Nathalie Karg Gallery

Nathalie Karg Gallery is pleased to present Simon Ko's exhibition Dreams Apart, on view from January 10 through March 1, 2025 at 127 Elizabeth Street. Ko's new paintings explore the complexity of human relationships, desire, and the space between the self and others. Dreams Apart examines the unspoken emotional distance and yearning that often skulks beneath the surface of our interactions. In Dreams Apart, Ko invites viewers into a world where fictional characters dream of desires unmet and unknown to those around them. Dreams Apart evokes the sense of longing for something different, something more, while also alluding to the literal and figurative distance between two people. The artist questions the boundaries of relationships, both external and internal, and the ongoing tension between connection and isolation. The works in Dreams Apart reflect a layered artistic process. Some paintings begin with personal observations, while others develop from scattered notes that evolve into scenes, sketches, and narratives. Drawing inspiration from theater, Ko describes the process as an improvisational act, where the outline is ever-shifting, and the final form takes shape through instinct and exploration. One painting in particular, Nasty Habits, captures the aftermath of a disaster, where a woman stands with a fire extinguisher while a man holds a piece of burning paper from a hole in the ground. The scene remains unresolved, leaving the viewer to ponder the cause and consequences. This piece, like many others in the show, touches on the theme of emotional distance-characters caught in moments of unbearable patience and silence, unaware of each other's presence, but united in their longing. The artist's approach to the formal elements of the paintings emphasizes bold, vivid colors, varied textures, and an intentional looseness in the application of paint. Each work conveys a sense of motion, as if the scene were coming to life before the viewer's eyes. The colors are intense, and the brushstrokes are dynamic, implying different speeds of time and emotion. An integral source of inspiration for the exhibition comes from a passage in Jorge Luis Borges' short story Everything and Nothing, which speaks to the fluid nature of identity and the interplay between dreams and reality: "...history adds that before or after dying, he found himself in the presence of God and told him: 'I who have been so many men in vain want to be one myself.' The voice of the Lord answered from a whirlwind: 'Neither am I anyone; I have dreamt the world as you have dreamt your work, my Shakespeare, and among the forms in my dream are you, who, like myself, are many and no one.'" Ko reflects on the idea of characters as both many and no one, much like the world itself, which is dreamt into being. This philosophical inquiry informs the entire exhibition, inviting the viewer to contemplate the tension between creation, identity, and the unspoken desires that define us. Dreams Apart is an act of questioning-an attempt to explore, through beauty and symbolism, the constant yearning that defines human existence.

Nathalie Karg Gallery is pleased to present new works by British artist Danny Moynihan on view from October 24, 2024 to November 30, 2024. Taking its title from a poem by W. H. Auden, In Praise of Limestone presents a new series of cave paintings by the artist and marks Moynihan’s representation with the gallery. Moynihan graduated from the Slade School of Art and was closely aligned with the Young British Artists (YBAs) of the early 90s. Following his relocation to New York City in 2016, Moynihan embarked on a new series of works which explore the interplay between memory and ever-evolving landscapes characterized by futuristic, erotic, and energetic themes. Moynihan’s fascination with humanity's earliest musings and visual representations of the world, coupled with the expanding consciousness towards realms unknown, culminate in the creation of landscapes that feel both familiar and in flux. He works with oil paint and sand to produce rocky, tangible textures characterized by remarkable unity and coherence. The artistic vision is as original as it is dynamic, weaving strands of mysticism and mythology to cross boundaries and evoke a sense of wonder and intrigue in viewers. In an essay written to accompany the exhibition, writer, and curator Adrian Dannatt comments: “These paintings go back to the beginning of it all, most obviously to the caves, to Cosquer and Chauvet, but also to Morocco where Moynihan spends much time, where the earliest human remains have been discovered. These are very much ‘cave paintings’ themselves, as French as North African, concluding a line of landscape in art from Lascaux through the Arcadian ideals of Poussin to the muddy realism of Courbet, a devolution, a ‘nostalgie de la boue’, returning to our primal darkness.” Moynihan has exhibited nationally and internationally, most notably at Grob Gallery, London, UK (1992); Anne Faggionato, London, UK (2001); and McGrath Gallery, Los Angeles, CA (1988, 89). Recently, he has been in group shows at Miguel Abreu and Lyles & King. His curatorial projects include Bacon in Tangier, Musée Yves Saint Laurent (forthcoming, 2025); Beach, Nino Mier Gallery, New York, NY (2023) and North by North East and Naturalia, Kasmin Gallery, New York, NY (2017, 2021). His book, Boogie Woogie (2001), cast a satirical eye over the New York art scene in the 90s. The film version (2009) starred Gillian Anderson, Alan Cumming, Heather Graham, Danny Huston, Christopher Lee, Joanna Lumley, Charlotte Rampling, Amanda Seyfried, Stellan Skarsgård and Jaime Winstone. In 2012, he produced Me and Me Dad, nominated at the Cannes International Film Festival and Telluride International Film Festival. Moynihan also wrote and produced an opera called Agongo for the Edinburgh Festival in 1994 with set design by Damien Hirst in 1994.

