027. Going medieval mode...
& some very whimsical art to see now
Hi everyone :) Saturday (Valentine’s Day), I woke up at noon and dragged myself to the city, determined to see some art before a dinner in the West Village. The galleries were quiet but the art in them was loud. If the current shows are any indication of the moment we’re in or what’s to come this year, I’d say we’re heading in an interesting direction. I’d say painting is getting weirder.
Case in point: Hydeon at Nicelle Beauchene. Yes, for the first time in ART BREAK history, I am writing about a show that has already closed. It’s my mea culpa for not getting there sooner - I wish I could have pointed you in the direction of this work a month ago! To be fair, I hadn’t heard of the show and happened to walk past Beauchene at 5pm on 2/14, truly the final hour to see this work.
I have a soft spot for exactly the kind of world Hydeon creates. I grew up playing Gauntlet on Nintendo 64 and two of my favorite films as a child (and still) are A Knight’s Tale and Monty Python and the Holy Grail—contemporary attempts at medieval storytelling, spotlighting the period’s crudeness and violence as well as its folksy beauty.
Hydeon paints Medieval tableaux infused with elements of fantasy and anachronistic easter eggs. His warriors, devils, and shamans duel with gleaming swords and guns alongside weiner dogs and Wave-runners. That it appears so familiar is a testament to how lawless and stupid the world feels right now, like I always imagined the dark ages.
I’m seeing a glut of medieval inspired art recently. Is it that we now have a town square in which we witness life’s most grisly horrors once more? I’m hardly the first person to write of the way social media commingles war and commerce with such indifference that even the most conscientious viewer becomes numb to their stomach-churning proximity.
The senseless violence and baseless superstitions of medieval times might feel closer to us now than even ten years ago. Conspiracy theories, viral misinformation, and AI deepfakes abound. “Improvements” in technology have made us all as clueless and uneducated as peasants, susceptible to fairy tales and baseless rumors.
Maybe this wave of weird and referential art can act as a comforting reminder of sorts: things have been bad and chaotic before and you can’t wait for peacetime to live, to create. I don’t believe that art flourishes in heartbreak and darkness, as some do, but I also don’t think it withers or dies on the vine in the cold. I think, much like wine, art is a product of a time and place as well as human hands and the materials we have, and certain conditions produce certain kinds of art. A lot of art made in response to difficulty is bad, but perhaps the heightened stakes of this moment could inspire people to be weirder, to seize the day, to shrug off our old, civilized ways of doing things, which never really served most of us anyways.
Sharing shows open now in Tribeca below - happy hopping!
“Play!” at Jacqueline Sullivan Gallery (52 Walker Street, 4th Floor - until 3/21) - Jacqueline Sullivan is offering one of the most exciting and immersive gallery experiences in the city right now (and has been since opening her doors). This new show is a welcome burst of whimsy, brightness, humor, and history. The rare press release that is not just art-speak gobbledygook: “The exhibition proposes that play is not frivolity or superfluous diversion, but is instead an essential mode of creative inquiry: one that allows joy and artistic rigor to meaningfully coexist.”
“In Celebration of Shadows” at GRIMM (54 White Street - until 3/7) - If you’ve been reading for a while, you know I love a group show chock-full of very different paintings. With a group show, your chances of connecting to something increase manifold—so many artists, so many styles and perspectives to try on. GRIMM’s latest includes some familiar favorites (the always wonderful Anthony Cudahy, who had a solo show with the gallery last year) and new-to-me discoveries (Daniel Richter).
The concept for the show was that the curator (who painted the portrait below - I love), Ian Hartshorne, invited artists to create a work to include and, in turn, invite their teacher to contribute a work and select one of their other students to contribute a work. Thus the show is clumped in groups of threes, with each trio in conversation (“the exhibition eschews thematic concerns outright and instead reveals deeper layers of incidental human, personal, psychological connections and occasional rejections between student and teacher.”).
“Unbridled: Horsin’ Around” at LATITUDE Gallery (5 Lispenard Street - until 3/14) - I kept bookmarking LATITUDE’s shows and somehow not going to them, but I made a point of stopping by for their horse-themed group show, cleverly timed to Lunar New Year (in case you’ve been living under a rock, it’s the year of the fire horse). 35 artists included equine paintings, with just a few names I recognized in the lineup (Emma Beatrez, Sarah Alice Moran). Although the salon-style hang means that a lot of work is crammed onto the wall, I was surprised by the overall consistent quality of these pieces. I took my time and deeply appreciated each interpretation.
Happy Lunar New Year to all who celebrate xx
LOVE your point about the medeival trend. It's been on the runway a ton, too. While we're at it, let's bring back the guillotine ;)