Taymour Grahne Gallery is pleased to present Follow The Crooked Path (Though It Be Longer), featuring new sculptures, drawings and paintings by Brooklyn-based artist Austin Eddy, who continues to blur the line between figuration and abstraction.

Bold, Matisse-like shapes proliferate the canvas. Muted taupes and browns mingle with vibrant reds, yellows and oranges, dark forest greens and deep blues. Geometric outlines and rounded, hand-like forms regenerate in familiar patterns from piece to piece, snuggly floating in abstract constellations. They can be found in sculptural incarnations too, as myriad materials bring them alive. Resin, plaster, foam, wood, cardboard and enamel are joined by found objects and elements such as string, fish tank sand and gravel. They rest on colorfully-topped plinths, primary colors harking to the vibrancy of circus big tops, a nod to a madcap sense of letting go. While rigorously abstract in execution, the works are figurative at heart, as Eddy explores personal emotions and encounters from his life.

The curvilinear shapes that serve as his oeuvre’s leitmotifs began life as hands and portraits, a sense of thumb and finger pinching together, like the famous children’s game of ‘I’ve got your nose’. This sense of helplessness, of an inflicted struggle lives on, even as hands and fingers now fly in freeform, reminiscent of clouds, birds, floating beings.

Each sculpture, drawing and painting is drawn together by a shared exploration of the relationship between color and shape. This exploration reflects the show’s title, as the ‘crooked path’ allows for a new meandering, facilitated by the use of oil stick, as a slower, more intuitive creative process develops. His works are visceral, the lumps and bumps of surfaces reminding us of bodies, of soft fingers and curves, and mixed media materials allowing for a meditation on surface, texture and the stories they can tell us through the flesh.

Austin Eddy (b. 1986, Boston, MA) received his BFA from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2009, and lives and works in Brooklyn, New York. He has exhibited at Fredericks & Freiser in New York City, Conduit Gallery in Dallas TX, Roberto Paradise in San Juan, Puerto Rico, Charlotte Fogh Gallery in Aarhus, Denmark, Asya Geisburg Gallery in New York City, Ameringer | McEnery | Yohe in New York City, The Horticultural Society in New York City, and The University of Kentucky Hospital in Lexington, KY. He has received press coverage in The New York Times, Modern Painters, Blouin Artinfo, and The New Yorker, among other publications.