Fredericks Freiser Gallery is pleased to announce a two-person exhibition of new work. Nicholas Di Genova recently graduated from the Ontario College of Art and Design. He has been included in group shows in Canada, Europe, and New York. He will have an upcoming solo show at Gallery 500 in Portland, OR. Sean McCarthy received an MFA from Yale and was included in Graphic presented here last summer. Both artists will also have new work at the Armory Show 2005.
Nicholas Di Genova’s aggressive and extremely technical ink drawings on Mylar chart the evolution and family genealogy of the breeding between the mythological Minotaur and its real-life doppelganger, the equally monstrous WWI Canadian battleship HMS Minotaur. Di Genova writes: “The HMS Minotaur has led a long and prosperous life. After killing and devouring fourteen boys and fourteen girls within the labyrinth during the beginning of its military career, The Minotaur went underground and was not heard of for many years. Eventually it re-emerged as a key member of the Mid-Victorian Royal Navy, where it performed many fantastic feats and defeated many enemies in the name of the Queen. In 1920, feeling worn out by many years of service, the HMS Minotaur retired from the navy and chose to settle down and raise a family. Being an able-bodied hermaphrodite, the Minotaur birthed and raised three lovely children. Now, many years later, the HMS Minotaur’s children have young children of their own, and the Minotaur can finally rest and enjoy their company in its old age.”
Sean McCarthy’s work is enigmatic, unsettling, and darkly comic. His finely-wrought drawings are hallucinatory visions of lust, gluttony, and general unpleasantness. Within this beastly upheaval, he renders the sagging crevasses and withered underbellies of a world in a state of fantastic violence. McCarthy is an extraordinary draftsman with influences as wide ranging as early Paul Klee etchings and Himalayan religious painting, while his primal dramas recall the 19th Century decadent tradition where imagery conjured a darkness far more vibrant than the banality of our everyday evil.
Fredericks Freiser Gallery is located at 504 West 22nd Street, between 10th and 11th Avenues. Gallery hours are Tuesday through Saturday, 11am to 6pm. For further information and/or photographs please contact the gallery by telephone at (212) 633-6555 or fax at (212) 367-9502 or email fredericksfreiser@nyc.rr.com. Find more information on this exhibition or any of our artists at www.fredericksfreisergallery.com