The Pit is pleased to present From a Place in the Light, a solo exhibition by Los Angeles based artist Hilary Pecis. The exhibition will run from April 28 – June 8th with a public reception from 4-7pm on Sunday April 28, 2019. The exhibition will consist of a new body of thirteen acrylic paintings on canvas. This will be Pecis’ first solo exhibition with the gallery, and in Los Angeles. 

The works in From a Place in the Light continue Pecis’ investigations into historical painting subjects such as still life’s, landscapes, interiors, and sites from her surroundings.   The exhibition’s title is a reference to living and working in LA, where artists have often times cited the quality of light as a valuable tool, particularly by painters. Though working within painting troupes with such long histories such as landscape painting, Pecis’ canvases are imbued with a fresh playfulness not just through her vibrant use of color and patterns, but also from rendering her compositions from flattened areas giving them a slightly distorted and dreamy quality. There is almost no illusionistic depth painted into these works, rather the viewer’s eye forces a sense of perspective onto the scene when viewing one layer of flattened acrylic color against another. This embracing of graphic qualities brings these paintings into conversation with another form of painting with deep roots in Los Angeles, which also happens to be a reoccurring subject in Pecis’ practice, that of sign painting and graphic design. Of the thirteen paintings in this exhibition, half of the canvases contain representations of printed graphic materials such as text on book spines, signage on storefronts or street signs, labels on wine bottles, etc. Her paintings are a reflection of her daily life and surroundings, which she documents, with a large archive of snapshots and then uses to create the compositions of her paintings. 

Hilary Pecis lives in Los Angeles, CA. She received her Master of Fine Arts in 2009 and her Bachelor of Fine Arts in 2006 from the California College of the Arts in San Francisco, CA. Pecis’ work has been the subject of one-person exhibitions at galleries such as Halsey McKay, East Hampton, NY and Rachel Uffner Gallery, New York, NY. Her work has been featured in exhibitions such as Vision Valley, Brand Library & Arts Center, Glendale, CA (2018); Shadow Shop, Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco, CA (2010); Fax, Torrance Art Museum, Torrance, CA (2010); This is Your, This is My, University of Texas, San Antonio, TX (2009); New Landscapes, Dominican University of San Rafael, San Rafael, CA (2008); and Grounded, Southern Exposure, San Francisco, CA (2007). She has been the recipient of the San Francisco Arts Commission’s Murphy and Cadogan Fellowship and is a co-founder of Binder of Women, a collective of female artists based in the Los Angeles area.