Curmudgeon presents Tales From the Crypt, a classic horror anthology featuring seven artists: Richard Medina, Seung-Jun Lee, Andrew Hammell Race, Petros Lales, Aaron Nemec, Douglas Paisley, and Tamsen Williams.
In this exhibition, each work evokes a specific milieu of terror, ranging from the gory to the psychological. Excised from a larger narrative and plopped into an eerily lit basement, these images and objects dare us to make sense of their disfigured figuration. The result is a rogues’ gallery of scenes and characters stripped from their setting: monsters with no movie, ghosts with no story, houses haunted by nothing discernible, but haunted nonetheless. In this way, the show magnifies and lays bare fear itself. Horror remains a popular genre because it promises terror within a container, a narrative, and a logical if strange framework. We seek out the scary to believe that we can master it. At the same time, great horror succeeds because it breaks free of its container: what we’ve seen or read still haunts us once we’ve left the theater or put the book back on its shelf. The works on view linger with a similar half-life, upsetting life’s necessary assumptions. Faith in science or the supernatural alike leads to damnation. The demon cannot be outrun. The madman knows where we’re hiding. Dying leads to an afterlife where we endure or cause more suffering; or, equally frightening, death is a cold finality. Control feels illusory; salvation is nonexistent; there is no story. Like any collection of horror, the art of Tales From the Crypt offers an uneasy truce with these disturbing mysteries: if we cannot resolve them, we can at least face them. In this spirit, we welcome you into the subterranean space. The call is coming from inside the gallery. Trick or treat!
Curmudgeon is an independent curatorial project founded by Jordan Segal and co-directed by Lola Lefrançois and Will Kaplan. We support materially expressive, conceptually rigorous, politically charged work. Our goal is to spark dialogue and build community around ideas and aesthetics that traditional galleries too often overlook. As a partner at Nine, Curmudgeon creates space for taking risks, evolving material exploration, and uplifting alternative avenues of making.
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