March 26 – April 23, 2022 Opening reception March 26, 6-10PM
Tomato Mouse presents “Suderland”- a solo exhibition by Ronan Day-Lewis from March 26 through April 23, 2022, with an opening reception March 26 from 6 to 10PM. The exhibition will consist of works in pastel on cut raw canvas, created by Ronan Day-Lewis in 2021 and 2022, including three monumental paintings and recent small works. This outing marks his fourth collaboration with Brooklyn-based gallery Tomato Mouse and his first solo show in New York since graduating from Yale School of Fine Art in 2020.
Where is Suderland? The paintings open onto hallucinatory pastoral scenes where mythical beasts roam in subdued postures, reenacting tableaus from biblical stories or archetypal stalemates. The expansive painting “The Beginning (Listen! Your Brother’s Blood Cries Out To Me From The Soil.)” is a landscape to move through, full of game objects. The story of Cain and Abel echoes through many of the paintings, as do themes of guilt, responsibility, brotherhood, and banishment. The Edenic “Dip Ur Toes in Baby” glows with warmth and menace. The flows of liquids between the creatures and earth suggests the old theory of the Humors, determining fate and personality. In “So Sorry (9,000,000 B.C.)” the paired beasts are captioned with text message apologies in pastel letters that glow like low-fi neon. In combination they depict an archetypal origin story seen through the filter of modern distraction. Says the artist: “At a time when any moment of serenity is interrupted by a euphoric and obliterating tsunami of content, these paintings pose questions, not answers. Has this age of information in which we live shattered some old Eden, or is this idea of innocence lost — traceable to Adam and Eve’s expulsion from the garden — a lie?”
A suite of new small works shows beasts inside and outside of circus tents. Their poised physicalities take on a sense of performativity, ceremony and carnival. The paintings contain images of themselves in miniature and echo earlier works. The public privacy of the bathing machine inflects the tent as a makeshift shelter less safe than a house of straw but complete in its theatrical potential. Perhaps the circus is this situation of self-presentation as an artist.
Tomato Mouse is directed by artist/curator Rebecca Bird since 2012.
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301 Saratoga Avenue, Brooklyn, NY
