Sean Horton is pleased to present a two-person booth of new paintings and video performances by UK-born artist Kate Groobey (b. 1979) and new trompe-l'oeil paintings by Texas-based artist Kirk Hayes (b. 1958).

Establishing a sort of self-empowered woman vs. self-defeating man dichotomy, Kate Groobey portrays her personal experiences and explores the androcentric cannon of painting from a feminist, queer perspective using the tactics of British humour while Hayes' semi-self-portraits attempt to soften the ever-present American notions of aging, depression, failure, and mortality through playfulness and dark humor.

And while Hayes' trompe-l'oeil paintings offer a glimpse into the artist's inner life, it is his ability to exploit the expectations between a painting's dumbness and sophistication that ultimately delivers the most baffling of punch lines.

To quote the artist Trenton Doyle Hancock, "For the first time viewer not yet let in on the joke, there is usually a period of examination that leadsto a comment about primitivism or the ephemerality of material. In those moments, we are being toyed with and being played for the fool. It's easy to put a fence around Hayes' vision with the presumption that one is looking at actual scraps and discarded elements glued or nailed to wood. We fall victim to the farce, because no one expects to see such raw subject matter treated with such sophistication. No one expects to be the lesser in that kind of visual power play. No one expects the paint."