Eric Hibit (born Rochester, NY) is a visual artist based in New York City. He attended the Corcoran College of Art + Design (BFA,1998) and Yale University School of Art (MFA, 2003). In New York, he has exhibited at Morgan Lehman Gallery, Dinner Gallery, Deanna Evans Projects, My Pet Ram, One River School of Art + Design, Tiger Strikes Asteroid, Underdonk Gallery, Ortega y Gasset Projects, Zurcher Studio, C24 Gallery, Anna Kustera Gallery, Max Protetch Gallery, and elsewhere. He has exhibited nationally at Weatherspoon Art Museum in Greensboro, NC, Wege Center for the Arts at Maharishi University in Fairfield, IA, Adds Donna in Chicago, Curator's Office in Washington, DC, Geoffrey Young Gallery in Great Barrington, MA, The Cape Cod Museum of Art, Satellite Contemporary in Las Vegas, NV, The University of Vermont, Bedford Gallery in Walnut Creek, CA and internationally in Sweden, France and Norway. His work has been covered by the Washington Post, The Village Voice, Hyperallergic, Newsweek, New York Times and New York Post. Hibit has taught studio art at Drexel University, The Cooper Union, Suffolk County Community College, 92NY, Tyler School of Art, NYU and Hunter College. Artist residencies include Terra Foundation in Giverny, France (2003), UNILEVER Residency in New York (2015), and Kingsbrae International Residency for the Arts (2019) and Green Olives Arts in Tetouan, Morocco (2019). Publications include Dear Hollywood Writers, with poet Geoffrey Young (Suzy Solidor Editions, 2017) and Paintings and Fables with Wayne Koestenbaum, a limited edition artist's book (2017), and Color Theory for Dummies, published by Wiley (2022). He is currently Co-Director of Ortega y Gasset Projects, an artist-run gallery based in Brooklyn, where he has curated exhibitions since 2014.
Artist Statment:
My work is informed by nature, history, urban culture, color theory, and the physicality of acrylic paint. I use a range of symbolic imagery to explore personally and publicly relevant themes such as camp and gay culture, the beauty of nature, color's expressive potential, the impulse to decorate, and the psychology of the creative drive. My subjects are rendered with dots of acrylic paint that define edges and activate the composition. My hand painted dots create raised textures that stand proud of the painting's surface and declare my devotion to craft, while questioning contemporary notions of painting's reproducibility. As a counterpoint to my labor-intensive acrylic paintings, I make ink paintings on rag paper that capture quick movement, the power of the immediate line, and nuances of touch and pressure. Subjects often include flowers that I grow myself.