Sunday: 1:30 PM Temp 73 and humid.
Manhattan, NYC, The Hole Gallery 312 Bowery.
Building: Whitest building around for at least a block or two.
Photos: Taken by me with my iphone 4. If you want better photos, hit that donate button here...
Interior: Even more white, probably the brightest gallery in town. Alas...Wonderful place to view paintings.
Alex Gardner is having his first show at The Hole, Run by Kathy Grayson. It's become the go to place to see new artists around the NYC area. She is a big fan of painting and shows more of it than most galleries do.
The exhibition runs only through today, which is why it's a bit sad to write this so late in the timing of the exhibition.
It's a strange hallucinogenic world these pictures inhabit. The quality of the brush, the shading of the clothes and the non-world in which these creatures live, it's only the beginning for these people. The figures themselves are reminding me of the non faces of Mark Kostabi, these people without faces, really without just about any features which would let you know anything about them. They all inhabit some strange fantasy world where it would seem that personalities haven't been given, or maybe it's long after the humanity we know today, to where people no longer have their own personalities, their own thoughts, stuck in a world they can't leave. It seems as if each person in this world pretty much looks the same, one type of man and one type of woman. Really disheartening to think about such things. A world where life revolves solely around shapes and shadows, nothing left to do, except BE.
In the structure beneath the darkness, you see details of the hands and feet, there isn't much to the non-faces, as that is the way it's supposed to be in this non-world. One part of the humanoids that is very detailed is the hair. He obviously spent a lot of time working on each strand of hair in the picture. Giving the work an even stronger ability to talk to you.
Most of what you see from the artist are what I feel could be details of a larger world that Gardner has created. I can't help but wonder why there were no large scaled pictures that give more insight into what this pre-post-world looks like, outside of all these portraits.
My advice...keep your eyes on the details after that first viewing. Upon repeated viewings they reveal more of their layering. The color choices were quite exquisite along with the execution of the working, and the reworking of the picture continues to give more for the sensitive observer to enjoy.
I look forward to seeing where Gardner takes these paintings in the future, he's a great draftsman and I look forward to seeing his development of this world and the beings that inhabit it.
Check out the elegance and beauty with which the hand is rendered.
I only wish I could have seen this show a few weeks ago, and wrote, that way maybe someone reading this might just head down there and dig into these the way I was.
Thanks for reading.
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