Cody Hudson

thanks man, see you around man, fuck yeah, you guys are wild, thanks man, i dig it, see you
March 27 – May 9, 2009
Gallery One

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Cody Hudson, The Millions Who Will Be Transported at the Time of the Rapture While You Are Left on Earth to Suffer for the Seven Years Leading Up to Armageddon, 2008. Acrylic, spraypaint, and ink on panel, 24 in x 24 in
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Cody Hudson, Long Cold Winter, 2009. Acrylic and ink on panel, 24″ x 24″

Exhibition Text

(PDF)

ANDREW RAFACZ is pleased to announce Thanks man, see you around man, fuck yeah, you guys are wild, thanks man, I dig it, see you, a solo exhibition on new paintings and drawings by Cody Hudson.

Chicago, IL, March 27, 2009 – ANDREW RAFACZ begins the spring season with Thanks man, see you around man, fuck yeah, you guys are wild, thanks man, I dig it, see you, a series of new paintings and drawings by Cody Hudson. The gallery will have a reception for the artist on Friday, March 27th, from 5 to 8pm. The exhibition continues through May 9th.

Hudson continues to develop his themes of hope versus doom, euphoria, boredom, community, solitude, and revolution with his first major Chicago solo exhibition in several years. His use of graphic line work and a palette of bright colors have coalesced to create a body of new paintings that reference his narrative of longing and hopefulness while also finding context within contemporary abstract painting. The artist continues to be interested in the elemental use of shape as signifier, but he has gone further by allowing the forms that take place in his paintings to be direct extensions of the poetic content of the painting itself. His previous use of text has nearly disappeared and a new visual language has emerged. In Long Cold Winter, Hudson creates a radial symmetry of blue, green, brown and gray acrylic balloons that project out from the center of the painting. Employing ink to limn the detailed designs of each shape, the final product is a collection of idiosyncratic talismans that provoke the viewer to unpack the visual field as if reading a poem. This motif is utilized throughout a series of paintings that will be presented in the exhibition.

Hudson’s insistence on a poetic ambiguity that is open to multiple interpretations gives his new series

of paintings their charge. They may be flat and exist in their own space, but they pull one into a dialogue that is substantially human and strangely beautiful. The artist will also present new drawings that concentrate more singularly on the elements that comprise his paintings, concise line drawings of balloon shapes and nearly hidden texts on found papers. These works will be balanced by a new site-specific installation of spray painted wood forms in the shape of a rainbow or arc.

CODY HUDSON (American, b. 1971) lives and works in Chicago. Recent exhibitions include I May Be Right and I May Be Wrong, but You’re Gonna Miss Me When I’m Gone: Notes On Building A Time Machine (with Sean Cassidy) at New Image Art, LA and This Ain’t No Bottomless Pit Here at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago. Recent group exhibitions include White Noise Drawn Together at V1 Gallery in Copenhagen, 2008, and Throb Throb: Rock and Roll Currents in Chicago Today, curated by Dominic Molon for Jil Sander, Chicago, 2007. As part of the Chicago Transit Authority’s “”Arts in Transit”” program, Hudson created a permanent public work for the Sox/35th Street Red Line station in 2007. Fifty24SF has published Save My Life, a monograph that surveys his recent work. He will create a new installation that will comprise two floors of the Hyde Park Art Center, Chicago, opening May 11, 2009.