“I called God from the narrow place, he answered me in expansiveness.” PSALM 118
Hirschl & Adler Modern is proud to present From the narrow place , James Everett Stanley’s debut solo exhibition with the gallery. Collapsing time, space, and personhood through gestural representation and fractured picture planes, these nine new paintings stand as non-linear stories of people’s lives. Along with the depictions of his friends and neighbors on Cape Cod, the artist gives equal importance to the landscape of the area, which he sees as continually changing and constantly under threat. A sense of precarity pervades each picture, wherein each person needs to stay attuned to nature’s sudden shifts.
Throughout From the narrow place , Stanley relies on pictorial collage to allow multiple ideas and images to exist in a single visual field. In splintered spaces behind the central figures in I cut them down , grass gives way to marsh and, ultimately, the sea, while the sky, bright blue in some spots is heavy and leaden in others. The background’s fractured composition reads as a non-linear depiction of time, through weather, and space as landscape, resulting in what feels like a full day’s journey. All of this plays out behind the portrait of a father and child. Their body language hints at the psychological effects of the environment itself. The father’s right hand opens tensely, his glance projecting awareness and vulnerability, while the child, whose eyes remain locked on the viewer, blends into the scenery behind him.
Stanley’s verisimilitude as a painter, stylistically ranging from stark realism to gestural abstraction, reinforces the collage aesthetic in his compositions. In Star, a girl pours water from pitchers into a tidal river and another into a stream. Her body is realistically and richly painted, pushing her into the very front of the composition. Around her,
the verdant growth beside the river is rendered in wide, washy blocks of color and the stream morphs into tight abstract swirls of black and white strokes. Far from acting in opposition to each other, the contrasting styles work together to present different moments signifying reality, memory, or movement. It is, as the artist has described, “pulling together disparate elements to create something fuller than a single strain of experience.” The exhibition title is taken from Psalm 118 and “the narrow place” has been interpreted as despair, distress or being “hard pressed.” Stanley likens the position to being an artist, recontextualizing it in his own need to understand it: How does one give visual expression to the entirety of someone’s thoughts and emotions, to their past and their present? The psalm tells us the answer. The paintings in From the narrow place are Stanley’s effort to depict that expansiveness.
SHELLEY FARMER Director, Hirschl & Adler Modern TED HOLLAND Exhibition Coordinator, Hirschl & Adler Modern
I shall not die but live II
2023
Oil on canvas
18 x 24 in.
It is marvelous in our eyes
2023
Oil on canvas
60 x 48 in.
Star 2023
Oil on canvas
84 x 60 in.
1975
E duc AT io N
2005 Master of Fine Arts, Painting, Columbia University, New York, NY
2002 Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, Skowhegan, ME
2000 Bachelor of Fine Arts, Studio Art, University of Massachusetts at Amherst, Amherst, MA
SELE c TE d S o L o E xhibi T io NS
2023 From the narrow place , Hirschl & Adler Modern, New York, NY
James Everett Stanley: Selected Works , Second Street Gallery, Charlottesville, VA
2021 Double Vision , Provincetown Arts Society, Mary Heaton Vorse House, Provincetown, MA
2017 Lands Seen and Unseen , Barton College, Wilson, NC
2015 New Work , Schoolhouse Gallery, Provincetown, MA
2011 Dark Matter, Kinkead Contemporary, Culver City, CA
2009 Let it Burn , Kinkead Contemporary, Culver City, CA
2007 The Garden , Kinkead Contemporary, Culver City, CA
The Hills and the Plains , Bucket Rider Gallery, Chicago, IL
2006 There Were Giants in the Earth in Those Days , Freight + Volume Gallery, New York, NY
Salt of the Earth , Bucket Rider Gallery, Chicago, IL
SELE c TE d g R oup E xhibi T io NS
2022 Lichtung , Gaa Gallery, Provincetown, MA
A Likeness , Hirschl & Adler Modern, New York, NY
2019 ZEIT-GEIST-ZEIT, Gaa Gallery, Wellfleet, MA
Seeds of Inspiration , Bristol Art Museum, Bristol, RI
2018 Connections: Visual Fellows of the Cape , Cape Cod Museum of Art, Dennis, MA Against Forgetting I , Gaa Gallery, Provincetown, MA
The Visual Thread , Mills Gallery, Boston Center for the Arts, Boston, MA
2017 Summer Show , Schoolhouse Gallery, Provincetown, MA Adjunct Faculty Exhibition , List Art Center, Brown University, Providence, RI
2016 The Faculty Curates , Mugar Art Gallery, Colby-Sawyer College, New London, NH
Visual Arts Faculty of the Summer Program , Hudson D. Walker Gallery, Provincetown, MA
2014 In Progress Show , ArtStrand Gallery, Provincetown, MA
2013 Kin , Hudson D. Walker Gallery, Provincetown, MA
2012 Our Roots: FAWC Takes Wings , Hudson D. Walker Gallery, Provincetown, MA
Drawing Invitational , Provincetown Art Association and Museum, Provincetown, MA
2011 From the Barn to the Apple , Herter Gallery, University of Massachusetts at Amherst, Amherst, MA
2010 Boy, Oh Boy! , Fredric Snitzer Gallery, Miami, FL
FAWC: Former Fellows 2002–2003 , Hudson D. Walker Gallery, Provincetown, MA
HeadJAM: a portrait invitational , Artstrand Gallery, Provincetown, MA
Fuckheads: Portraiture for Silicon Enlightenment , Kinkead Contemporary, Culver City, CA
2009 Giving Face: Portraits for a New Generation , Nicholas Robinson Gallery, New York, NY
Fuckheads: Portraiture for Silicon Enlightenment , SCA Contemporary Art, Albuquerque, NM
2008 Always Kiss Me Goodnight , Kinkead Contemporary, Culver City, CA
2007 Highlights of Distinctive Messengers LA and NY, House of Campari, Miami, FL
Keeping it Real , Richmond Center, Western Michigan University, Kalamazoo, MI
Painted Faces , Kinkead Contemporary, Culver City, CA
Some Kind of Portrait , Marc Selwyn Fine Art, Los Angeles, CA
Distinctive Messengers , House of Campari, New York, NY
First Kiss , Monte Vista Projects, Los Angeles, CA
2006 Manhattan Project , Fredric Snitzer Galley, Miami, FL
Project Room , Freight + Volume Gallery, New York, NY
2005 Can I Get a Witness?, Bucket Rider Gallery, Chicago, IL
Columbia University MFA Thesis Show , Studebaker Building, New York, NY
2004 Hungry Eyes , Wallach Gallery, Columbia University, New York, NY
2018 Arts Foundation of Cape Cod Fellowship
2005 Sharpe-Walentas Studio Program
2004 Gelman Painting Fellowship Columbia University
Rudin Award, World Studio Foundation Scholarship Program
2002 Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, Visual Arts Fellowship
pub L ic co LLE c T io NS
Studio Museum of Harlem
They surrounded me on every side
2023
Oil on canvas
50 x 36 in.
design
Elizabeth Finger
photography
James Everett Stanley frontis
I shall not die but live I
2023
Oil on canvas
18 x 24 in.
© 2023 Hirschl & Adler Modern
H&A