‘TRUE STORIES’ Exhibition Echoes Narratives At The Untitled Space
‘TRUE STORIES‘ entrances the experiences of each artist’s stories through narrative painting, drawing, or portraiture.
‘TRUE STORIES’ is a group show that opened on April 9th and is on view through May 27th, 2022. The Untitled Space‘s “TRUE STORIES,” is curated by the one and only Indira Cesarine . The exhibition features over 30 contemporary artists whose work addresses storytelling through narrative painting, drawing, or portraiture. Each artist amplifies different perspectives that mirror back themes that echo a ‘true story.’ Themes gleaning from each artist’s vision of public and private life, encounters, dreams, suspense and drama, the absurdities of life, lived experiences, traumatic moments, celebrations, memories, time, love, loss, and survival while touching on notions of the eerie, the familiar, and déjà vu.
The artists present complex narratives featuring characters and scenes that provoke our imagination and address our hopes, fears, and desires through their depictions. They channel their abilities to give shape and texture to stories that can be read across time, language, and cultures.
Exhibiting Artists: Annie Brito Hodgin, Annika Connor, Bartosz Beda, Boris Torres, Bria Fernandes, Danielle Muzina, Eva Redamonti, Faustine Badrichani, Gabriel Zea, Grace Graupe Pillard, Hannah Duggan, Ian Clyde, Indira Cesarine, Jared Freschman, Katie Commodore, Ken Mar, Kerry Lessard, Kestin Selwyn Cornwall, Kristin O’Connor, Louise Campion, Meegan Barnes, Mel Reese, Michael Hubbard, Michele Brody, Rebecca Bird, Robin Tewes, Siobhan McBride, Sophia Oshodin, Tabitha-ann Whitley, Tracy Brown, and Watson Mere.
Here are a few of the works that are displayed at The Untitled Space. This is ‘TRUE STORIES’:
Boris Torres was born in Ecuador in 1976 and moved to Brooklyn as a child. His work explores the intersection of portraiture, queer culture, and sexuality from a Latin-American and immigrant perspective. A 2019 Leslie Lohman museum queer artist fellow and a 2022 artist-in-residence at the Virginia Center for the creative arts, Torres’s work can be found in the notable collections of Beth Rudin Dewoody and Amir Shariat.
Faustine Badrichani is a French artist based in New York. Badrichani is represented in France by Esther et Paul gallery.
Badrichani’s work focuses on the female body and the exploration of femininity, always showcasing colorful women’s silhouettes. The past decade, Faustine’s creative process, a self-taught artist who developed an extensive artistic practice, has done works from oil paintings to sculpture, and focuses on works on paper and acrylic paintings. The female body is invariably a leading figure in her practice, and she has developed different series of works around this theme. She creates her own graphic universe and showcasing a unique use of the color blue throughout her work. Her practice is derived from real life and invites models to pose in her New York studio.
In June 2021, she had a solo show in Paris named “D’abord la Mer.” Faustine’s work can be seen in various group shows in galleries such as Insight Art Space, Untitled Art Space, and Brooklyn Collective. As well as in multiple exclusive and curated only platforms such as Artsy, Saatchi, and ArtinRes.
Born and raised in Connecticut, Eva Redamonti pursued music at Berklee College of Music in 2013. She lives and works as both an artist and musician in Brooklyn, NY. Eva Redamonti’s art portrays drawings that merge realism with fantasy through movement and detail. Redamonti is a multi-faceted artist who uses different media forms such as ink on paper, digital, gouache, and acrylic. Eva’s drawings strive to convey the emotion and narrative around various topics; empowerment, mental illness, superstition, and futurism, with a dab of her lived experience as a musician.
Gabriel Zea is a Brooklyn- based artist who works as an assistant for Sean Kenney, an artist who creates immersive sculptures out of LEGO bricks. Zea still maintains a consistent artistic practice of his own. He was born in Singapore to a Colombian family and was raised in Houston, TX. Zea’s artwork reflects a desire to find a calm interior livelihood regardless of an outside world that is frequently in a state of constant change. He received a BFA in painting from the Maryland Institute College of Art and then pursued his MFA from the New York Academy of Art. Gabriel studied for a year in Japan, focusing on printmaking and the Japanese language, and in continuation, went to attend artist residencies in Germany, Russia, Spain, and the United States.
