Anthony Cudahy (b.1989 Florida, USA) received a BFA from Pratt Institute, NY in 2011 and completed an MFA at Hunter College, NY in 2020. He lives and works in Brooklyn, NY.
Cudahy is a figurative painter whose tender scenes reveal the nuanced complexities of life. In masterful compositions he creates a world for unspoken stories, intimate moments and romantic gestures. Personal and poetic, Cudahy's figures coalesce with the atmosphere of their environments in fluid brushstrokes.
At once dark and luminous, Cudahy's paintings often have a phosphorescent quality to them, as though they are lit from within. For the artist, how the paint is handled has its own narrative potential - the thick textures, light airy space, patterning and delicate marks are all active in the story he is creating. Alongside painting, Cudahy makes incredibly detailed colored pencil drawings, in an all-consuming process of mark making. Unlike his paintings which transform throughout the making, the challenging medium calls for the compositions to be decided beforehand.
Cudahy devotedly collects images. His collection draws upon film stills, snapshots of his partner, ancient sites, hagiographic icons and the photography of his great uncle, Kenny Gardner (which his husband, Ian Lewandowski has been compiling). Cudahy returns to his collected images time and time again, for they have a potent quality, which sparks ideas and concepts for the works. Painting several versions of the same figure or scene, in each work he will make changes to the dimension, media, crop and narrative.
For Cudahy, the archive becomes a site for imagining - in the process of painting, scenes become less specific to time and place but hint more at the mythical or potential reality. References from art history ranging from Pompeii tiles, the Bayeux tapestry, Bruegel and Bosch find their way into his lexicon and visual shorthand. Floral elements from tapestries are used for their decorative formal qualities. Cudahy intuitively combines motifs with personal imagery to create a complex compositional puzzle. Bringing the past into the present, the sensitive works re-visit and expand on the original references.
Cudahy works on many painterly projects that are linked to histories which have been left untold. By painting and re-contextualizing the past to address the present, the artist speaks to the continuum of queer experience across generations. In Cudahy's dedicated practice, he explores intimacy and vulnerability, as well as trauma in distinctly hopeful works. In allegories of histories forgotten, he shows how active the past is in shaping the future.
Cudahy’s first US museum solo show opens at Ogunquit Museum of American Art, Maine in 2024. In 2023, Cudahy's first solo institutional exhibition, Conversation, opened at Museum of Fine Arts, Dole, France. His dual solo exhibition, Double Spar, was on view at Hales London and GRIMM London in Fall 2023, accompanied by a publication.
Previous solo shows include, Coral Room at Hales New York, USA; Burn Across the Breeze at 1969 Gallery, NY and The Moon Sets A Knife at Semiose Gallery, Paris, France. In 2021, he exhibited work with Ian Lewandowski and Kenny Gardner in It Was Dark in His Arms at Deli Gallery.
He has been in group shows at Hales, NY, USA; ICA Miami, Florida, USA; FLAG Art Foundation, NY, USA; Pratt Institute's Dekalb Gallery, Brooklyn, NY, USA; Perrotin Gallery, NY, USA; PPOW, Provincetown, MA, USA; Rude Assembly, Sydney, Australia; Danese/Corey NY, USA; Semiose Gallery, Paris, France; Half Gallery, NY, USA; Deli Gallery, Brooklyn, NY, USA; Pale Horse, Mulherin, Toronto, ON, Canada; the Dawn Hunter Gallery, Brooklyn, NY; 68 Projects, Berlin, Germany, among others. In 2022, Cudahy was selected as an Artsy Vanguard artist.
His work can be found in collections of the Institute of Contemporary Art, Miami, FL, USA; Baltimore Museum of Art, MD; The Hort Family Collection, NY, USA; Kunstmuseum, The Hague, the Netherlands; Les Arts au Mur Artothèque de Pessac, Pessac, France; Xiao Museum of Contemporary Art, Rizhao, China; and Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, the Netherlands.
