The embittered search for the explanatory in the early post-observation-description era
Jeff Gabel solo show
Spencer Brownstone Gallery, New York
January 24 - March 7, 2025
One Day At A Time blogger who won’t post or respond to comments unless he’s totally baked, preparing to enter a discussion with a commenter who’s deconstructing the selection of clips in sitcom intros with engaged physical activity as intuitive relief from the more static scenes used for character portraiture and focused comic facial expressions as reactions to mishaps, noting that 2 common activity clip types are: a family’s buoyant informal sports reveling in the yard or at some public field, and one or two characters performing an ostensibly humorous dance, noting that he prefers the latter, if for no other discernable reason than that the dance clips, unlike the family sports scenes, are more candid; they’re grabbed from episodes rather than filmed with only the intros in mind like petty ads, and noting that One Day At A Time is a particularly successful example, with 2 dance clips in one intro, Julie’s and then a bit later Schneider’s which coincides with the intro songs’ animated bridge – before closing with an aside that for the record the Hogan Family intro starts with a family sports frolic but also includes a 2-character dance clip near the end.
Spencer Brownstone Gallery is pleased to present The embittered search for the explanatory in the early post-observation-description era, a solo exhibition by Brooklyn based artist Jeff Gabel.
Working primarily in graphite, Gabel renders both real and imaginary figures caught in the comedy of everyday existence: the routine embarrassments of daily life, merciless office encounters, and imagined foibles. His subjects emerge not through the careful rendering of their features, but through the captions and stories that accompany each portrait. The lines between figures are blurred, in every sense. It is in the text that Gabel reveals his subjects' unspoken thoughts or surgically precise summations of their personalities. In this eighth exhibition with Spencer Brownstone Gallery, Gabel continues to mine the fertile territory of America’s inner monologues and our desperate but often frivolous search for meaning.
Whereever-whenever suburb, 2024
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