Anthony Cudahy, Anti-bausor tree (protected sleepers, wolf’s-bane and spider around), 2021, Oil on canvas. Institute of Contemporary Art, Miami. Museum purchase with funds provided by John Auerbach and Ed Tang.
Hales is delighted to announce that Anthony Cudahy’s work, Anti-bausor tree (protected sleepers, wolf’s-bane and spider around) (2021) has been acquired by the Institute of Contemporary Art, Miami.
Cudahy is primarily a painter who employs symbolism and narrative devices, combined with depth of feeling to create works that are intimate, profound, and mysterious. His works are testament to relationships and human connection, physically and mentally. The warmth and quietness of the scenes are undercut by a sense of tension, reflecting personal and collective anxiety. There is a presence of narrative possibility playing out within and beyond Cudahy’s painted and drawn surfaces. In Anti-bausor tree (protected sleepers, wolf’s-bane and spider around) Cudahy masterfully cultivates ambiguity. The work was inspired by an etching from the Middle Ages which depicts a bausor tree with two men lying down, it remains unclear if they are dead or sleeping peacefully.
