Press Release

Mrs. is pleased to present Bedroom Eyes, Queens-based artist Hilliary Gabryel’s debut solo exhibition with the gallery. Working in mixed media, this presentation focuses on the artist’s series of altered headboards and vanities which she sources from resale markets or finds on the street. 

The majority of stylized furniture she salvages can be traced to the Italian-Australian entrepreneur Franco Cozzo – the so-called “furniture king” of Melbourne. His larger-than-life personality matched his flamboyant furniture that he advertised in television commercials, reaching large audiences and thereby popularizing his ostentatious sofas and bedroom sets; for an accessible price, bourgeois dreams and elevated cultural capital could be made a reality. Preloved pieces are now often found on Facebook Marketplace and Craigslist.

For Gabryel too, the Baroque and Art Nouveau-inspired furniture pieces are signifiers of aspirational luxury. In place of precious stone or wood, each element is vacuum-formed, mimicking a sleek, polished appearance, but ultimately hollow. Gabryel’s interventions result in hybrid forms of spliced headboards and vanities, connecting their swooping rounded geometries, floral embellishments, and grandiose accouterments in unexpected ways, pushing the limits of these readymade forms. Rendered in rich jewel-tones, the artist upholsters the curvatures and contours in slick, glimmering latex, and punctuates with numerous steel tacks.

While the artist’s interventions tease out considerations on consumerism and class divide, they also highlight gender imbued objecthood. Gabryel titles her artworks in the same vein as Cozzo’s bedroom sets: Tonya, Raquel, Odette, and Sylvia, to name a few. There is an innate femininity to the decorative headboards that bear smooth curves, floral motifs, and an original chaste white color. The association of a woman with the bedroom set brings a seductive allure, a promise of comfort, and the tantalization of purity. Through her aesthetic interventions, including encasing the objects in hypersexualized latex, Gabryel reclaims these mass-produced items, setting them free from the bedroom.

Hilliary Gabryel received her BFA and Post Baccalaureate Certificate from Virginia Commonwealth University in 2013. She is a founding member of MATERIAL GIRLS collective (2016-present) and co-founder of the interdisciplinary Ridgewood, Queens project space ERA (2014-2016). Her work has been exhibited at Montclair State University Gallery (Montclair, NJ); Duke Hall Gallery Fine Art (James Madison University, VA); Random Access Gallery (Syracuse University, NY); 5-50 Gallery, Paradice Palase, SPRING/BREAK (New York, NY); Tiger Strikes Asteroid (Los Angeles, CA); Mass Gallery, MOHA (Austin, TX); Sweet Pass Sculpture Park (Dallas, TX); Sadie Halie Projects (Minnesota, MN). Residencies & awards include the Shandaken: Storm King, Queens Art Fund New Work Grant, Vermont Studio Center Fellowship, and Wassaic Project Guest Residency. This is her first solo show with the gallery.

Hilliary Gabryel, Bedroom Eyes will be on view at Mrs., 60-40 56th Dr., Maspeth, Queens, NY 11378 through January 11, 2025. For more information please contact hello@mrsgallery.com.