GABE CORTESE

Gabe Cortese joined us on the project in June 2022. Cortese’s fluid, sweat-slicked figures undulate against curling grass, wind, and trees in this new series of works. The world built by the artist answers to the will of the body, the environment bending against it. In Stumbler, 2022 both environment and body turn acidic, as a lone figure runs downhill, head thrown back in ecstasy, even as the setting swells and burns with heat. In a series of smaller works, Dancers (tangle), Forward and Back and Visitation, frenzied limbs tangle, twine and repel one another, caught in a feverish dance. Mannerist style meets the crescendo of movement familiar in futurist painting and 1940s Disney animation. Cortese employs Pentimento, the trace of an earlier painting beneath, as the technique behind these layered gestures. But Pentimento's literal meaning, to regret, further strikes a chord in the works. Specifically, in Weeper (Iris grasp), 2022 as the artist’s character returns, a single iris limp in hand.

Group exhibitions include Fluid Suns and Vitamin C, G/art/en Gallery, Como, Italy, Curated by Vince Vanden Bogaard,2022; Lost in a Spectacle, Woaw Gallery, Beijing, China, Curated by Sasa Bogojev, 2022; Slow Songs, Quappi Projects, Curated by John Brooks, Louisville, KY, 2022; A Species of Writing, Auxier Kline, Online curated exhibition, Brooklyn, New York, 2021; Summer Stage: Act Two, Auxier Kline, Online curated exhibition, Brooklyn, New York, 2021; Summer Stage: Act One, Auxier Kline, Online curated exhibition, Brooklyn, New York, 2021; Significant Others, Auxier Kline, Online Curated Exhibition, Brooklyn, New York, 2021; Paper House, UCF Art Gallery, Orlando, Florida, 202; Hopefully, ParkHaus15, Orlando, Florida, 2021; INsideOUT, Atlantic Center for the Arts, New Smyrna, Florida, 2020; amongst others. As well as a recent solo exhibition, Flirting with a Shadow, The Cabin LA, Los Angeles, CA, 2022.