Joshua Abelow

Released in 1969, Songs from a Room was Leonard Cohen’s seminal second album; it’s also the title of New York-based artist Joshua Abelow’s first solo exhibition at devening projects + editions. Cohen’s release set the stage for a long career as a poet, lyricist and vocalist with a sound and attitude that was spare and circumscribe. Like the songs on this album, Abelow’s paintings have a similar quality of efficiency and use a melodic thread as the foundation for cutting subject matter. At the root of Abelow’s modestly scaled paintings is a prodigious, career-long reconsideration of Modernist idioms. Filtered through a lens of wry self-deprecation, these tough canvases are produced with highly specific chromatic systems and suggest a historical reverence to artists as diverse as William Copley, Francis Picabia and Rene Magritte (particularly works from his Vache period). We are very pleased to show Joshua’s work at this important time in his career.

Joshua Abelow has been exhibiting in the United States, Europe, and Canada since the early 2000s. He has had solo shows in New York at James Fuentes LLC and Tomorrow Gallery in Toronto. Abelow has an upcoming solo exhibition at Sorry We’re Closed in Brussels, Belgium.

During the summer of 2011 Abelow oversaw a series of curatorial projects at “ART BLOG ART BLOG” a gallery space he conceived in the Chelsea studio of his friend and former employer Ross Bleckner. Abelow is working on a memoir titled “Painter’s Journal” about his adventures as a burgeoning young artist in New York City in the late 1990s. Abelow will be featured in a solo presentation with James Fuentes at the inaugural Frieze, New York, in May of 2012. “Painter’s Journal” will be released in New York at this time.

Abelow earned his BFA from the Rhode Island School of Design in 1998, and his MFA from the Cranbrook Academy of Art in 2008. He has participated in residencies at the Vermont Studio Center (Johnson, Vermont), the Banff Center (Alberta, Canada), and at Takt Kunstprojectraum (Berlin, Germany). Abelow is represented by James Fuentes Gallery in New York City. You can find Abelow’s blog online at ART BLOG ART BLOG.

Joshua’s exhibition ART BLOG ART BLOG is the subject of a recent article by Sofia Leiby called Post-Internet Painting and the Death of Affect.

Website landing page photograph by Jason Frank Rothenberg.