Curated by Vin Thorpe. Featuring: Chase Biado, Alex Cutler, Devon DeJardin, Jess Xiaoyi Han, Nicolas Holiber, Jack Jubb, Kathryn Kampovsky, David Leggett, Brendan Lynch, Stefan Robert Meier, Amadeo Morelos, Taylor Marie Prendergast, Dylan Rose Rheingold, Nathan Ritterpusch, Rebekah Rubalcava, Runsy, Rachel Sharpe, Wilba Simson, Sol Summers, Lauren Tsai, Anne Vieux, Bwhitey, Jamie Gray Williams, & Scout Zabinski.

Hat Trick at Rusha & Co. explores a triple-threat of artistic expression: sketched imagery, dimensional forms, and detailed renderings. Cohesive and distinct, yet fluid and permeable, these loosely-defined manifestations of the creative process, taken together, create an all-encompassing portrait of contemporary human existence.

Each of the elements of our artistic hat trick occupies one of the three rooms of the historic firehouse cum gallery. The realm of the sketch gets our ball rolling in the building’s engine bay. The artists in this exercise embody a stream of consciousness, an amalgamation of forms, and an ever present aura of the artist’s hand. From the vibrant to the monochromatic, the human mind finds its way in the court through gestural strokes and a freestyle approach to the image.

A world of dimensional shapes is the second volley in the exhibition’s threepeat. From voluminous explorations of the trompe l'oeil to intense otherworldly narratives, the artists engage their skills in both figuration and abstraction to orchestrate entirely new worlds, characters, and journeys. This division manipulates form and composition, providing an escape from the pitch and slipping away from reality in favor of the absurd, the geometric, and the colorful.

Last in our huddle is the experience of the full render. An intense corporeality permeates through the works on view as artists blur the lines of reality with visceral figurations and manipulations of photorealism. Physical and internalized identities are reconceived through a change of direction. Figures and forms find free substitution by the artists’ hands in the representative side of the works on view.

Hat Trick goes to bat for a conception of contemporary art both inventive and groundbreaking. A trophy case of styles and mediums, Hat Trick breaks down preconceptions of how art can be understood by sharing their inherent similarities and the unifying thread within all artistic production: human connection. Emanating with an urgency of the present day, each of these artists has evolved from lineages of art history, the champions of minimalism, surrealism, expressionism (and more), to rethink the ways we see and inhabit the world around us.

Together, these artists are grouped into triple threats. On their own, each develops a distinctive visual language that cuts through the noise of the crowds to resonate with onlookers in plays that illuminate the hidden, the societal, and the internalized.