Scrapbook takes its name from the popular method of preserving, presenting, and arranging personal and family histories that began in fifteenth-century England and rose to prominence- like most forms of self-mythologizing - during Modernism. Fast-forward to 1971, ‘Scrapbook’ was the working title for what would become known as the World Wide Web. The paintings in Scrapbook build on this jumbled history of storage, information, and imagery to question how meaning and identity are assembled into localized bodies. The content and color palate of the works are modeled on the cultural aesthetics found in and around Young’s hometown of Seattle and the 1990s alternative music scene in which he grew up. ‘Grunge’, embodied by bands such as Hole and Nirvana, catalyzed a significant cultural shift and demonstrated capitalism's power to elevate a once marginalized community into mainstream ideology. Today, elements of this world continue to resurface - fragmented and whole - and demonstrate how cultural references evolve between distinct sites of individual transformation and the often alienating world of mass media. On the gallery's far wall, Young continues his exploration of Barn Quilts—simple geometric paintings developed from quilting patterns traditionally displayed on barns. These classic examples of Americana continue to increase in communities across America and serve as an exterior inversion to the psychology of scrapbooking. Hung in a grid, the works engage with the barn-like architecture of 127 Elizabeth Street and collage references to many iconic Modernist painters and Cubist still lifes. Young’s versions double their material nature via tedious trompe l’oeil painting techniques and employ hues referencing a contemporary digital landscape. Barn Quilts testify to the authentic value painting can offer. By appropriating this phenomenon while layering deceptive imagery and references, Young highlights their legitimacy while acknowledging - as the Etsy economy they have stemmed attests to the potential problems in doing so. Scott Young (b. 1988, Seattle, WA) lives and works in London. He studied Philosophy at The Evergreen State College and traditional decorative painting at Van der Kelen Logelain, Brussels. He graduated from the MFA at Goldsmiths, University of London, in 2022. Recent solo exhibitions include Decoy at Duarte Sequeira, Seoul (2024), Planned Obsolescence at NADA Miami (2023), Storage Solutions at V.O Curations, London (2023), and Home Wrecker (Citrus of Sadness) at Des Bains, London (2022). Recent group exhibitions include Gunia Nowik Gallery, Warsaw (2024); Hannah Barry Gallery, London (2024); Galerie Mitterrand, Paris (2023); The Artist Room, London (2022); Christie’s, London (2022); Art Exchange Gallery at University of Essex (2020).

Follow Me is an invitation to enter into Ford’s paintings—the takeaway being an experience personal to the viewer and not dictated by the artist. Ford’s paintings are an accumulation of observations, and her perspective is honed by watching and experiencing how cities and their neighborhoods change, build, and destroy themselves. Rome is a second city for Ford. There, ancient streets and heroic buildings have been rebuilt from rubble and filled with fragments of century-old mosaics. This history inspires Ford’s textures and patterns that evoke the natural world while embracing an urban world, too. She connects these experiences while drawing inspiration for many years from her summer studio in Nova Scotia, where she collects rocks while walking her beach. More recently, though entirely unintended, several works seem to observe orbiting spheres of celestial bodies in the night sky. Dedicated to reconceptualizing these experiences, Ford leads viewers to reflect on how the past translates into the present in a constantly changing and adapting world. “All we are, all we see, is nature,” Ford expresses. “Things grow. Or are made. Maybe by a human being, maybe by a bird or a bee. We make objects of all sizes, buildings, art. Then they get old, sometimes are torn down, even made to disappear, by water, wind, war, volcanoes, earthquakes, tornadoes, floods, or fire. Or they fall from their weight or are pushed over, stepped on, shot at, blown up, or smashed. Yet, the pure material remains. The materials have been reused through the ages. Architecture, painting, and sculpture are made from these raw and recycled materials. An artist's eye and hand move over the materials while at the beach, visiting an Italian city, or in the studio, remembering them as they used to be and rearranging them: the broken buildings, the stones, the tiles, the pigments. In my work, I'm reimagining the past, making it present.”

JITTERS is a study of how we withstand time, grapple with a geographic sense of unease, sift through the stillness of the mundane, and sit through the restlessness within a contorted body. The paintings in this exhibition evoke muses of the habitual and examine a sense of otherworldly loss, perhaps real or imagined. Each artist respectively explores space and time through an anticipatory lens. McClure's paintings are more than visual narratives. They are concentrated depictions that poignantly illustrate the destruction of a natural world and the dislocation of its remaining inhabitants: eerily masked children and domestic animals. McClure's practice evokes a sense of home as a concept rather than a structure. Her images, filled with domestic shrapnel, challenge the viewer's understanding of the locale. Franzen's dreamlike paintings depict a quality of light as much as they imagine the point at which a specific part of the Southern California coastline disintegrates into the Pacific. This dissolution of landscape into atmosphere is evocative of Whistler’s infamous Nocturnes , in which visual phenomena seem to evaporate into abstracted carriers of feeling. Layered onto the glow of light and water are reflections of objects from Franzen’s studio: gossamer renderings of mementos and found objects, carriers of personal narrative. In two of Gröschl's paintings, a stork is a meditation on something cyclical, a life cycle, and reimagining of loss's impermanence. Gröschl gestures towards the uncanny beauty of nature and unrest. In a still-life painting and another of a figure grappling with a parachute, he reminds us that these flowers will eventually wilt. Although the parachute once brought one to safety, what does remain is a looming implication of struggle and mortality. In one of Rouy's works, a figure clutches at her body and stares vacuously at something beyond. These bodies appear vulnerable, preoccupied, and even asleep; her psychologically charged works preserve a genuine tenderness that is without match. Through a mutual intrusion of sorts, Rouy provokes and challenges her viewers, rendering us, in effect, powerless and disarmed.

Nathalie Karg Gallery, Gallery Artbeat, Tbilisi and John Riepenhoff present a two-part group exhibition of works by various generations of Georgian artists: Edisher Beradze, Irakli Bugiani, Elene Chantladze, Salome Chigilashvili, Mamuka Japharidze, Tamo Jugeli, Anna K.E., Giorgi Khaniashvili, Nika Kutateladze, Nino Kvrivishvili, Elene Lukhutashvili, Sergei Parajanov, and Beso Uznadze.