Artforum
"Hilary Harnischfeger"
Written by Andy Martinelli Clark | April 1, 2026
In the first minutes of Sara Dosa’s enthralling 2022 documentary Fire of Love—which takes as its subject the adventurous exploits of the volcanologist couple Katia and Maurice Krafft—staccato guitar riffs overdub a frenetic sequence of aerial and static shots depicting volcanoes at various moments of eruption. Later in the film, we see the inquisitive French scientists, clad in protective gear and gazing skyward, standing before the edge of a jagged precipice while a Brian Eno song swells in the background. I imagine that such an inhospitable environ, full of smoldering rock and pyroclastic ash, is precisely where one might unearth Hilary Harnischfeger’s craggy yet beguiling sculptures.
“Songs for Clouds,” Harnischfeger’s fifth solo outing with Uffner & Liu, featured a concise presentation of ten mixed-media works made between 2024 and 2026, arrayed across two conjoined galleries on the first floor. The Australia-born, Brooklyn-based artist’s multifarious concoctions of ceramic, Hydro-Stone, mica, and paper—which sat atop pedestals and hung from walls—seemed as though they were not crafted in her New York studio but extracted from the subzero terrain of some distant arctic landmass. Her eccentrically omnibus objects beg to be seen through a geologist’s eye: Take the pale and tower-like Host, 2026, or the marbled, rough-hewn Violets, 2024, both of which could have been lifted from the side of an icy, barren escarpment. The latter, diminutive and turtle-like in its compactness, is rife with streaks of Neptune blue and malachite green—hues that longtime devotees of the artist’s work recognize as classic Harnischfeger. We also found these oft-used pigments in the nearby freestanding Lost Peak, 2025, whose jagged edge is beset with a protruding cluster of botryoidal lepidolite—a lithium-rich mineral coveted for its pearlescent luster and alleged calming properties. A quick Google search reveals a plethora of online merchants selling these desirable stones to homeopatic enthusiasts seeking a cleansed aura. Harnischfeger has downplayed the spiritual implications of crystals, instead deploying them in her art merely for their glittering qualities.
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