Molly Zuckerman-Hartung

[3][4] Critics characterize her approach as dialectical—both carefully considered and provisional[5][6]—and identify in the work a handmade, punk culture-like rejection of conventional taste and consistency that is paired with a deep regard for the diversity and history of painting.

[23][20] She remained in Chicago for a decade, earning an MFA in 2007 while also co-founding an artist-run alternative space called Julius Caesar with Dana DeGiulio, Diego Leclery, Colby Shaft and Hans Peter Sundquist.

[26][1] Critics described Zuckerman-Hartung's early paintings as accretions of ideas built off a dense modernist heritage, diverse materials and actions (cutting, collaging, assembling, staining) that often extended beyond the picture plane and frame (e.g., Readymade Mood, 2011).

"[5] Reviews described Zuckerman-Hartung's subsequent work (e.g., at Corbett vs. Dempsey, 2012 and 2014) as playful, brash, fragmented, and personal but not revelatory, while identifying a shift toward greater social engagement through the incorporation of photographic imagery and text.

[27][8][7][10] For example, paintings such as Venomous, with Four Pairs of Arms (2008–11) mixed her characteristic abstract mark-making and tears with collaged and painted-over pornographic imagery, bringing interests in writing, critical theory, feminism, punk aesthetics and sexuality to the forefront.

[1][26][3][28] The former show took a subtle approach to gender, employing surfaces of scrawled words and numbers, phallic drips and graffiti, pours, stains and shapes made by removing pigment with bleach, with absences becoming form (e.g., How Much Such a Little Moon, 2015).

[11][1] Hyperallergic's Ashton Cooper remarked, "Zuckerman-Hartung's pieces made from patchworks of sewn fabric confront these 'postures' of the past and in doing so manage to invoke and undo the history of AbEx, women’s work, and the grid as it relates to painting.