Timothy Curtis: Things to Remember
NEW YORK, NY | albertz benda is thrilled to present Timothy Curtis: Things to Remember, the artist’s first solo show in the U.S., on view from June 20 - July 26, 2019, featuring an entirely new body of work. Curtis’ paintings are the product of a self-directed education received throughout his youth in Philadelphia’s most destitute neighborhoods coupled with a deep and extensive study of art history.
Things to Remember features several recurring motifs that the artist has developed into an iconography or personal signature.
Activating the entire first room of the exhibition, Curtis’ emotive faces cover the walls from floor to ceiling. The sheer span of expression and profusion of figures reaches for ways to define the human experience. In paintings such as Forever On Route (2019) the artist depicts the symbol of the bicycle. Curtis associates the bicycle with basic freedoms, and with the memory of deceased friends who were less fortunate in their individual crusades to surmount environmental limitations.
Intertwining and tangled figures, often arranged among playful iterations of institutional environments, suggest the ways in which longstanding systems of power have created obstacles that can simultaneously fortify and ensnare the spirit, and can break or cement friendships. The canvases offer viewers various connections across literal and figurative planes.
Curtis’ work exists at the intersection of drawing and painting, evident from the gestural fluidity and expressiveness experienced from the compositions. Placing an emphasis on the power, strength and intuition of bold lines, their potential to communicate feeling and convey movement is harnessed by the artist.
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Timothy Curtis [b. 1982] is a self-taught artist from Philadelphia, who lives and works in New York City. Since establishing a focused studio practice in 2015, Curtis realized his first solo exhibition in November 2017 at Kaikai Kiki’s Hidari Zingaro gallery in Tokyo, Japan, curated by Takashi Murakami. His work was debuted publicly in the U.S. at the Brooklyn Museum as part of the group exhibition Coney Island Is Still Dreamland (To a Seagull) by the artist Stephen Powers (2015-2016). Curtis had his first solo show in New York with albertz benda and was featured in the group exhibition The Pencil is a Key curated by Claire Gilman at the Drawing Center, New York in 2019. Recent shows include Timothy Curtis: Temporary Decisions at Arndt Art Agency, Berlin (2020).
