SATELLITE, Will Hutnick

February 24 - April 7, 2024

Opening Reception: February 24, 2024, 4-6p

Geary is pleased to present SATELLITE, a solo show by Sharon, CT based artist Will Hutnick opening on February 24, 2024.

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Hutnick’s paintings read like historic artifacts – a topographic map of time and what remains constant throughout it. Hutnick sources and uses flora and fauna from his immediate surroundings as stencils, pressing the plants onto a paint roller and applying them to the canvas. The immediacy of this act is apparent: the ghostly layers are both grounding and disorienting, as our memories often are. What is captured and what is lost is kismet.  

As Hutnick works into the layers, more patterns emerge. Somehow both natural and artificial, they do not compete with one another for attention, but rather orbit around one another; sometimes behind, sometimes parallel, most of the time at different speeds, vibrations and perceived moments of time, without following a binary system. Though completely hand drafted, the glitches read almost as digital static, a bright contrast to the natural forms that ground Hutnick’s process.  

The work in SATELLITE is not fixed; it is ever-changing and moving as both our real and digital worlds are, revealing what we try to grasp onto and what we lose in the process. Hutnick states: “There is something inherently queer about these glitch-type spaces that seem to be filled with potential; they’re shape-shifting, constantly reinventing themselves, not tied to the present but rather circumnavigating both the past and the present.” 

Will Hutnick (b. 1985, Manhasset, NY) is an artist based in Sharon, CT. 

He received his M.F.A. from Pratt Institute in 2011 and his B.A. from Providence College in 2007. Hutnick is a 2021 NYSCA/NYFA Artist Fellow in Painting, as well as a grant recipient from the Berkshire Taconic Foundation in 2023 and 2017, and the Foundation for Contemporary Arts in 2016. Solo exhibitions include: Pamela Salisbury Gallery (Hudson, NY), Elijah Wheat Showroom (Newburgh, NY), Standard Space (Sharon, CT), Providence College Galleries (Providence, RI), One River School (Hartsdale, NY), The Java Project (Brooklyn, NY), and St. Thomas Aquinas College (Sparkill, NY). Selected group exhibitions include: Samuel Dorsky Museum of Art (New Paltz, NY), Hollis Taggart (Southport, CT), Geary Contemporary (Millerton, NY), 1969 Gallery (New York, NY), Heaven Gallery (Chicago, IL) and Collar Works (Troy, NY). Hutnick has been an artist-in-residence at Yaddo, Elizabeth Murray Artist Residency, Vermont Studio Center, Hambidge Center for the Creative Arts and Sciences, Soaring Gardens Artists’ Retreat, DNA Artist Residency, Hewnoaks, Stove Works, and the Wassaic Project, as well as a curator-in-residence at Benaco Arte and Trestle Projects. He has curated numerous exhibitions at SPRING/BREAK Art Show, Ortega y Gasset Projects, Trestle Projects, Pratt Institute, Wassaic Project, Troutbeck and Standard Space. His work has been featured in The New York Times, New American Paintings, and Hyperallergic, among others. From 2015-20, Hutnick was one of the Co-Directors of Ortega y Gasset Projects, an artist-run curatorial collective and exhibition space in Brooklyn. He is currently the Director of Artistic Programming at the Wassaic Project in Wassaic, NY, a nonprofit organization that uses art and art education to foster positive social change.