York City, where he attended the School of Visual Arts. Sullivan came of age in the social milieus around Andy Warhol, Max’s Kansas City, and Parisian fashion designer Kenzo. Even as he absorbed such influences as Fairfield Porter’s domestic realism and Joan Mitchell’s dynamic pastels, Sullivan’s paintings, drawings, and photographs are saturated with the intimacy of the “muses” in his own life, present and past—friends, lovers, artists, writers, allies and other collaborators, both known and obscure. Noted for their loose, gestural mark-making and unexpected color combinations, his portraits and still lifes draw viewers into the atmosphere as participants rather than mere observers.

Scout Zabinski

work is a meditation on her own trauma and experiences with sexual abuse, depression, eating disorders, and anxiety. Her “psychological self-portraits” serve as both reminders of specific points of time and a kind of therapeutic relief. She paints herself naked as a reclamation of the female nude in art and in an attempt to be as vulnerable as possible on canvas.