Images by K8 Hardy

When it comes to jeans, it seems we’re always searching for authenticity. Tuesday’s opening of DENIM, a visual art exhibit at NYU’s 80 WSE Galleries was no different.

Curator David Rimanelli said he designed DENIM to be “hipper” than other group shows. “But smart hip,” he specified. “Not dumb hip.”

Talia Eisenberg, a young gallerist herself, wasn’t buying it. It was all too superficial, she felt, until she came upon K8 Hardy‘s work, Trough, a selection of five poster-sized photographs resting in a craft fair-style rack. The chromogenic self-portraits of the artist in varying costumes bear comparison to Cindy Sherman’s work. What separates them is how utterly believable they are, which is exactly the quality that drew Ms. Eisenberg to the photograph in front.

“It’s real,” she said. “And very raw and she looks pissed off as hell.”

In the photograph, Ms. Hardy (or the character she’s portraying) does look pissed, standing in front of a skeleton of a brambly bush, with an empty beer bottle resting in its branches. Her top is pulled down to reveal her breasts. Maybe someone left her there. She looks dead serious.

“That one’s funny,” said Ms. Hardy, of her photograph. “Because people are like, ‘It’s so intense. It’s so poetic.’ And it’s not. It’s so fake.”

On one hand, the photo had Ms. Eisenberg fooled, but on the other, she absolutely got it. Ms. Hardy said her pictures are about the elements, those beer bottles and brambles, that combine and compel us to believe in a particular moment.

Smart.

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