Cody Hudson: I Am The Only One Searching For You

Joshua Liner Gallery is excited to announce Cody Hudson’s inaugural solo exhibition with the gallery, I Am The Only One Searching For You. The Chicago, IL based artist creates paintings and sculptures that explore the poetic potential of abstraction. I Am The Only One Searching For You opens June 20 and will remain on view through July 19, 2019. The artist will attend the opening reception.

Hudson characterizes his practice as a “stream of communication” that works itself into all facets of his artmaking, which includes painting, sculpture, murals, print-making, and graphic design. Each of these artistic endeavors is informed by Hudson’s narrative of longing and hopefulness, while finding context within contemporary abstraction. The artist draws inspiration from a wide range of subjects, not limited to color field painting, outer space, Wisconsin, communal movements of the 60s, weaving and textile design, psychoactive plants, Chicago, ambient and new age music, and the High Desert in California.

I Am The Only One Searching For You includes a selection of Hudson’s acrylic on linen paintings, powder coated steel sculptures as well as a mural. Complimenting each other, Hudson’s painting and sculpture practices aim to “build a history of repeated shapes to form a personal language.” Both bodies of work employ a visual lexicon that unites organic forms with a bold palette, reminiscent of Henri Matisse’s cutouts and Stuart Davis’ abstract compositions. Whether through the additive process of applying paint to linen or the subtractive process of cutting out forms from a sheet of steel, Hudson’s elemental use of shape acts as a direct extension of the poetic content of the work itself. These non-representational forms capture the dynamic quality of the natural world, that the artist characterizes as “loose, imperfect, and ever-changing.”

Starting with simple geometric contours and slowly evolving into slightly more representational paintings, the artist exploits the repetition of color and shape to develop compositions that loosely reference landscape, still life, and human emotion. In These Practices Sometimes Have Similarities (High Desert Memory), Hudson layers idiosyncratic shapes in contrasting hues to create the illusion of a background and foreground, suggesting a dense landscape. The artist captures the essence of his subjects by deconstructing complex forms into cohesive and lyrical canvases. Mimicking the composition of two paintings on the opposite wall, Hudson’s mural serves to further contextualize his panting practice in relation to his entire oeuvre.

Aligning with the aesthetic of his canvases, Hudson’s powder coated sculptures also feature illustrative linework and monochromatic colors. The edges and cutouts have a gestural quality that is preserved through the manufacturing process, which involves welding a quarter inch steel form to a steel base and then applying a powder coating, making the finished sculpture weather-proof. Arranged in a group, these intimate three-dimensional works echo the compositions of the surrounding canvases.

Cody Hudson is a Chicago, IL based artist, also known for his graphic design contributions under the name Struggle Inc. His paintings, sculpture, and graphic works have been exhibited throughout the United States, Europe, and Japan in solo exhibitions at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, IL; Hyde Park Art Center, Chicago, IL; Elmhurst Art Museum, Elmhurst, IL; Andrew Rafacz Gallery, Chicago, IL; Rocket Gallery, Tokyo; and V1 Gallery, Copenhagen, Denmark. The artist’s site-specific installations include: Dreams Burn Down Redux, Soho House, Chicago, IL; Future/Memory, Hellerau Art Center, Dresden, Germany; A Cheval-Entre design graphique et art contemporain, Nantes, France; and Festival of Light, Bangkok, Thailand.