Artist: Anthony Cudahy

GRIMM and Hales present a dual solo exhibition by Anthony Cudahy across their London spaces, marking the artist’s first solo project in the UK. A new body of work is on view at both GRIMM's Mayfair location and Hales Gallery’s Shoreditch space, opening 9 October 2023 and coinciding with Frieze London. The solo presentations follow on from Conversation, Cudahy’s solo institutional debut at Musée des Beaux-Arts Dole (FR) and precedes his first US museum solo at Ogunquit Museum of American Art, ME (US).

Cudahy 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.

In new paintings and drawings Cudahy explores the idea of doubling: subtle dual associations appear in companion paintings, as recurrent gestures and pairings of figures. He continues to paint multiple iterations of the same people, who are sometimes ‘acting’ or sometimes ‘themselves,’ challenging the conventions and cultural understanding of portraiture. For Cudahy, how the paint is handled has its own narrative potential, in texture, brushstrokes, cropping and use of colour. There is a sense of narrative possibility playing out within and outside Cudahy’s surfaces, encapsulating a moment suspended in time.

Anthony Cudahy (b. 1989 Ft. Myers, FL, US) completed an MFA at Hunter College, New York, NY (US) in 2020. He was featured as one of the Artsy Vanguard artists of 2022, and his exhibition Conversation is currently on view at the Musée des Beaux-Arts de Dole (FR). He has had solo exhibitions with GRIMM, Amsterdam (NL) in 2022; Hales Gallery, New York, NY (US) in 2021; Semiose Gallery, Paris (FR) in 2021 and 1969 Gallery, New York, NY (US) in 2018. He has been shown in various international group exhibitions and was included in GRIMM’s Equal Affections exhibition in Amsterdam (NL) in 2021. Cudahy's work has been featured in Artforum, Brooklyn Rail, The London Magazine, Cultured Mag and the Paris Review among others.

His work can be found in collections of the AkzoNobel Art Foundation, Amsterdam (NL); Baltimore Museum of Art, MD (US); The Hort Family Collection, New York, NY (US); Institute of Contemporary Art, Miami, FL (US); Kunstmuseum, The Hague (NL); Les Arts au Mur Artothèque de Pessac, Pessac (FR); and Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam (NL).