"Sweetheart Grip" is a conversation rooted in perception. During World War II, soldiers sometimes embedded photographs of loved ones in the clear grips of their pistols, holding tenderness and violence in the same hand. The sweetheart grip becomes a metaphor for this collection of works of Machine (LA, CA) and Simone Thornton (Austin TX) as they reclaim objects, gestures, and spaces traditionally coded as masculine.

Through familiar symbols of strength, toughness, and concealment, both artists embody the ways gender is recognized and performed. Machine subverts popular iconography, creating objects that resist a fixed gender identity. Thornton revisits the rituals and artifacts that once offered refuge, revealing the vulnerability beneath the performance.

Both artists explore how strength is perceived, performed, and misread. They create moments in which objects and iconography become something other than what they appear to be, creating an identity that resists easy categorization and revealing something we cannot control: how we are seen, and who we are becoming.

The exhibition will remain on display through December 19.