Four young artists are on the verge…

One of them, David Stanger, has reduced painting to a question of shadows and the poetry of absence.

He is haunted by Philip Guston on his deathbed… Guston: a Jewish artist who gave up his Jewish surname (Goldstein) and later begged his friends to say kaddish for him – the Jewish prayer of mourning…

Courtney Jordan, another artist on the verge, is fascinated by impossible industrial architecture. Her paintings deconstruct blueprint-like urban plans into biomorphic abstraction and absurd space satellite imagery…

Paul Jeanes teeters on the verge by reproducing hordes of whirling gray birds and slicing them into strips of mylar, which he layers onto larger sheets of mylar to create a singular poetic event…

And finally, Nicole Barrick explores folklore and the tragedy of isolated human hair, by creating unique organic sculpture that also exists on-the-verge…

What is On the Verge?

It’s the discovery of detail through obsession… and a new boundary of painting driven by poetry, but not just any poetry: a poetry based on disintegration and the idea that Baltimore is falling apart, our lives are falling apart, even the material we use to express ourselves is falling apart.

Opening next Friday night, May 12th, at Sub-Basement Artist Studios, “On the Verge” is an art show unlike anything you may see this year…