Boy with a Hat: Ed Askew Paintings 2014–2024

About this exhibition

— Soccer Club Club is pleased to announce “Boy with a Hat: Ed Askew, Painting 2014-2024”, a solo-exhibition by New York-based artist Ed Askew. The opening reception shares the release date of The Final Painting on Drag City, the posthumous album by Askew produced by Jerry David DeCicca. “Boy with a Hat” at Soccer Club Club is the fourth exhibition of paintings from this ten-year period, the final working years of Ed Askew. The show is curated by Jay Pluck, Askew’s longtime friend and collaborator. The title of this exhibition is taken from the song of the same name, a favorite and oft-performed track from Askew’s first of three releases on Drag City. The painting selected by Askew himself for the album cover is featured in this exhibition; it is likely the last painting completed by the artist. Throughout his lifelong painting career, Askew’s work was in discrete groups, less bodies of work than a finite search for the heart of a conceptual or compositional idea. After substantial exploration, he would move on abruptly from one idea to another but not without a connective ligament. One consistent element of his work from the past ten or more years is scale, due somewhat to the limitations of his residences — Askew lived in rented rooms that gradually became smaller as he moved from Washington Heights to Queens and to Brooklyn. In addition to collage and watercolor on paper, he painted almost exclusively on 10 x 10 or 12 x 12 inch, thin profile, store-bought canvases. Another commonality of the paintings from this time is the partitioning of the canvas. Sections of the square were often taped off or painted out, creating a seemingly independent section in which Askew would place some of his favorite motifs — shapes of boats, houses, and stars referencing children’s drawings of such things (Askew often worked as an after-school art teacher). A second or third independent section would become ground for heavy marking and later a sort of abstracted calligraphy which he began to privilege. Earlier marks perceptible in the surface of the painting are evidence of his frequent reassessing of these partitions. Each painting is exciting and, because Askew is known as a psych folk legend, it is easy to see them each as their own song. Not unlike one of his primary songwriting inspirations, Hoagy Carmichael, he uses a known vocabulary in surprising ways, leaning on motifs in unique fashion. From 2014-2024, Askew painted with the canvas flat on his desk. Generally having two or three canvases in progress simultaneously, he would hang them on thumbtacks on the wall in his room and consider them throughout the day and night. His consideration was not protracted — on average he completed three paintings per month. At a two-week artist residency in Maine in 2021, he completed at least fifteen paintings. Ed Askew was a painter and musician of extreme simultaneity and he worked every day. Installation images of his two shows at Starr Suites (Brooklyn, 2021 & 2024) and Xavier Hufkens (2023) are available at the gallery. Special thanks to Lydia Mokdessi and Starr Suites.

via The Visualist