Fred Escher Presents Killer Diorama @ Catbox Contemporary In New York

"I can't talk about art or ideas or the creative act. I dream, day and night. Most of the time I dream about something that didn't happen to me and is not going to happen to me. It is called thinking, and that is a riddle wrapped inside a mystery and inside, is a mystery of me. My thinking is like watching TV. Nothing happens. I want to be lobotomized by boredom. I dream as if it were happening, both past and present, day and night. People talk about ideas and inspiration. I don't think I have that kind of body or mind. I don’t know where dreams come from and I don’t know where you go to find ideas; you either have a helium connection to feelings or you don’t. I can't talk about dreams or what things mean. I have silence in my brain and it sits on my tongue. Hiding in my head is the dream and I pick up a brush or a pencil and let it out. I can't put it into words, I can only paint or draw it. If you find a dream, work with it, if you don’t have dreams get a job (I worked at CVI making stretchers for 25 years). If you read a book or a newspaper or travel to another country, that is good for your life, but don’t take that stuff into your studio. I don’t know what influences me, or who; but I am guilty of looking at art. I do not feel like I missed anything by not painting or drawing for 26 years. If you stop breathing you die, if you stop making art, nothing happens, you just find something else to do. Now, I feel like painting and here I am: a painter.” - Fred Escher

Killer Diorama is on view through December 9 @ Catbox Contemporary in Ridgewood, NY. photographs courtesy of Catbox Contemporary

Morgan Mandalay's 'Holy Holy Holy' @ Catbox Contemporary In New York

Holy Holy Holy is an exhibition of new work by Morgan Mandalay. Using the “Book of Tobit” (a Catholic story centering around the exorcising of demons) as a starting point, Mandalay generates a  visual narrative about class, populism, and agency through the lens of 18th century painting. The walls of the gallery are painted a pale pink, meant to reference the Timken Museum of Art, a small museum in San Diego Mandalay used to frequent because of its free entry for the public and prominent collection of Rococo paintings. Here he uses the sentimentality of the setting to help conjure the anarchistic energy latent in painting’s history.

Catbox Contemporary is an appointment-only art gallery housed in the Ridgemont apartment of artist/founder, Philip Hinge. Occupying two catboxes within Hinge’s cat tree, the space allows artists to display full solo exhibitions at miniature scale and sell small works at affordable prices. Holy Holy Holy is on view through October 14, make your appointment now by DMing @CatboxContemporary. photographs courtesy of Catbox Contemporary

Artist Brad Phillips Leaves a Suicide Note Before the Opening of His Exhibition at Freddy Gallery In Baltimore

Tomorrow, Freddy Gallery in Baltimore will open "Problem Is You," a group exhibition featuring three artists: Aaron Carpenter, Philip Hinge, and the very much alive (but maybe not well) Brad Phillips. Instead of a traditional statement about the exhibition and the artists, the gallery offers a morbid, but brilliant, suicide note penned by Phillips, which probably sums up the exhibition more than any standard press release could. If you don't follow Phillips on Instagram, you should - it is an extenuation of the artist's unique practice that ranges from delicate near-photorealistic paintings to text based play-on-words to prose - his book Suicidal Realism is out now on the Swimmer's Group imprint. In the following suicide note, Brad Phillips offers his disdain for the mechanics of the art world and he narrates a spiritual journey of selfhood and artisthood in the midst of self doubt, depression and addition. Click here to read Brad Phillips' suicide note.