A Breathing Solitude Gallery Exhibit

Rivalry Projects is thrilled to present A Breathing Solitude, a group exhibition that explores how abstraction can embody place and presence. The exhibition includes works by Jake Berthot, Hayley Carrow, Megan Greene, Eva Lundsager, Peter Stephens, and Rodney Taylor, each of whom have ties to Buffalo and the broader Western New York region. 

The title of the exhibition is taken from a 2006 essay on Jake Berthot, written by artist and art critic Michael Brennan for the Betty Cuningham Gallery in New York. In speaking to Brennan, Berthot describes how he renders tension in his work, attempting “to paint silence before it completely disappears.” Utilizing oil as a primary medium, his paintings embody an atmospheric stillness within landscape that is both inviting and, at times, ominous.

Like Berthot, explorations of place, light, and time ground the work in the exhibition. Peter Stephens utilizes the structure, and fracture, of the grid to create vibrational planes of interwoven colors that evolve based on the viewer’s perception. Through the layering of ink and colored pencil, Megan Greene creates improvised portals to unseen spaces or conditions. She takes influence from organic forms – horizons, atmosphere, flora, the body – and yet the final compositions are seductive echoes of a setting that doesn’t exist. Similarly, Eva Lundsager creates deep, immersive space through the layering of horizon lines, bold swaths of color, and subterranean-like spaces that suggest a world different from what we know. Leaning into our capacity to assign meaning to what we see, her work carves space for imagination and the fantastic. Hayley Carrow’s paintings evolve through layers of oil, chalk pastel, and acrylic that create translucent overlapping fields of color. Working from memory, she utilizes fluid gesture and a simple palate to render a haze that at times evokes landscape or fleeting atmosphere, while others feel more representational of quotidian moments, objects, or experiences. While he oscillates between representation and abstraction, the work of Rodney Taylor is specific to a place and time. Through his paintings and drawings, often rendered using clay, Taylor examines many topics, that, in this instance, include the dangers of climate change, and the body’s relationship to space. 

Together, these artists explore how abstraction can summon the experience of being – an embodied presence in space, a geography that is felt rather than described, and a landscape that emerges through gesture, systems, and imagination.

Gallery Is Free & Open to the Public

Wed-Sat 11am-5pm