Harmony Hammond’s Wrapped Paintings (2010–17) belong to her body of near monochrome works that simultaneously engage with and challenge the narrative of modernist painting. Near monochrome, the artist insists, positions painting as a site of negotiation between what exists inside and outside the picture plane. In these compositions, Hammond utilizes grommets, fabric straps, and layers of oil paint to build a textured near monochromatic surface activated by light and cast shadow. She often describes the painted canvases as skins. In this context, Hammond explains, “the grommeted straps are wrapped around the painting as objects and body (suggesting bandage, bondage, binding) but do not cinch or constrict. The straps do not hold the painting together; the paint (and therefore the act of painting) does.”
