Soak Rinse Repeat is a two-person exhibition of paintings and drawings by Pittsburgh-based artists Adam Linn and Bridget Quirk. Vacillating between abstract and figurative imagery, both artists offer queer bodies that slip in and out of eachother, themselves and their environments. Squeezed, stained, slathered and sliced, Linn and Quirk implement materials and processes that parallel this relationship of absorption⁠ and secretion. It is through this duality, a truth boils to the surface: to touch is to be touched.

By using her own limbs to mark the surfaces of her canvases, Bridget Quirk literally imprints herself into the paintings she creates. Materials like hair, clothing and bedding also become tools to make marks and are often integrated into the works. Blurring the space between the body and the materials that touch it every day, Quirk muddles the lines between the visceral (what we feel inside) and parietal (what we feel on the surface). Adam Linn’s color pencil drawings of anthropomorphic creatures also consider texture, but take a sleeker, shinier approach. By working on mylar and burnishing his lines to a glossy finish, Linn’s surfaces play well with the figures he depicts. With spidery lashes, voluminous hair and always in a killer heel, Linn drags his figures to today’s standards and trends. By beautifying the grotesque (or is it the other way around?), his figures beg to be adored, trolled and above all else, looked at.

In Soak Rinse Repeat, Linn and Quirk only allow viewers to peek. By spilling over the canvas’ edge and building up material, Quirk’s paintings function as petri dishes to be examined under a microscope. Linn’s asymmetrically shaped drawings oscillate between puzzle pieces and keyholes to peer into bizarre vignettes of mundane spaces like the bathroom, the bedroom and the car. It is in these private places that identity and intimacy is explored and abstracted. Banal actions like bathing and shaving become acts of ritual. Limbs reach out to pull up the covers, but at another moment open a mouth. Almost always either getting ready to go out or just settling in, Linn and Quirk’s figures are caught in deeply introspective moments in time. -Fred Blauth, curator

 themselves and their environments. Squeezed, stained, slathered and sliced, Linn and Quirk implement materials and processes that parallel this relationship of absorption⁠ and secretion. It is through this duality, a truth boils to the surface: to touch is to be touched.

By using her own limbs to mark the surfaces of her canvases, Bridget Quirk literally imprints herself into the paintings she creates. Materials like hair, clothing and bedding also become tools to make marks and are often integrated into the works. Blurring the space between the body and the materials that touch it every day, Quirk muddles the lines between the visceral (what we feel inside) and parietal (what we feel on the surface). Adam Linn’s color pencil drawings of anthropomorphic creatures also consider texture, but take a sleeker, shinier approach. By working on mylar and burnishing his lines to a glossy finish, Linn’s surfaces play well with the figures he depicts. With spidery lashes, voluminous hair and always in a killer heel, Linn drags his figures to today’s standards and trends. By beautifying the grotesque (or is it the other way around?), his figures beg to be adored, trolled and above all else, looked at.

In Soak Rinse Repeat, Linn and Quirk only allow viewers to peek. By spilling over the canvas’ edge and building up material, Quirk’s paintings function as petri dishes to be examined under a microscope. Linn’s asymmetrically shaped drawings oscillate between puzzle pieces and keyholes to peer into bizarre vignettes of mundane spaces like the bathroom, the bedroom and the car. It is in these private places that identity and intimacy is explored and abstracted. Banal actions like bathing and shaving become acts of ritual. Limbs reach out to pull up the covers, but at another moment open a mouth. Almost always either getting ready to go out or just settling in, Linn and Quirk’s figures are caught in deeply introspective moments in time.

-Fred Blauth, curator

oak Rinse Repeat is a two-person exhibition of paintings and drawings by Pittsburgh-based artists Adam Linn and Bridget Quirk. Vacillating between abstract and figurative imagery, both artists offer queer bodies that slip in and out of each other,

JULY 2019

Exhibition

Soak Rinse Repeat