Patrick Hillman - Everything is Dangerous

September 1 through 30, 2014

Opening reception: Sunday, September 7, 2014, 7-9 p.m.

Right Window is pleased to present Everything is Dangerous, by the New Jersey-bred, San Francisco-based artist Patrick Hillman, an exhibition which expands on the methods and materials of Sets and Reps, Hillman’s debut exhibition at Right Window gallery in 2011.

Patrick Hillman's recent work explores the flowering of a childhood spent in the grip of sensational media broadcasts of the 80s and 90s that ostensibly set out to protect children but which effectively terrorized them into obedience to state control, particularly into the haven of heteronormative identity. “PSAs, docudramas, TV reenactments/dramatizations, talk shows, made-for-TV-movies, and after-school specials,” remembers the artist, “collectively cast the world as a scary place full of dangerous people, where bad things can happen at any time and the most mundane of objects can result in sudden tragedy for the unwary child.” 

At Right Window Hillman’s work ranges from video animation to large-scale installation to small sculptural pieces, each a recreation and interrogation of a bizarre moment in last century’s apocalyptic history.  TV’s Webster warns against child molestation using three firm, giant words, NO, GO, and TELL from which meaning drops out as the alphabetical characters, in the garish dayglo of youth, collide, merge, separate.  The unassuming shack in which his kidnapper hid the boy Steven Staynor for years is reconfigured, domesticized into a plastic canvas/yarn tissue box cover, hygienic and squalid at the same time.  Is trauma collective or individual, both, neither; can it be exploited to make fear into a social weapon?  Hillman spills such questions onto the dark plate glass of San Francisco, where you can see his work all month long in the storefront windows of the city’s #1 gallery.

Please direct questions, requests for interviews, and so forth, to Kevin Killian (415) 728-6309, or visit the artist’s website www.patrickhillman.com.

About Right Window

Right Window is an exhibition space located in the Mission District of San Francisco and run by a collective of artists, writers, and curators.  Since August of 2007, Right Window has hosted over 70 events and involved over 100 artists to engage the general public in under-represented and experimental work. Exhibitions, installations, readings, and screenings are staged within a sunny space, lined by storefront windows that open to the busy streets.  The building is shared with Artists Television Access (ATA) and Other Cinema.