Cade Tompkins Projects

Melinda Hackett

American, b. 1961

Melinda Hackett’s use of vibrant, layered colors and biomorphic shapes refers to organic space and unfixed time.  Each painting is a reference to the structure and colors found in nature and are abstracted testimonies to abundance, growth, movement and harmony.  Hackett is interested in the play between interior and exterior space.  “On the one hand: interior, intimate, house, personal and on the other: exterior, immense, universe, cosmos.” The images float, hover, creep, spin, hang and roll.

Melinda Hackett grew up in the East Village art scene of the early 1980s and exhibited with members   including Jean Michel Basquiat, Keith Haring, Richard Hambleton, Mark Kostobi, Judy Rifka, Kenny Scharf and Rhonda Zwillinger.  Exhibitions were organized in night clubs and small East Village artist-run galleries.  Curators and collectors took note and the East Village became fertile ground for uptown art collectors to venture down to the homegrown, punk style, club life and defiant art scene breaking away from the established large formal gallery system. Hackett was also a member of the group “CoLab” which organized exhibitions in an abandoned building in Times Square and sold work through a store called “4 A More” in the East Village.

Hackett received her BA from Hobart William Smith College and her MFA from Parsons School of Design, New York. Exhibitions include solo shows at Charles Cowles Gallery, The Stamford Museum and group exhibitions at Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum, The Parrish Art Museum and Chautauqua Institute.

Read Melinda Hackett's full biography here