Jonathan Edlehuber: Skulls, February 27 - April 3, 2021

Jonathan Edelhuber’s contemporary update of the classical memento mori flips the script completely. Surrounded by morbid statistics, social upheaval and doom scrolling, the artist’s iterations of a single, laughing skull approbate and celebrate “what it is to be human. To be alive.” The physical nature of the work itself (acrylic paintings and double-sided cut wood silhouettes on a simple base the artist calls “skullpture”) betrays this optimism— yawping faces splashed and layered, scraped, and gouged, not with violence, however, but with the exuberance of discovery in a less than gentle approach to life, fully embraced. The traditional symbolisms are here processed by way of technical reckoning, contemporary gestures mix with heroic mid-century maneuvers, making use of the canon— Horace Pippin, Cy Twombly and Alice Neal vie for space with Tal R, Katherine Bernhardt and Bendix Harms. Surprising color combinations, enlivened by surfaces from glossy sheen to distressed furrows, the well-worn, rough-hewn template animates itself, urging the viewer that with death this close, we best get busy being born.

Arkansas native Jonathan Edelhuber earned a B.F.A. with an emphasis on Graphic Design from Harding University and currently lives in Nashville. Running from February 19 - April 3, 2021, the exhibition was his first solo presentation with ZieherSmith, Nashville.