01.05 — 02.08.25
It is with great pleasure that Devening Projects presents I Would Like to Step Out of My Heart, Cody Tumblin’s third solo exhibition with the gallery. An opening reception for the artist takes place on Sunday, January 5th; the exhibition continues until February 8, 2025.
In this intimate exhibition of new paintings by Cody Tumblin, the Chicago artist presents a body of work gently tethered to the miraculous. Throughout his career, Tumblin has described abstraction as a tool to bind the natural world to the spiritual, situating his work within a lineage of artists such as Hilma af Klint, Etel Adnan, Paul Klee, and others. Functionally, his paintings act as reliquaries, dedicating themselves to singular subjects that are embraced and celebrated by dense, colorful collages. Each image is cobbled together through a slow and meticulous assembly of cut and painted forms—often scraps and remnants torn from other paintings or found textiles. Slow and attentive eyes are rewarded with painted threads or bright pigments peeking out from beneath the edges of stars, hearts, and creeping vines.
His palette dances between the celebratory and the melancholic, often emulating soft light or a darkened night sky. Color is not only a formal device but a resonant voice, one that leans toward contemplative introspection rather than unrestrained optimism. Grids and stripes echo the fragile construction of order and stability, reflecting a human condition that is both tenuous and delicate despite its beauty. At times, his spatial structures feel pictorial; at others, they unfold across flat planes, evoking a sense of instability and complexity.
Tumblin’s work invites viewers to see the world as a place ripe with possibility and tenderness, even amid its frequent darkness. The show’s title, I Would Like to Step Out of My Heart, borrowed from Rilke’s 1918 poem “Lament”, echoes a longing to transcend the depths of sorrow and connect with something greater. Tumblin’s paintings propose that the ordinary often holds the sacred and that the unnoticed may carry the potential for the miraculous.
Cody Tumblin (b. Tennessee) lives and works in Chicago, IL where he received his BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2013. Recent solo and two-person exhibitions include Left Field Gallery, Hans Gallery, Devening Projects, Mild Climate, Skylab, Good Enough, and SPF 15. In 2021, Tumblin was invited by the Morris Museum of Art to lead a writing workshop for emerging artists, and in 2020 he was honored as a Breakout Artist by Newcity Magazine. His work has been published in Art Maze, Tatter Quarterly, Vast Magazine, and Vogue Korea.
Exhibition Review for I Would Like to Step Out of My Heart
