The Hot Madness of Four O’Clock | Hunt Gallery Incorporated

Hot Madness of Four O’ClockKate O’ConnorAmerican Berserk is a phrase coined by Philip Roth in his novel American Pastoral (1997). It refers to a violent, chaotic undercurrent in U.S. life that ruptures the calm surface of the so-called American Dream, a state where truth is elusive and societal structures disintegrate.  Roth’s 60 year old assertion - that you can’t write good satirical fiction in America because reality will quickly outdo anything you might invent - still encapsulates the profound absurdity of the American experience, maybe now more than ever.  It is a state – between the satire of the American experience and the absurdity of watching it unfold from afar – that is explored in Kate O'Connor’s debut exhibition, The Hot Madness of Four O’Clock. The exhibition brings together twenty-two recent paintings that chronicle O’Connor’s life and experiences as a Canadian artist raising two children in the United States before returning home. After completing her MFA at Yale, O’Connor spent over a decade in the United States; in California and Portland, where she built her career, practice and raised her family. At the start of the second Trump administration, O’Connor and her family decided to relocate to Canada. They returned on the day of Trump’s assassination attempt, an uncanny echo of the unsettled conditions they were leaving behind and how even in the most obtuse way, could not fully remove themselves from their surrogate americana identities. The works, painted over the last year, capture the intimacy and humour of everyday life: a family road trip, the cat perched on the counter, neighbourhood kids at play, a neighbour’s Phish fandom. Together they form a portrait of transition, domesticity, and dislocation. This discomfort is articulated in the paintings in moments of absurdity, moments where humour is used as a stand in a tool for the toleration of discomfort.The title of O'Connor’s show, Hot Madness of Four O’Clock, evokes the intensity of this emotional collapse. The “four o’clock” hour is often when the day drags, when time itself seems to warp, and when the heat of the day becomes almost unbearable. This is the sensation O'Connor captures in her work – a feeling of being trapped in a world where time is disjointed, where the ordinary becomes strange, and where reality is slipping beyond our control. It is a moment of madness, where the heat of the day mirrors the heat of the existential crisis facing contemporary America.O'Connor’s move back to Canada on the very day of the Trump assassination attempt speaks to this final moment of breakdown, the symbolic culmination of America’s descent into the berserk. As Roth predicted, “American life will never be what it was. It’s broken, not just politically but existentially.”The assassination attempt felt, to O'Connor, like a final, absurd punctuation of an era defined by irrationality and the complete loss of control. It was not just a political event, but a moment of cultural reckoning – a recognition that the very idea of America, as it was once understood, had collapsed into something unrecognizable and absurd.Kate O'Connor’s paintings articulate the emotional truth of our current moment  – the collapse of  national identity, the blurring of place,  the breakdown of value systems and ethics.  It’s easy to see O'Connor's work as a site of political activism; in truth, it’s closer to an embodiment of politics; the ordinary, ongoing act of living with it. Where Phillip Guston’s late work and Peter Saul’s acid satire take politics head-on, O’Connor metabolizes it into interior weather: a mental/emotional state registered as tempo, palette, and comic dissonance. The “political” here isn’t exterior signage so much as the grain of experience. It’s about care, ambivalence, fatigue, and tenderness.  O’ Connor’s work is the quiet insistence on attention: to a household, a child’s joke, a neighbor’s fandom, and to the absurdity that leaks in from the wider world.The American Berserk, as articulated by Roth, marks the collapse of this idealized America. Roth writes, “America is absolutely free of any stable concept of truth,” signaling a shift from a time when truth was clear, even rigid, to one where chaos and contradiction reign. The American Berserk is an America where national myths of stability and moral clarity are replaced by a sense of absurdity, disillusionment, and a loss of meaning. Roth’s America is one that has descended into a state of madness, where the very concept of truth becomes fluid, and the chaos of daily life becomes the defining characteristic of the nation.The American Berserk is a state of national frenzy and irrationality: a state where order and reason are lost to chaos and violence. This transition is not merely a reaction to the immediate political landscape but a culmination of centuries of American expansion, violence, and the pursuit of empire. The very etymology of “berserk” provides insight here: originating from Old Norse, it referred to warriors who fought in a wild, uncontrollable state, often as a result of overwhelming external forces. This berserk rage captures the essence of America’s historical narrative: from the violent colonization of North America to the aggressive expansion and the eventual unraveling of its mythologies in the 21st century.The title of O'Connor’s show, Hot Madness of Four O’Clock, evokes the intensity of this emotional collapse. The “four o’clock” hour is often when the day drags, when time itself seems to warp, and when the heat of the day becomes almost unbearable. This is the sensation O'Connor captures in her work – a feeling of being trapped in a world where time is disjointed, where the ordinary becomes strange, and where reality is slipping beyond our control. It is a moment of madness, where the heat of the day mirrors the heat of the existential crisis facing contemporary America.O'Connor’s move back to Canada on the very day of the Trump assassination attempt speaks to this final moment of breakdown, the symbolic culmination of America’s descent into the berserk. As Roth predicted, “American life will never be what it was. It’s broken, not just politically but existentially.” The assassination attempt felt, to O'Connor, like a final, absurd punctuation of an era defined by irrationality and the complete loss of control. It was not just a political event, but a moment of cultural reckoning – a recognition that the very idea of America, as it was once understood, had collapsed into something unrecognizable and absurd.Kate O'Connor’s paintings articulate the emotional truth of our current moment  – the collapse of  national identity, the blurring of place,  the breakdown of value systems and ethics. The absurdity of living in a world where chaos is not just possible, but expected.HG