Exhibitions
HANNAH ROSE DUMES & PALOMA WALL: SHELL GAME
Tinney Contemporary / 237 Rep. John Lewis Way N. February 21 - April 4th
Paloma Wall, Hannah Rose Dumes
TINNEY is proud to present Shell Game, a two-person exhibition featuring works by Hannah Rose
Dumes and Paloma Wall. The opening reception will be Saturday, February 21, from 6 to 9 PM, followed by an additional reception in conjunction with the Second Saturday Art Crawl on March 14 from 6 to 9 PM.
Hannah Rose Dumes’ abstract oil paintings feature an ecstatic use of intense hues, each piece its own celebration of color, a carnival of intersecting shapes and vibrational color relationships. Dumes paints in oil on top of a foundational layer of acrylic washes. It’s an open and exploratory process that embraces personal symbolism and ambiguity. The forms are familiar, bearing subtle reference to the body or to nature, but remain implacable. Dumes’ universal, unassuming set of symbols—flowers, spirals, eggs, shells, breasts, suns—melt into one another like overripe produce on an impossibly hot summer afternoon. The works elicit a giddy sort of headrush, like bees drawn to flowers, color-drunk.
Paloma Wall’s totemic ceramic vessels are bent, pierced, horned; some even seem to weep large
ceramic tears, like surrealist memorial urns. Form and function seem to wrestle for prominence in
Wall’s expertly hand-crafted works, which sprout appendages from their alien-like abdomens, some
of which sport large cavities where the stems of flowers might rest in a more traditional vase. It’s as
if the vessels have adapted like plants over millennia to survive in their unique environments: with
camouflage, vestigial limbs, predator-deterring thorns, and bright poison-warning coloration. This
sense of animism, deftly imbued in such a delicate medium, is the magic of Wall’s works.
In these intermingled bodies of work, some immediate meaning lies hidden; concealment emerges as
a method of preservation. The personal is abstracted, a form of encryption—ambiguity as defense.
Like a shell game, odds are one-in-three, place your bets! Eye on the ball, watch closely! But the game is rigged, and the ball, spirited away by sleight of hand, is nowhere to be found.
