56 HENRY is delighted to present A Foot, Some Guns, A Boot, Some Hands, Some Lips, A Breast & A Snail, an exhibition of new work by Sadie Laska. The exhibition, which consists of ten paintings on shaped MDF, will be on view from February 10 through March 13, 2016.

Sadie Laska’s shaped paintings depict what her title suggests: a foot, some guns, a boot, some hands, some lips, a breast, and a snail. These brightly colored, exaggerated forms are checkered across the gallery. On one wall, an oversized pink snail inches toward the center of the room, while a cartoonishly large machine gun shoots an electric blue flower. Pieces of cardboard, fabric, pipe cleaners, trivets and cloth flowers are glued and stapled to the surfaces of the paintings. A pink flip flop becomes a snail’s tail, and an old glove silences a pair of hot pink lips.

Laska’s paintings are a junky and poetic response to shaped canvases and color field painting. Each panel is a monochrome of sorts with a spray painted line reinforcing its shape. The cheap materials serve as compositional elements, making patterns and disrupting the surface. The totality of the scene reads like a non-sensical, ten-word sentence. A black sexy boot is kicked free from a swollen green foot. Hands that look like plants say, ”Stop, don’t shoot!”, and a misshapen breast points to the right. The snail seems impatient in its nocturnal wandering, and all signs indicate something more sinister than their bright colors suggest.

Sadie Laska lives and works in New York City. A graduate of Bard’s Milton Avery Graduate School of the Arts, Laska has exhibited her paintings at CANADA, Kerry Schuss, and Galerie Bernard Ceysson in Paris, Geneva, and Luxembourg. She has been featured in group shows at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Tuscon, Gavin Brown’s Enterprise, Harper’s Books, White Columns, United Artists, Ltd., and Cleopatra’s. Sadie Laska is represented by CANADA. This is her first exhibition with 56 Henry.

Exhibitions at 56 HENRY are visible 24 hours a day. Gallery doors are open to the public on Thursdays, 12:00 – 6:00 pm. For additional information, please contact Ellie Rines at
(646) 858-­0800 or info@56henry.nyc.