NYC-based artist Hunter Potter has just spent the last month working on an unusual artist residency with Deli Grocery gallery in Bushwick, Brooklyn. The residency and project, titled Happy To Be Here, was done as part of an ongoing collaboration with local real estate company, Cycamore, to offer more Brooklyn properties for artist residencies and exhibitions.
During the time of the Happy To Be Here project, Potter turned the space into an intense, bright yellow, two-floor installation containing thousands of smiley faces, painted and drawn on every surface of the building's interior. Mimicking the smiley faces Potter has been known to smeare and spray onto his studio drop cloths while cleaning his work tools, this smiley overload creates an almost psychotic atmosphere. While the stylized representation of a smiling humanoid face itself is a part of our popular culture since Harvey Ball designed its classic form in 1963, the use of emoticons and emojis has caused a revival of the symbol in contemporary times. Universally seen as a metaphor for happiness and positive feelings, it's manic application through space can suggests an opposite feeling. 
Potter says of the project, "This globally recognized symbol is one of the first things a little kid attempts to draw. It is one of the few tags that can be found spray-painted under nearly any bridge in any part of the world. Some variation of the grinning cartoon can be found on everything from automobile antenna toppers to customer service surveys to sheets of blotter acid. I am not sure why I paint smiley faces, and perhaps that uncertainty is indeed why I have been painting them for so many years—some kind of subconscious muscle memory that I picked up along the way. The symbol somehow doesn't say much, and yet says enough. Whether it is carved into an old tree that no one will notice or carved into the cement of a busy sidewalk in New York City, that smiley face is saying the same thing... Happy to be Here." —Sasha Bogojev
The installation, Happy to be Here, will be open to the public through October 4th at 6 Saint Nicholas Avenue in Bushwick, Brooklyn.
Photos by Stephen Hamilton and Julie Simon