The horrors persist, but so do the little treats
Judy Giera
October 28 - December 3rd, 2023
“But once you’re in it is smooth like butter.” This is how Judy’s doctor described injecting hormones: by imagining the material under our skin as smooth and tasty, able to be cut into with ease. Envision your body as a delicious treat. For example, the artwork by the same name but once you’re in it is smooth like butter stacks 6 different layers of bright colors, patterns, and textures, like the cross-section of a cake. Imagining this as the material underneath our skins is both humorous and disgusting, a fun play between body horror and delectability.
The horrors persist, but so do the little treats “is born out of the strange joy of survival. Being trans in America is sometimes like the dandelion that grows through the cracks in spite of the concrete. It is an abject horror and luxurious embrace,” in Judy’s own words. The works in this show are abstract self-portraits, reflecting on complex personal experiences with blended elements of theater, camp, patisserie, comedy, and gore.
The humor is underlined most when reading the titles. Like, when she IS wearing her shapewear… and when she IS NOT wearing her shapewear… Two bulbous blobs with dark holes in the middle, the pink one being more balanced top to bottom (IS wearing) while the yellow one (IS NOT wearing) has more blobs down below. This pair of artworks is easily memed, a quick yet poignant punchline that says much more than is literally presented.
“As an artist, I think through painting in a theatrical way. There is a little bit of artifice to it all, like if Brecht and Lisa Frank had a chill stoner daughter.” In the escapism of theater, the story plays out in between the curtains. The set is framed for the viewer to enjoy. These artworks have inherent frames, joyfully extravagant borders that begin the fun inside. However, further inside the frames, nearly every work in this show has a hole – a visual void in the center that the rest of the work is decorating. Judy describes the holes as points of “entrance and exit, a site of ingestion and expulsion.” These voids are undefined empty spaces around which Judy has glazed, beaded, dusted, whipped, marbled, and sprinkled an array of artificial, neon, plastic materials. The works are indulgent to simply look at, but also sickly sweet. They might give you a headache if you eat too much. The voids offer some reprieve. And yet, we all know what they say about The Void. The horrors persist, but so do the little treats. Which is which?
Judy Giera is a Brooklyn, NY based artist working in mixed media painting, sculpture and video. Judy holds an MFA in Theatre (Pace University) and an MFA in Art (Lehman College). Giera’s work has been seen in group exhibitions at venues such as NARS Foundation, Gallery Aferro, Bronx Art Space, The Hudson River Museum, Amos Eno Gallery, and White Columns (online), among others. She has presented solo exhibitions at SPANTZO (2021, NY, NY) and Waterloo Arts Center (2023, Cleveland, OH). She was a 2022 AIM Fellow with the Bronx Museum, awarded the 2022-23 Davyd Whaley Memorial Scholarship in Abstraction at the Art Students League of NY and has participated in residencies at NYC Crit Club, EFA North Fork/The Potato Farm Project, and SVA. Giera’s work will appear in the 6th Bronx Biennial at the Bronx Museum in 2024. In addition to her work as an artist, Judy is an arts worker, serving as the Collections Manager for the Leslie-Lohman Museum of Art. She resides in Brooklyn with her fiancée, two cats, and a copious amount of houseplants.