Adler Beatty is pleased to present Studiolo, a group exhibition curated by Kathy Huang. The exhibition features works by Dotty Attie, Mahesh Baliga, Michaël Borremans, Milano Chow, Will Cotton, Max Ernst, Leyla Faye, Dominique Fung, Lenz Geerk, Francisco Goya, Friedrich Kunath, Timothy Lai, John Hyen Lee, Nina Molloy, Keita Morimoto, Anna Park, Bony Ramirez, Hiba Schahbaz, Shahzia Sikander, Bartholomaeus Spranger, Kathia St. Hilaire, Yves Tanguy, Wayne Thiebaud, Bob Thompson, Jan Van Kessel the Elder, Stanley Whitney, and Stella Zhong.
Commonly painted on vellum, metal, or enamel, cabinet paintings are small works placed in modest rooms known in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries as cabinets. Dutch and Flemish painters, already known for their artistic excellence, would strive for even greater refinement in cabinet paintings, which they understood to be under much closer scrutiny due to their size and the intimacy of the rooms. Whether through portraits, landscapes, or still lifes, cabinet paintings showed a painstaking attention to detail and highlighted the skill of the artist. In the later nineteenth century, a number of French artists working in the same tradition eschewed highly rendered subjects for paintings that emphasized the spirit or atmosphere of a subject.
Across modalities, small paintings allowed artists to experiment more readily and visitors to experience more intimately. Taking its name from the Italian term for a room for study and the display of collections, Studiolo brings together contemporary artists alongside works by modern masters in a cabinet-style exhibition at Adler Beatty, and like the cabinet paintings of the 18th and 19th centuries, these small works span genres, techniques, and mediums.
