Anthony Cudahy


Solo

Fool’s errand / Fool’s gold, GRIMM and Hales Gallery, New York, NY, 2024

Double Spar, Hales Gallery and GRIMM, London 2023

A pearl caught between my teeth, GRIMM, Amsterdam, 2022

Coral Room, Hales Gallery, New York, NY, 2021

The Moon Sets A Knife, Semiose, Paris, 2021

Burn Across The Breeze, 1969 Gallery, New York, NY, 2021

Flames, Semiose, Paris, 2020


Museum

Spinneret, Ogunquit Museum of American Art, ME, 2024

Spinneret, The Green Family Art Foundation, Dallas, TX, 2024

Like Night Needs Morning, CAP Centre d'art de Saint-Fons, 2024

Conversation, Musée des Beaux-Arts de Dole, Dole, 2023


Two-Person

It Was Dark in His Arms, with Ian Lewandowski, Deli Gallery, New York, NY, 2021


Group


******


Printed Matter


Press


Contact

Coral Room, Hales Gallery, New York, NY
September 10 - October 30, 2021

Hales is delighted to announce Anthony Cudahy's debut solo exhibition at the gallery, Coral Room. Cudahy (b.1989 Florida, USA) received a BFA from Pratt Institute, NY in 2011 and completed an MFA at Hunter College, NY in 2020. He lives and works in Brooklyn, NY.   

These new works mark a continued evolvement and refining of Cudahy's practice. Still drawing from his expansive archive, developed from a continuous collaging of ideas, Cudahy is now setting up his own imagery, photographing subjects. For Cudahy, allegorical elements of the new works have progressively become autobiographically focused. Themes and motifs in the works stem from looking to vernacular photography, etchings from the Middle Ages, the symbolism of specific plants, to a scene from La Dolce Vita. In Cudahy's carefully constructed images, he has also become more specific about place. Architectural elements of apartment interiors and exteriors, as well as rural and beach scenes ground his storytelling. 

Coral Room takes its title from a song by British performer Kate Bush, whose enchanting lyrics are packed with visual imagery, which Cudahy has delicately woven into the exhibition - sightings of spiders, webs, and little brown jugs. Moreover, the song speaks to the passing of time, memories, relationships, loss, and an attachment to objects. Like Bush, Cudahy is a storyteller who borrows from the past - where she creates songs within songs, Cudahy makes paintings within paintings. 

As Cudahy describes, he 'quotes' from art history. Often repeating a visual motif which in turn becomes part of his lexicon and own symbolic shorthand. When looking to art history, Cudahy is drawn to works that have multiple readings. In Washed up on shore (gift from the nothing) he references Soutine's Still life with Rayfish which itself is an adaptation of Chardin's The Rayfish (1725). Details such as the reflections in the windows of Lily and snake bundle ("And she took the time to believe in what she said and") are a homage to Lois Dodd. In Tempest (rooftop) Cudahy borrows compositional and atmospheric elements from Giorgione's The Tempest - the Renaissance painting made in the early 1500s which still sparks much debate between art historians. The elusive meaning of the scene and mystery surrounding the work is echoed in Cudahy's piece, the viewer is encouraged to decipher the narrative puzzle. Three figures are bathed in a golden red light, which could be viewed as sunset with an approaching storm or as a strange, unnatural color palette. This masterfully cultivated ambiguity is seen throughout the exhibition. Details are open to interpretation, in Anti-bausor tree (protected sleepers, wolf's-bane and spider around) it is unclear as to whether the bausor tree has caused harm to the figures or if they are in a peaceful slumber. Similarly with portrayals of animals in the works, their allegorical presence is not definitively good or evil.  


Photography by Phoebe dHeurle

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