Anthony Cudahy: Spinneret

The Green Family Art Foundation is pleased to present Anthony Cudahy: Spinneret, curated by Devon Zimmerman, remaining on view until January 26, 2024.

Anthony Cudahy: Spinneret draws inspiration from—and is named for—the silk-producing organ that spiders use to weave, or spin, their webs. Cudahy’s figurative paintings piece together enigmatic scenes of specific objects and equivocal environments from interwoven references drawn from Queer archives, art history, film, poetry, friends, and his own autobiography. His fluid application of paint and idiosyncratic palette—at moments sullen, earthen, corporeal and at others high-key, acidic, artificial— animates the ongoing push and pull between the real and surreal across his practice.

Through his art, Cudahy explores the hazy slippages of subjectivity in the digital age. The artist anchors his compositions to passages of gentle tenderness, absent-minded repose, or banal isolation; prosaic instances that often carry the greatest poetic weight. Within these moments, Cudahy contemplates love and friendship. His husband, the photographer Ian Lewandowski, frequently appears as the artist’s muse, found reading, sleeping, or entwined. Cudahy also turns to his network of friends, like the artist Lily Wong, who is caught lost in thought gazing from a balcony or tensely moving furniture in a New York apartment. The art historical mixes with the present, as Cudahy imbibes figures and compositions from works by artists as far-flung as Giorgione, Pieter Bruegel the Elder, Lois Dodd, and Francis Bacon.

Wrapped around his scenes of intimacy are meditations on death and its politics. From the HIV/AIDS crisis of the 1980s and 1990s to the COVID-19 Pandemic, Cudahy examines these periods of crises with homages to artist and filmmaker Derek Jarman, and more germane views of crowds congregating during lockdowns. Cudahy brings together different histories, culling images from a range of sources, including photos from the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual & Transgender Community Center archives in New York and medieval tapestries. These themes are woven throughout the works in the exhibition.

Anthony Cudahy: Spinneret is organized by the Ogunquit Museum of American Art, ME (US).

About Anthony Cudahy

Anthony Cudahy (b. 1989 Ft. Myers, FL, US) completed an MFA at Hunter College, New York, NY (US) in 2020. His solo exhibition titled Spinneret at the Ogunquit Museum of American Art, ME (US) has travelled to the Green Family Art Foundation, Dallas, TX (US). Spinneret is accompanied by a publication available to order. In 2023 the artist had his first solo museum exhibition, Conversation, at the Musée des Beaux-Arts de Dole (FR). He has had solo exhibitions with GRIMM London (UK) and Amsterdam (NL), Hales Gallery, New York, NY (US), Semiose, Paris (FR), and 1969 Gallery, New York, NY (US), among others. 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 T Magazine, 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); Cantor Arts Center at Stanford University, CA (US); Dallas Museum of Art, TX (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); Speed Art Museum, Louisville, KY (US); and Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam (NL).

About Devon Zimmerman

Devon Zimmerman is the Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art. His research focuses on transatlantic networks that fueled modernism in art and design. Zimmerman has held various positions at the Museum of Modern Art, Metropolitan Museum of Art, and Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum. He curated or co-curated the exhibitions Deconstructing Power: W. E. B. Du Bois at the 1900 World’s Fair (2022–23); Networks of Modernism, 1898–1968 (2023); Ever Baldwin: Down the Line (2023); and Spontaneous Generation: The Art of Liam Lee (2023). He is also the curator of several exhibitions, including Anthony Cudahy: Spinneret and Lee Krasner: Geometries of Expression (both 2024). He edited and contributed to the catalog Ever Baldwin: Down the Line (2023) and Anthony Cudahy: Spinneret (2024) and has been published in journals such as Modernism/modernity. Zimmerman received an MA from the Institute of Fine Arts at New York University and a PhD from the University of Maryland, College Park.

About the Green Family Art Foundation

The Green Family Art Foundation is a non-profit 501(c)(3) organization. The Green Family Art Foundation’s mission is to provide a venue for, make grants to museums for the benefit of, and educate others about contemporary artists who we believe communicate important ideas that are relevant and discussion-worthy both today and in the future.

The Green Family Art Foundation is located at 2111 Flora Street, Suite 110, Dallas, TX 75201. Hours are Wednesday–Friday, 11 am–5 pm, and Saturday–Sunday, 11 am–6 pm. Admission is free.

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