SAY HELLO SOMETIME, 2025: Kerri Stevenson

Say hello sometime is a meditation on distance, intimacy, and the quiet negotiations that shape human connection. In this feature, Kerri Stevenson explores the emotional space between presence and absence, where relationships are defined not only by what is spoken, but by what remains unsaid. The works move gently through moments of hesitation, familiarity, and longing, capturing the fragile thresholds where connection is both desired and deferred.

Stevenson’s practice is attentive and restrained. Rather than presenting fixed narratives, the works operate as fragments of lived experience. Figures, gestures, and environments appear suspended in moments that feel unresolved, as though something has just occurred or is about to happen. This sense of pause invites the viewer into a reflective encounter, one that mirrors the uncertainty and vulnerability inherent in reaching out to another person.

The title Say hello sometime functions as both an invitation and a deferral. It speaks to the casual language we use to soften distance, often masking deeper emotional complexity. Stevenson is interested in these everyday phrases that carry weight beyond their simplicity. Within the works, familiarity coexists with estrangement, and closeness is suggested without being fully realized. Connection becomes a possibility rather than a certainty.

Material and surface play a central role in conveying this emotional register. Stevenson’s mark making is subtle yet deliberate, allowing traces of touch, erasure, and repetition to remain visible. These visual decisions echo the ways relationships are formed through accumulation rather than resolution. Time is felt across the surfaces, reinforcing the idea that intimacy is built slowly, through attention and persistence.

Say hello sometime also reflects on contemporary modes of interaction shaped by mobility, technology, and emotional guardedness. Stevenson does not position these conditions as failures, but as realities that inform how people navigate closeness today. The works resist sentimentality, offering instead a quiet honesty that acknowledges both desire and restraint.

This feature invites viewers to consider their own patterns of approach and withdrawal. It asks what it means to reach toward another person without certainty of response. In Stevenson’s hands, the act of saying hello becomes an expression of courage, tenderness, and risk. The exhibition holds space for these gestures, honoring the fragile beauty of connection in all its incompleteness.