Jack Hanley Gallery is pleased to announce Friend of the Devil, a group exhibition of works on paper. Incorporating narratives that are concurrently playful and grotesque, the works in the show are all rooted in the human form. In their own way, each artist has crafted a cast of recurring characters, often uncanny or surreal, and concerned with the human condition.
Nick Payne and Aris Moore both work solely on paper to create subjects that seem to exist equally in the real world and dream-scapes. Although not overtly sinister, there is an undeniable darkness to their distorted characters. Utilizing graphite and brightly colored pencil, Atsushi Kaga creates characters that present themselves throughout his work and develop personalities with thoughts, feelings, and hopes that allude often to darker themes of life. Heidi Hahn mainly works on canvas, but paper has served as an important adjunct of her practice which allows her to work in a more free-form seriality. Her small-scale series of clock paintings allows for a repetitive conglomeration with subtle changes, resulting in somewhat of a visual puzzle. With an underlying dark humor, Donald Urquhart portrays strange and glamorous subjects, from former Hollywood starlets to drag queens. The techniques and choices of medium that the artists apply to paper are striking and varied.
Heidi Hahn grew up in Los Angeles and went on to receive her B.F.A. from Cooper Union in 2006. Her studio practice resides in New York with intermissions from residency opportunities, most notably Skowhegan in 2010 and currently Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown until May 2015. In the upcoming summer months she will attend Headlands in San Francisco.
Atsushi Kaga (b. 1978) is a Japanese artist living and working in Brooklyn. Kaga graduated from the National College of Art and Design, Dublin, in 2005. He works in mixed media, painting, animation, drawing, and sculpture and has exhibited at mother’s tankstation in Dublin, the Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin, Butler Gallery in Kilkenny, Ireland, Nicolas Krupp Gallery in Basel, Switzerland, and Galeria Leme in Sao Paulo, Brazil.
Aris Moore lives and works in Exeter, NH. She received her B.F.A from Montserrat College of Art in Beverly, MA, in 1998 and her M.F.A. from the Art Institute of Boston in 2010. Her work has been exhibited in the Netherlands, New York, and Boston.
Hudson, NY-based artist Nick Payne received his BFA from Rhode Island School of Design in 2005. He has recently exhibited at Galerie 126 (Rennes, France), Mission Comics (San Francisco), Fifi Projects (Mexico City), and Cathouse Funeral (Brooklyn, NY). His work is currently on view at 247365 in New York, NY.
Donald Urquhart (b. 1963) lives and works in London. His work has been exhibited at institutions such as White Columns in New York, Saatchi Gallery in London, CCA Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts in San Francisco, Museum für Moderne Kunst in Frankfurt, and The State Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg, among others.