Company Gallery has opened My Private Hell, an exhibition featuring Robert Bittenbender, Tobias Bradford, Cole Lu and Aleksandra Waliszewska whose works on view evoke feelings of anxiety, frazzled nerves and existential panic.
Robert Bittenbender’s sculptural wall works encapsulate a frenetic reality in a beautiful pile of rubble.
Found objects – wires, tubes, safety pins, wrappers, and fragments of molded plaster are combined together with strategy and chance. The resulting amalgamations offer endless compositions in an excess of opulent detritus, unsettled and forever moving.
Tobias Bradford’s uncanny bodily sculptures speak to the delicate nature of the human psyche. Animated with rudimentary mechanics, Bradford’s works display the repetitive actions characteristic of compulsive behavior. Disembodied limbs tremble, tap, quiver and rock with absurd and frenzied energy, challenging our notions of agency and the equivocal relationship between mind, body, and the limitations of
technology.
Cole Lu’s wall works and sculptures challenge the widely used concept of “creatio ex nihilo” — creation
out of nothingness. Lu’s work puts forth a series of gestures to interrogate this logic and how it pertains
to certain philosophies affected by structures of nationalism and colonialism. Drawing from literature and
personal experiences, Lu uses concepts of death and subsequent rebirth – as in trance, a way of crossing, a constant existence in transits – to redefine contemporary belief systems and create new mythologies.
Aleksandra Waliszewska’s intimate gouache works on paper conjure psychologically charged dreamscapes. Waliszewska’s paintings contrast childlike freedom with precision to create dark and enchanting worlds, populated by hybrid creatures and fantastical animals. These ominous and brooding narratives illustrate unsettled notions of the self and emotional unease.
My Private Hell: Robert Bittenbender, Tobias Bradford, Cole Lu, Aleksandra Waliszewska – April 16th, 2022 145 Elizabeth Street (Lower Level) COMPANY
