New York City offers a huge buffet of fascinating art, but seldom do you leave an exhibition that stays with you for days as you try to decipher its meaning. Such was the case of ADAM GREEN's new show at The Hole, Hot Chicks. Like Green’s last exhibition at the gallery, Hot Chicks references the imagery of cartoons. The figures in its drawings, composites of distorted body parts, aren't what immediately comes to mind when you think of sexy superheroines. Yet like certain comic book characters, they're recognizable as female primarily via the presence of boobs––in this case, oddly placed ones––and exclamatory titles like "Angry Chick", "Stripper Chick", and "Sister Chick."
Green's world is as colorful Mondrian's, and if it had a theme song it would probably go something like this. But don’t let the bright colors and joyful brushstrokes fool you; the motifs are distorted and mutated, leaving you feeling like the first-glance-innocence is just a mask for something more provocative. Walking around the exhibit, I find myself thinking of the vicious kid SID from Toy Story, who would mutilate his toys and randomly piece them together into new deformed creatures.
It's hard not to feel uneasy watching yet another male artist chop up female bodies and use them as building blocks for new imagery. Yet Green is perhaps also conscious––and even critical––of this "great tradition of messing up women's faces" that the exhibition's PRESS RELEASE places him in, practiced by art history greats like De Kooning and Bacon as well as almost every comic book and video game ever. In the bizarre world of comics, female protagonists are often signaled only through their boobs. And to create an even more twisted version of this reality also helps call our attention to it in ways that could be productive.
Exhibition through January 31
![]()
Hot Chicks by Adam Green
![]()
![]()
![]()
Green's show is called Hot Chicks in part because its drawings depict female forms. Though as the PRESS RELEASE points out, "t
Green's world is as colorful Mondrian's, and if it had a theme song it would probably go something like this. But don’t let the bright colors and joyful brushstrokes fool you; the motifs are distorted and mutated, leaving you feeling like the first-glance-innocence is just a mask for something more provocative. Walking around the exhibit, I find myself thinking of the vicious kid SID from Toy Story, who would mutilate his toys and randomly piece them together into new deformed creatures.
It's hard not to feel uneasy watching yet another male artist chop up female bodies and use them as building blocks for new imagery. Yet Green is perhaps also conscious––and even critical––of this "great tradition of messing up women's faces" that the exhibition's PRESS RELEASE places him in, practiced by art history greats like De Kooning and Bacon as well as almost every comic book and video game ever. In the bizarre world of comics, female protagonists are often signaled only through their boobs. And to create an even more twisted version of this reality also helps call our attention to it in ways that could be productive.
Exhibition through January 31
THE HOLE
312 Bowery
New York, NY 10012
Hot Chicks by Adam Green
Green's show is called Hot Chicks in part because its drawings depict female forms. Though as the PRESS RELEASE points out, "t