CHAMBER: Joshua Abelow
Worm Paintings
July 22nd - 23rd, 2023

“The Worm Paintings started as a private joke. I defaced one of my Barnett Abelow paintings with a worm to make Katya laugh. Of course, the Barnett Abelow paintings were already a joke so this became a double joke of sorts. The idea to put the worms in the paintings was directly influenced by Katya's drawings of cans of worms. Katya is quite knowledgeable when it comes to worms and all manner of information that is of importance to the health of our planet. Darwin wrote that "civilizations could flourish in regions where the soil had passed thousands of times through the intestines of active earthworms." With this exhibition, I'm presenting a suite of large vertical paintings - all feature worms, some feature a yellow alien - all 80 x 48 inches - all made between 2022 and 2023. There is also a sculptural element that is an extension of my current show on view at Disneyland Paris in Australia, but I don't want to give away the surprise. In short, I couldn't resist the opportunity to exhibit this group of paintings in an underground chamber. I think artists are a bit like worms: we spend our lives in the dark, toiling away at things most people find unimportant or uninteresting. Oh, how wrong they are!”

(all photography courtesy of Katya Kiriloff)

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Joshua Abelow is an artist based in Harris, NY. Abelow is the proprietor of Freddy, a curatorial project he founded in 2014.