Com­ing up on their 2-​year anniver­sary this March, Baltimore’s artist-​run gallery Nudashank has seen the kind of crit­i­cal suc­cess and mete­oric growth most inde­pen­dent spaces only dream of. True to their mis­sion “to show­case ris­ing young artists and bring new blood into the Bal­ti­more scene,” Nudashank has staged a diverse, and con­sis­tently qual­ity array of shows. From group shows, like the stel­lar Alex Lukas curated Doubt­ing Thomases exhibit last fall, to solo shows from young tal­ents like Michael Dot­son, and a mov­ing ret­ro­spec­tive of beloved Bal­ti­more artist Waltr Car­pen­ter who passed in 2009, Nudashank founders Seth Adels­berger and Alex Ebstein have made excel­lent use of their beau­ti­ful third floor space in the his­toric H&H Build­ing. Urban­ite Mag­a­zine ref­er­enced their “win­ning spirit” in Baltimore’s Year in Arts, by stat­ing, “In a tough eco­nomic year, [Nudashank] led the way to pro­mote local artists with pro­fes­sion­al­ism, ambi­tion, and an unapolo­get­i­cally hip aes­thetic.” Nudashank is con­tin­u­ing their trend of keenly selected emerg­ing tal­ents with their lat­est group show, “Color Me Bad,” open­ing this Sat­ur­day Feb­ru­ary 19^th, fea­tur­ing work from Joshua Abe­low, Hugh Scott-​Douglas, Brian Michael Dunn, and Ted Gahl.

Joshua Abe­low an artist and writer liv­ing in Brook­lyn, NY. His ever quirky, often dark, paint­ings and illus­tra­tions run the gamut from abstract can­vases to funny, self-​referential draw­ings. Abe­low received his BFA from RISD, and went on to earn an MFA in Paint­ing from Cran­brook Acad­emy of Art. At his Williams­burg stu­dio Abe­low pro­duces work for shows at gal­leries like Griz­zly Griz­zly in Philly and Cin­ders Gallery in Brook­lyn. He had a solo show last month, “Oh! Abe­low!” at James Fuentes LLC in NYC. Hugh Scott-​Douglas is a painter liv­ing in Toronto, Canada. Orig­i­nally from Cam­bridge, Eng­land Scott-​Douglas stud­ied at Pratt before going on to fin­ish his BFA in sculp­ture at Toronto’s Ontario Col­lege of Art and Design. While at OCAD he cre­ated del­i­cate, unbal­anced unfired clay sculp­tures, but recently he has been focus­ing on a series of sim­ple, optic paint­ings. Scott-​Douglas’ illu­sion induc­ing pat­terned can­vased have been shown at Ruins and Xspace in Toronto and New Gallery in Lon­don. His sculp­tural work was fea­tured in last years “Bad Sculp­ture” at Young Art in LA.

Brian Michael Dunn lives and works in DC. His palette ranges from muted to tech­ni­color, strik­ing a wide range of expres­sive tones. Dunn’s web­site doesn’t offer a great deal of bio­graph­i­cal infor­ma­tion, but per­haps this is meant to let his beau­ti­ful paint­ings speak for them­selves. I for one am excited to hear what they have to say at the show. You can see images of his stu­dio in DC that the Nudashank team recently posted here. Finally, round­ing out the exhi­bi­tion is Brook­lyn based Ted Gahl, who makes pared down paint­ings in acrylic paint, latex paint, gouache, and spray paint. Gahl got a BFA at Pratt before going on to earn an MFA in Paint­ing from RISD last year. Gah’s work has been fea­tured at West­ern Exhi­bi­tions in Chicago, Above Sec­ond Gallery in Hong Kong, and is cur­rently on view at the Mass MOCA in an exhibit curated by Regine Basha enti­tled, “An Exchange With Sol LeWitt.”

Color Me Bad
Feb­ru­ary 19^th through March 13^th
NUDASHANK
405 W. Franklin Street
3^rd Floor
Bal­ti­more, MD 21201
Open by appointment

Images cour­tesy of Nudashank, Lost in E Minor, Fecal Face, and Hugh Scott-​Douglas’ web­site.

Tags: Brian Michael Dunn, Hugh Scott-Douglas, Joshua Abelow, Nudashank, Ted Gahl

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, February 16th, 2011 at 8:51 pm and is filed under Art, Event.
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