ILY2 is thrilled to present SOFT PINK HARD LINE, a group exhibition in two parts, featuring the work of Colleen Billing, CFGNY, Justin Cloud, Beatrix Fowler, Sylvie Hayes-Wallace, Y. Malik Jalal, Bonnie Lucas, Catherine Telford Keogh, Kiki Kogelnik, Tatiana Kronberg, Hannah Levy, I Gusti Ayu Kadek Murniasih, Umico Niwa, Amanda Ross-Ho, Adrianne Rubenstein and Leena Similu.
The exhibition’s title engages the linguistic and cultural implications of demarcation. If “drawing a hard line” connotes rigidity and finality—an assertion of boundaries that distinguish one state from another—then the soft pink line represents nuance, plasticity, and tenderness. The boundary becomes provisional: a threshold that invites reconsideration, subverting decisiveness in favor of sincerity. In contrast to the definitive black line, the pink line is mutable—assertive yet permeable, capable of holding its form while allowing for slippage and reinterpretation.
The artists in the show demonstrate these themes both aesthetically and conceptually. The exhibition is defined by contrasts—delicate pastels against bold primary colors, harsh industrial metals against soft, handwoven textiles, and the skillful manipulation of negative and positive space. Operating outside traditional categories, the works suggest that the creative process is not a means to an end but a perpetual state of flux—an attempt to connect and find moments of understanding, even if fleeting. Embracing this porousness, they reveal reciprocity as a radical form of resistance.
The exhibition unfolds not as a singular event but as a series of shifting encounters. Structured in two-parts, it gestures toward a third intangible locus: a conceptual space that exists beyond the constraints of time and geography. This nonlocal center — analogous to the overlapping segment of a Venn diagram — emerges from conscious imagination, positioning perception (rather than venue) as the primary site of meaning. As the exhibition moves through different stages, its contours shift — a process of becoming that resists totality. The presence of some artists is defined by their absence: works shown in one iteration morph and reverberate in the next, their conceptual threads teased out and unraveled only to re-entangle again. Through these varied gestures, the mind becomes a site of synthesis, bridging distances and constructing an experience that extends beyond first-hand observation.
