(HUDSON, N.Y.) – Solo exhibitions of works by Nicole Cherubini and Ted Gahl open at Retrospective Gallery with a reception on Saturday, January 16, from 6 to 8pm. Cherubini’s show, ‘the love tapes’, is a retrospective of her work. Gahl’s show, ‘Hibernation Anxiety,’ features works in various modes, all of them rooted in drawing. The shows run through Monday, February 28. Cherubini lives and works in Hudson and Brooklyn; Gahl lives and works in Litchfield, Conn.

According to a curator’s statement, the Cherubini exhibit, at 711 Warren St., “looks at an artist’s practice over an extended period of time. We do this without critical hindsight or foresight. We are not packaging the artist’s work into categories, nor inflating it with attractive trajectories, nor flattening it into a linear timeline. To invite further access to the artist’s practice, we have produced a 92-page catalog organized by things other than time. We have provided interpretations to fracture the priority of a singular perspective. Along with the featured artist Nicole Cherubini, we have included the voices of artists Francesca DiMattio, Jenny Monick, Katy Schimert, and Michelle Segre. The catalog extends backwards and forwards and ultimately intends to anchor the work with you, as you see it, now.”

 

 

In “Hibernation Anxiety,” at 727 Warren St., Gahl continues to push his interest in creating works in various modes, all of them rooted in drawing. Sketches that appear are both recent and mined from the past. Large paintings depict the rushing commuter – a silhouette of a traipsing worker that slinks along the canvas, making appearances at different stages. Angles and points of view shift, and the simple character undergoes a transformation. Limbs, features, and minute extremities are starting points for casual paint addition, only to lead the eye into distorted end points of vague landscapes. A loss of perspective within the drone of habits. A loss of clarity in the dead of winter.

Other mixed-media works by Gahl employ both found objects as well as traditional artmaking materials. A suet cake, the bird feed used for winter months, sits encased in clay inside of its feeder tray. The green, gridded metal box becomes a small prison for an already unattainable gratification. The slotted links have been used as guides to mold the facing layer into an endless series of angular hallways reminiscent of animation stills and simple depth drawing exercises. A wood building beam has been positioned in the space to act as a stand-in for a support more fitting to the cage. An obstruction necessitates movement.

Working largely in sculpture and mixed media, Nicole Cherubini has presented solo exhibitions at Samsøñ (Boston, MA), Perez Art Museum Miami (Miami, FL), the Santa Monica Museum of Art (Los Angeles, CA), the Institute of Contemporary Art (Philadelphia, PA), Tracy Williams (NY), the Nassau County Museum of Art (Roslyn Harbor, NY), the Jersey City Museum (Jersey City, NJ), and La Panadería (Mexico City, MX). Her works have been included in group exhibitions at institutions including MoMA PS1 (Long Island City, NY), the Cranbrook Art Museum (Bloomfield Hills, MI), The Tang Teaching Museum and Art Gallery (Saratoga, NY), the Museum of Fine Arts (Boston, MA), the Institute of Contemporary Art (Boston, MA), the Boston University Art Gallery (Boston, MA), the Boston Center for the Arts (Boston, MA), Permanenten: The West Norway Museum of Decorative Art (Bergen, NO), the Rhode Island School of Design Museum (Providence, RI), and the Sculpture Center (Long Island City, NY). Her work has received press from Art in America, Art Forum, Art News, BOMB Magazine, The New York Times, The New Yorker; also featured on The Pot Book by Edmund De Waal, and Breaking The Mold new approaches to ceramics by black god publishing. Her work is in the public collections at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (Boston, MA), the Museum of Fine Arts (Boston, MA), the Institute of Contemporary Art (Boston, MA), the Perez Museum Miami (Miami, FL), The Tang Teaching Museum and Art Gallery (Saratoga, NY), the Progressive Collection (Mayfield Village, OH), and the Tishman Speyer Collection (NY).

Ted Gahl was born in 1983 in New Haven, Connecticut. He received his BFA from Pratt Institute in 2006 and his MFA from Rhode Island School of Design in 2010. His work has been exhibited at Queens Museum of Art, Queens, NY; Cooper Cole, Toronto, Canada; Art Blog Art Blog, New York, NY; Halsey McKay Gallery, East Hampton, NY; Middlemarch, Brussels, Belgium; The Peninsula School, Institute of Contemporary Art, Portland, ME; Morgan Lehman, New York, NY; Storefront Bushwick, Brooklyn, NY; ACNY, Brooklyn, NY; Dan Graham gallery, Los Angeles, CA; FJORD Projects, Philadelphia, PA; Cirrus Gallery, Los Angeles, CA; Nudashank, Baltimore, MD; Geoffrey Young Gallery, Great Barrington, MA; and Green Gallery West, Milwaukee, WI. Gahl’s work has been reviewed in Art Haps, Artinfo, Artnet, Artspace, NY Arts Magazine, White Hot Magazine, Beautiful/Decay, Time Out New York, and New American Paintings Blog, among others. Gahl lives and works in Litchfield, Connecticut.

 

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