Lily Hollinden’s work can be found at MIXD Gallery in Rogers, AR, and Midnight Gallery in Bentonville, AR

On View Now: Pepper Perpetual

A solo exhibition at Midnight Gallery in Bentonville, AR

On view April 2nd - 27th, 2025

Public reception: Friday, April 4th, from 4 to 6pm

PEPPER PERPETUAL

CURATORIAL STATEMENT

The Pepper Philosophy:

To find excitement in the mundane,

to find meaning within chaos, 

to find purpose within pointlessness, 

to find comedy within tragedy,

to find animalism within humanity, 

to find taste in the tacky,

to find honesty in comedy, 

to find sweetness in the bitter, 

to find beauty in the grotesque, 

and to find sophistication in the absurd.

    Humor is the lens through which I peer at the world. There is a complicated relationship between comedy and authenticity. Sarcasm and irony have the ability to literally speak a lie, yet communicate a truth; intentions decoded through familiarity, context, and inversions of meaning. This collection of work is composed of observational snippets and narrative vignettes from the lives of Earth’s most peculiar creatures: humans. Our relationship to nature is like that of a rebellious child with their parents; we reject what we’re made of, consider ourselves separate, smarter, beyond nature’s influence. In reality, we carry its character within every cell of our beings. Nature does not end where humanity begins. The motif of clowns is symbolic of humankind’s innate ridiculousness; our self-made rules, our cultural hypocrisies, our playfulness, our fantasies, and our desire for good stories.

    Much of my work features a clown character named Pepper Plinkett, an alter-ego and caricature of myself. Pepper is an embodiment of my personal philosophies about human existence and the freedom found within its lack of purpose. She serves as a protagonist to guid the viewer through a timeless, chaotic, bizarre world.

    Pepper Perpetual is a celebration of bright colors, bad jokes, curiosities, clowns, and liberating pointlessness.