skin hunger was an installation of new works (video, performance, sculpture, multi-media) @ The Club Car Gallery (12 W. North Avenue, Baltimore, MD) from April 11-May 4, 2025 by artist Kristin Putchinski, curated by Beth Yashnyk. Events included an opening & closing reception with community members, 2 live performances of the installation of Putchinski’s sculpture, “Hex,” and 2 trash abatement events in the lot next to the venue where 50 lbs of trash were removed.
OPENING RECEPTION & COMMUNITY INSTALL
APRIL 11, 5-8PM
Community members enjoyed directing Putchinski to add their colorful tape selections to the whole work.
PERFORMANCES of “Hex”
April 27, 12-1PM
An hour long performance of the sculpture, “Hex.” This sculpture, comprised of 88 disassembled piano keys was repetitively “installed” for one full hour. Inspired by Yvonne Rainer’s “task based performance” concept, this performance used the materials from Putchinski’s 2024 experimental music & video performance, “Hex & Defense.”
CLOSING RECEPTION & COMMUNITY de-INSTALL
MAY 4, 3-7PM
Community members assisted in a DE-install the 36 feet of colorful painter’s tape and re-rolled the materias so that the artist can re-use them.
Photo by Elijah Davis.
Photo by Elijah Davis.
Photo by Elijah Davis.
Photo by Elijah Davis.
Photo by Elijah Davis.
Photo by Elijah Davis.
Photo by Elijah Davis.
Photo by Elijah Davis.
Photo by Elijah Davis.
Photo by Elijah Davis.
Photo by Elijah Davis.
Photo by Elijah Davis.
Photo by Elijah Davis.
Photo by Elijah Davis.
Photo by Elijah Davis.
Photo by Elijah Davis.
Photo by Elijah Davis.
Photo by Jen Pruitt--trash pick up in the Y Not Lot
Artist Statement — Kristin Putchinski
“skin hunger”
The Club Car Gallery, April 11 – May 4, 2025
Curated by Beth Yashnyk
skin hunger is an installation of new video, performance, sculpture, and multimedia works that explores the physical and emotional dimensions of touch, repetition, and shared labor. This body of work reflects my ongoing interest in public action, participatory making, and the quiet gestures that hold communities—and bodies—together.
Installed at The Club Car Gallery in Baltimore, the exhibition begins with a Community Install on April 11, 5-8PM, inviting guests to collectively create a 36-foot painter’s tape installation, one strip at a time. The act is simple, meditative, and intentional—a slow-build toward presence.
Central to the exhibition is Hex, a one-hour performance presented on April 12 and 27, 2-3PM, in which I construct and topple a sculpture composed of 88 piano keys, arranged in a cross-hatched formation. This repetitive gesture—a nod to Yvonne Rainer’s task-based performance practice—draws from my 2023 experimental work, Hex & Defense. Here, destruction becomes ritual, and the act of rebuilding carries the weight of emotional labor and endurance.
Preceding each performance of Hex, I host a Trash Abatement and Community Clean-Up (1–1:30PM), inviting the public to engage in collective care through neighborhood trash collection. These small, visible acts of reuse and repair are core to my public art practice and a vital expression of environmental and social responsibility.
The exhibition closes with a Closing Reception & Community de-INSTALL on May 4, where participants are invited to carefully remove and re-roll the tape installation—returning materials to the artist for future use and underscoring the project’s cyclical, collaborative ethos.
skin hunger is a meditation on what we build together, what we discard, and how we show up for one another through the gestures that connect us. It is also an invitation—to touch, to topple, to tape, and to witness. These works live in the tension between care and collapse, resistance and release.
— Kristin Putchinski