NEW YORK, NY.- GRIMM is presenting The Moon and I, a group exhibition on view at the New York gallery from July 13 to August 11, 2023. Among the artists included in the exhibition are Jessica Taylor Bellamy (b. 1992, US), Marcus Cope (b. 1980, UK), Anthony Cudahy (b. 1989, US), TM Davy (b. 1980, US), Matthias Franz (b. 1984, DE), Michael Ho (b. 1991, NL), Matthew Day Jackson (b. 1974, US), Wanda Koop (b. 1951, CA), Ian Lewandowski (b. 1990, US), Mevlana Lipp (b. 1989, DE), Alice Tippit (b. 1975, US), and Eric White (b. 1968, US).
The Moon and I reflects upon noir and neo-noir aesthetics in contemporary art; cinematic tropes that include nightscapes, neon-tinged environments, mysterious figures, and clue-like symbology to illustrate a puzzling metanarrative. The exhibition title refers to the 2005 Rian Johnson-directed film Brick, an homage to film noir, about a teenage loner who pushes his way into the underworld of a high school crime ring to investigate the disappearance of his ex-girlfriend. In the film, an enigmatic character performs a spoken-word rendition of the song The Sun Whose Rays Are All Ablaze from the 1885 opera The Mikado, whose final words are 'We're very wide awake, the moon and I.’ The exhibition underscores and draws from this nonlinear convergence of narratives.
The works on view range from painting to photography to film, creating an elusive story told through several visual languages with distinctive formal approaches. The hard-edged, graphic style of Alice Tippit’s paintings create a coded language of looming ambiguity that encourages the viewer to question forms and symbolics. Matthew Day Jackon’s Footprint (2010) echoes this use of signals and forms with a gypsum relief that suggests memory and evidence of a just-missed action.
New paintings by Jessica Taylor Bellamy feature found imagery and text, such as those found in newspapers, that are screen printed on to the canvas amidst sun-kissed skies of kaleidoscopic light to create sublime explorations of the California landscape.
Featuring a lone figure shouting illegible words into the woods of a forest at twilight, Michael Ho’s film work Echoes from the Void (2022) considers the echo chambers of contemporary conspiracy theories alongside the mythic, subterranean topography of the cave. Scattered representations of the moon in various artists’ works in the exhibition, such as those by TM Davy and Wanda Koop, offer a unifying atmosphere suggestive of uncanny events that often occur at night.
Jessica Taylor Bellamy (b. 1992, Whittier, CA, US) is a multidisciplinary artist working in painting, sculpture, and video exploring themes of utopia and dystopia, fantasy and reality, and the collapsing of time. Bellamy creates layered compositions of overlapping and intersecting representations of culture, history, plant species, and sun phases that result in dream-like narratives or windows that give form and visibility to unseen or alternative possibilities.
Marcus Cope (b. 1980, Bath, UK) examines the unreliability of memory and how personal histories are recollected or recorded. Cope explores intimate and personal memories through his paintings that often result in fragmented and abstracted forms, inviting both new interpretations and reflections to unfold.
Anthony Cudahy (b. 1989, Fort Meyers, FL, US) weaves imagery culled from photo archives, art history, film stills, hagiographic icons and personal photographs to explore themes of queer identity and tenderness. His evocative figurative paintings and drawings are informed by extensive historical research. They negotiate feelings of loneliness, isolation, desire, and safety through the lens of the artist’s own autobiographical narratives and crafted mythologies.
TM Davy (b. 1980, New York, NY, US) paints with light and shadow, centering relationships of love and self-realization through his figurative paintings and pastels rendered in a luminous reality. He often depicts the subjects of his work in intimate interactions, allowing the viewer to participate in moments of uncanny engagement.
Matthias Franz (b. 1984, Ilmenau, DE) paints with muted earth tones, contrasted with shadowy outlines and full primary hues that comprise invented architectural spaces or uncanny perspectives. The pulling and pushing tension within his brushstrokes captures the sensation of heavy, enlarged forms giving way to more delicate arrangements, infused with the imbalanced weight and proportions one would find in a dream.
Michael Ho (b. 1991, Arnhem, NL) investigates the notions of the Chinese diaspora, cultural mismatch, and cultural rediscovery through his painting and filmmaking practices.
Ho employs a specific technique of painting from back to front, superimposing diluted images with resolved brush strokes and clashing Eastern traditions with Western aesthetics.
Matthew Day Jackson (b. 1974, Panorama City, CA, US) diverse practice encompasses sculpture, painting, collage, photography, drawing, video, performance, furniture design, and installation art. The concept of connectivity is at the core of Jackson’s work. He investigates a wide range of philosophical, scientific, and historical themes that he interweaves with his personal narrative.
Wanda Koop (b. 1951, Vancouver, CA) is best known for her large-scale, immersive paintings that explore the relationship between urbanization, technology and the natural world.
Throughout the course of her over forty year-long career, Koop has often worked in series, typified by masterful coloration and iconographical repetition. In addition to painting, she produces mixed-media events that incorporate video, music and dance.
Ian Lewandowski (b. 1990, Crown Point, IN, US) photographs a range of subjects including portraits, objects, interiors and text. In particular, he aims to capture the temporal nature of queer spaces, especially in the context of community. Lewandowski produces honest depictions of his subjects while anchoring them within his seductive and surreal world.
Mevlana Lipp (b. 1989, Cologne, DE) works take up the concept of metaphysical art and make references to creation and life in its most primal form. Lipp is deeply fascinated by the natural world in its pure state, as well as in the space it occupies in the human imagination. To Lipp, the curling tendril of a vine, the rounded form of a seed pod or the gentle swaying feathers of a crinoid become signifiers of complex sets of emotions and experiences, communicated in a language outside of human linguistic codes.
Alice Tippit (b. 1975, Independence, KS, US) practice is informed by her interest in language creation and the application of meaning. In her paintings, she employs a graphic, hard-edged style and a restrained color palette, using simple, recognizable yet relatively neutral shapes. The images that she depicts function as signs in which the interaction of form and color produce visual relationships.
Eric White (b. 1968, Ann Arbor, MI, US) creates paintings that reference 20th century film, music and pop culture backed by consummate draftsmanship and painterly finesse to subvert and recode the dominant narratives of contemporary society.
White’s paintings are constructed from elements of our collective consciousness, overflowing with an entropic visual overload.
