Charles Hickey: The Bathers The Brushers: THE BATHROOM

LOS ANGELES, CA | albertz benda is pleased to present The Bathers The Brushers, a solo exhibition of 3D Pen plastic paintings and sculptures by Charles Hickey set in the Los Angeles Gallery’s unique exhibition space THE BATHROOM. In this presentation, Hickey draws attention to the daily rituals of the washing, brushing, preparing, and cleaning we undertake in the domestic bathroom setting through his distinct technique of painting with plastic.

Hickey’s tool, the 3D Pen, melts colored filament out of a nozzle. As the plastic cools, it solidifies leaving hardened “brush strokes” that appear to stay in a semi liquid state. Through a myriad of techniques, Hickey uses the pen to paint against a canvas surface or even in thin air to create hollow sculptural works with painterly mark making. 

In albertz benda’s THE BATHROOM, Hickey contextualizes a series of four paintings amid a seemingly messy bathroom scene. After a second look, the abundance of shampoos, lotions, creams, and brushes filing the counters reveal themselves as sculptures made of individually drawn lines of colored plastic. 

Hickey’s use of color in this installation tricks the eye from afar and allows each object to reveal itself as the viewer approaches. What at first glance is a tube of toothpaste becomes strands of plastic flowing together line by line, accentuating the repetitive motion used to create each object. The rhythmic marks that form Hickey’s sculptures and paintings take on a unique meaning in the domestic bathroom setting. This repetition goes hand in hand with the daily rituals of cleaning and maintaining the body that take place in this sacred yet common space.

Hickey’s use of the 3D Pen accentuates the presence of the body in each line of plastic as the tool is essentially a handheld 3D printer. In place of the neat precise lines the computer generates with this same tool, the handheld pen showcases the wiggles and wobbles of a hand moving through space. Hickey focuses on movement and texture in his painting Brush and Bristle Basking, by recreating Van Gogh’s 1889, Still Life of Oranges and Lemons with Blue Gloves above an AI generated still life of toiletries, lemons, and teeth. This combination of imagery in his paintings serves to push forward the nature of Hickey’s unique medium and contextualize this work in a setting of ritual and repetition.

ABOUT THE ARTIST

Charles Hickey (he/him, b. 1995) is a Los Angeles based interdisciplinary artist from Atlanta, Georgia. Working entirely with the 3D Pen, Hickey champions the genre of still life through painting and sculpture. In his 3D pen paintings, Hickey employs the tool's voluptuous mark-making to capture movement and time, etching the hand's motion in seductive plastics. Engaging with how we see and how we represent objects in space, he pulls from the traditions of still life painting and sculpture, using the genre as an armature on which to experiment and communicate. Hickey received a M.F.A. in Studio Arts from Syracuse University in 2020 and a B.F.A. with a concentration in sculpture from Winthrop University in 2017. His work has been shown at Field Projects and The Invisible Dog Art Center in New York City, and the Everson Museum in Syracuse, NY. He has had solo exhibitions at Monte Vista Projects in Los Angeles, CA, Random Access Gallery in Syracuse, NY and The Novella Project curated by DJ Hellerman in Savannah, GA.