11/9/2022

Exhibition

To Die For

Group Exhibition Curated by Laura Sanders
Deborah Brown | Johnny DeFeo | Sophia Heymans | Christina Nicodema | Laura Sanders | Aaron Zulpo

On view November 10 – December 6, 2022

Catalog Launch Event
Thursday November 10, 5-7PM

Sophia Heymans, Tidal Tears, 2022, Paper mâché, molding paste, shells, rocks, sea moss, acrylic, oil on canvas, 20 x 24 in.

Contemporary Art Matters is pleased to present To Die For, a group exhibition curated by Laura Sanders. The exhibition is on view from November 10 to December 6, 2022, and features the work of Deborah Brown, Johnny DeFeo, Sophia Heymans, Christina Nicodema, Laura Sanders and Aaron Zulpo.

To Die For is an exhibition that explores desire, particularly the inexplicable desire to paint. Artists have long been drawn to subjects that reveal life’s dichotomies and match their technical approach to heighten the tension. The application and handling of the paint can imbue a work with opposing qualities, blending beauty with peril, metaphorically mirroring life experiences. Painting is pure alchemy and the drive to paint is an urge as mysterious and ancient as it is magical. This show brings together a group of artists whose work revels in the materiality of the medium itself, using it to infuse their imagery with meaning and potency. Sumptuous paintings traverse the genres of landscape, figurative and still life. To Die For conjoins human desire and the endangered environment from which it is derived.

In a world of magnifying natural disasters and threatened ecosystems, pursuing desire raises uneasy questions. This group of artists’ prescience is evident in the very subjects that they obsessively chase. They shine a light on significant social and environmental impending disasters and cultural norms that threaten our way of life. They draw us in with luscious paint and poignant subjects that have an undercurrent of nature’s fragility.

Sophia Heymans, Braiding The Rain, 2020, Paper mâché, mop strings, oil on canvas, 42 x 50 in.

To Die For installation shots