Annie Brito Hodgin is a self-taught artist who does figurative oil paintings. Born in Poughkeepsie, New York, and raised in the south, she now lives in Hendersonville, TN. Hodgin’s artwork collections have been displayed nationally and internationally, where her paintings are often evocative and opulent in illusion. Her stokes are thinly layered with diversified mark-making that is personified in the colors she uses, which are radiant with imagery to last in one’s mind for days. Her current work centers on a meditative exploration of trauma, ambiguity, culpability, absurdity, repression, and control. Her figured avatars explore these realities and the tensions they create in her works. Loose symbolism is what Annie draws, which is influenced by literary and mythical references, memories, and the subconscious.
Tabitha Whitley is a Brooklyn-based artist with a focus on oil painting and relief printmaking. Tabitha received her BFA in Painting from the Fashion Institute of Technology in 2009, afterward receiving an MFA in Painting from the New York Academy of Art in 2011. Tabitha uses vibrant colors and portraiture to explore themes around African American heritage. Whitley’s work has been shown in galleries throughout the United States and featured in the Wall Street Journal.
Michael Hubbard was born at a short distance from Detriot. He currently lives and works in Midland, Texas. Primarily working with paintings, their work creates images of non-binary identity, inclusively exhibiting ambiguity, joy, freedom, and contradiction. Their work has been exhibited nationally, including their latest solo exhibition at Gallery 1600 in Atlanta. They received a BFA in Painting from the Savannah College of Art and Design and an MFA in Visual Art from Washington State University. They currently teach Painting and Digital Art at Midland College.
Kestin Cornwall grew up in the Windsor, Ontario area. His father is Grenadian, and his mother is American. He spent much of his youth in Detroit, Michigan, with his family. In 2001 he moved to Oakville, Ontario, to begin his training at Sheridan College Institute of Technology and Advanced Learning. While completing the Art Fundamentals and Illustration programs, Cornwall’s focus and love for the arts increased. He increasingly combined classical drawing and painting with modern digital reproduction and screen-printing.
In 2006 Cornwall won the CAPIC Best In Show Award. Over the past ten years, Cornwall has focused on creating relevant, progressive art. He has used a varied practice of combining hand drawings, digitally removing the human hand, and then forcing the human element back into his work.
Cornwall uses images to explore the notion that culture and entertainment, including film and other media, shape the mass public perception of black people and people of color in American society. Cornwall explores culture and humanity’s relationship with beauty, sex, nature, and the history of cultivation. In addition, Cornwall’s work aims to ask questions regarding equality, immigration, and what it means to be black in America. Cornwall blueprints current political, social-economical murals with structures overflowing with references to media, popular culture, music, and art history. He enjoys challenging the conventional. Cornwall lives and works in Toronto. He feels “an artist must add beauty to the world while invoking the unending social responsibility to capture the thought.” Many of his influences include contemporary graphic realism, street art, and old comics, with remarkable flattery to mystery, often mirroring pop culture representations.. Each of Cornwalls pieces depicts an analysis of societal obsession with beauty, age, and change.
Sophia Oshodin is a self-taught figurative painter who is based in London. She is known for visual storytelling that centers around the spirit of everyday life using imaginary subjects. Her paintings are famous for their striking colors and patterns that engage viewers to come up with their individual interpretations.
Oshodin explores artistic conventions and movements of daily life struggles and the complexities humans experience using figuration storytelling with gazing expressions to highlight the absence of black figures in western art. Her inspiration stems from African art history, fashion, politics, and everyday experience; she works predominantly with acrylic and oil. Sophia uses her practice to challenge the stereotypes drawn from personal experiences constructed by societal ideology and the media associated with the black community, Mental Health, and the complexity of navigating through everyday life. Sophia uses art to reflect representation. She often showcases the daily lives of her subjects in figurative paintings from the diaspora. Primarily women, with a particular interest in family connection, female representation, and empowerment.
The Untitled Space’s exhibition ‘TRUE STORIES’ is open for viewing until May 27th, 2022 in Tribeca, New York. Every piece of art you’ll encounter will tell you a story, either about the artist, what the artist is studying, influenced by, and wants viewers to contemplate on.