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
Adam Linn
Adam Linn (b. 1995 Pittsburgh, PA) is an artist based in Pittsburgh, PA working in drawing and print media. He graduated from the Rhode Island School of Design in 2017 with a BFA in Printmaking and moved back home to continue his practice. Since returning, Adam has joined the Associated Artists of Pittsburgh and the Pittsburgh Print Group. He actively participates in shows for both organizations. Adam will be participating in the Distillery Residency at the Brewhouse Association for the year 2019-2020. There he will work towards larger shaped pieces, installation based drawings and prints and the fabrication of small sculptures.
“The drawings bloat with a heavily anthropomorphized amalgam of characters displaying all too familiar human sensibilities. The body, and its infinite array of sloppy, inarticulate and fumbled mannerisms, twists and pulls like warm cheese. Slightly bulged, the line is a slithering worm, meandering in its approach. The anthropomorphic influence and its many faces crawled their way through the internet and into the mind of a little gay blonde. Fuzzy and supple, they coaxed him in, cementing an eternal fixation with the underbelly of the internet. The works examine queerness and anthropomorphism coinciding with the digital world, a match made in hell. Everything is perverse and imbued with a raging pubescent wiggle. Splicing and carving quotidian narratives with a libidinous impulse, the characters of this world concoct fumbled yet graceful performances of a life experiencing queer identity, desire, beauty, perversion, sexuality and gender.” -Adam
Bridget Quirk
Bridget Quirk (b. 1994 Pittsburgh, PA) is an artist working in Pittsburgh, PA. She creates acrylic paintings and collages. In 2017, Bridget graduated from Carnegie Mellon University, where she was the recipient of the Samuel Rosenberg Senior Award. For over a year, Bridget worked in Radiant Hall Studios, participating in their seasonal open studios. This summer, her works on paper will be shown in a group show at Chautauqua Institution.
“My work is informed by experience and social observations. Each painting contains queer figures and the space activated by their presence. Everyone experiences life through their senses. Unassuming imprints made in solitude, or with company, contain more significance depending on their recipient. This phenomenon of contact includes intimate encounters in private and public spaces, touching one’s own body in an act of cleaning and self-care, and sinking into exterior surfaces out of curiosity or instinct. Each body portrayed practices nesting, immersing themselves in their environment. There, they become lost in layers created from worn surfaces and imitation skin. Touch dominates how I work. I press, scrape, wipe, sand, and peel my surfaces to present the sensation of feeling.”
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
Adam Linn
Adam Linn (b. 1995 Pittsburgh, PA) is an artist based in Pittsburgh, PA working in drawing and print media. He graduated from the Rhode Island School of Design in 2017 with a BFA in Printmaking and moved back home to continue his practice. Since returning, Adam has joined the Associated Artists of Pittsburgh and the Pittsburgh Print Group. He actively participates in shows for both organizations. Adam will be participating in the Distillery Residency at the Brewhouse Association for the year 2019-2020. There he will work towards larger shaped pieces, installation based drawings and prints and the fabrication of small sculptures.
“The drawings bloat with a heavily anthropomorphized amalgam of characters displaying all too familiar human sensibilities. The body, and its infinite array of sloppy, inarticulate and fumbled mannerisms, twists and pulls like warm cheese. Slightly bulged, the line is a slithering worm, meandering in its approach. The anthropomorphic influence and its many faces crawled their way through the internet and into the mind of a little gay blonde. Fuzzy and supple, they coaxed him in, cementing an eternal fixation with the underbelly of the internet. The works examine queerness and anthropomorphism coinciding with the digital world, a match made in hell. Everything is perverse and imbued with a raging pubescent wiggle. Splicing and carving quotidian narratives with a libidinous impulse, the characters of this world concoct fumbled yet graceful performances of a life experiencing queer identity, desire, beauty, perversion, sexuality and gender.” -Adam
Bridget Quirk
Bridget Quirk (b. 1994 Pittsburgh, PA) is an artist working in Pittsburgh, PA. She creates acrylic paintings and collages. In 2017, Bridget graduated from Carnegie Mellon University, where she was the recipient of the Samuel Rosenberg Senior Award. For over a year, Bridget worked in Radiant Hall Studios, participating in their seasonal open studios. This summer, her works on paper will be shown in a group show at Chautauqua Institution.
“My work is informed by experience and social observations. Each painting contains queer figures and the space activated by their presence. Everyone experiences life through their senses. Unassuming imprints made in solitude, or with company, contain more significance depending on their recipient. This phenomenon of contact includes intimate encounters in private and public spaces, touching one’s own body in an act of cleaning and self-care, and sinking into exterior surfaces out of curiosity or instinct. Each body portrayed practices nesting, immersing themselves in their environment. There, they become lost in layers created from worn surfaces and imitation skin. Touch dominates how I work. I press, scrape, wipe, sand, and peel my surfaces to present the sensation of feeling.”
