Picture Farm is proud to present Teeth Will Be Provided, new works on canvas by Matthew Lusk.
It is his second exhibition with the gallery.
Originally conceived as studies for larger installations, the works on exhibit are drawings that consist of chalk and charcoal on flat black canvas panels salvaged from an earlier exhibition at the Goethe Institut that the artist designed and built. The visual vocabulary of this crazed goup of drawings will seem familiar to cosmopolitan types; all of the images have been lifted and altered from cartoons that originally appeared in the New Yorker. Though all of the pieces deal with physical spaces as their subject, their wrecked and wracked human inhabitants make these more than proposals for physical built environments. They function as surreal and perverse Public Service Announcements; promotional materials for decadent contemporary existentialism.
The exhibition title comes from a fabricated tale of Christ that struck the artist as joke with especially New Yorker qualities:
“Truly I tell you, in no one in Israel have I found such faith. I tell you, many will come from east and west and will eat with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven, while the heirs of the kingdom will be thrown into the outer darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.”
A disciple asked, “But Master, what of those who have no teeth?”
And Jesus replied, “Teeth will be provided.”
The exhibition opens Friday, January 9 with a reception from 6-10 pm.
(A small, bespoke bar has been built by the artist for this purpose.)
A special musical performance will take place on the 24th of January featuring Dana Schecter, Lynn Wright, Algis Kyzis, Pete Simonelli, and Vincent Signorelli.
Doors open at 7 PM.
A closing reception will take place on Saturday the 31st.
