Tilo Baumgärtel's works are characterized by a frozen, poetic, even haunting sensibility. The artist succeeds to reconfigure the conventional idea of time and space, creating an ambiguous spatiotemporal relation and making possible the coexistence of various levels of meaning on a single pictorial plane. Elements that are intelligible as independent entities become ambivalent on the level of composition.

While imbued with hints of Modernism—Duchamp-Villon, Noguchi, Boccioni, and more come to mind—the forms in Gorzo’s work take on a unique impositional quality that transcends ideas of historical influences. In short, Gorzo is an artist who defies oversimplification, who scoffs at grandiose notions of a priori truths and instead focuses on art as an active engagement with ideas—both from the perspective of the creator and the viewer.

This new body of work reveals the fragility of human experience and the complicated nature of one’s home. Destruction—both intentional, at the hands of the artist, and incidental, as the result of time and desertion—recasts the viewer’s notion of the show’s titular subject, “hard times,” in terms of geopolitical conflict, irresolvable nostalgia, and the personal struggle to find one’s place in the world, both physical and psychological.

Goyette and Oldham collaborate on the title piece Surf and Turf, a road movie shot on the coast of Oregon. Eccentric animal spirits Octopussy and Wolftits explore the interstices between land and sea. "We don't yet know the purpose of our journey,” Wolftits exclaims to their spiritual channeler, who replies, "Well, that is the best way to start any journey." The possibilities of transmutation fuel their quest, while they suffer individual personality traits. Octopussy is fearful of men, as female octopus die in childbirth; she tries to keep her dentata closed. Wolftits can’t help but rip the throat out of each new friend she meets.

“Preliminary Study: RSI – T” is a group exhibition comprised of art works that explore the effects of technology on the evolution of the body, and consequentially, the mind. RSI, better known as “Repetitive Strain Injury,” is a clinical term for "injuries to the musculoskeletal and nervous systems that may be caused by repetitive tasks, forceful exertions, vibrations, mechanical compression, or sustained or awkward positions.

Alternating between frustration and resignation, composure and escapism, Bassel’s figures embody the challenge of negotiating these spaces of waiting and perhaps the desire to make meaning of a momentary relinquishing of control. Bassel enacts the art of painting as a confluence of deeply observed surroundings and the material exploration of the paint itself.

In this body of work Avital Burg addresses her relationship to her family's roots and the history of painting, transforming what can often feels distant and remote into something immediate and personal. Growing up in the Middle East, with her ancestors' European past over a thousand miles away, Burg has immersed herself as a child into the European tales about kings and queens. At the age of reflection, as her involvement with painting matured, the make-believe games of her childhood evolved into a deep interest in European Renaissance and Baroque painting.

Appearing as performance, video, sculpture and installation, "Always on Our Plate" offers numerous means for engaging with the conflict as well as the nuances of each artistic medium.

Small in scale yet huge in humanity, Ioana Joa's softly rendered oil paintings of at once individualized and anonymous townspeople conversing, convening and crossing paths in public, mostly outdoor settings—streets, plazas, courtyards, alleyways—are subtly naturalistic, pictorially neo-realist and fundamentally, albeit quietly, politicized. Paul D'Agostino's paintings and drawings in a range of media are generally bound by narrative structures or linguistic matters. Stories, protagonists and settings thus factor frequently in his works, and the visualized forms of the latter are most often rendered as variably abstracted landscapes—sylvan or marine, rural or urban, mysterious or mundane.