The Shadow Side

UPCOMING SHOW PREVIEW / RJD GALLERY

Just in time for the spookiest holiday of the year, RJD Gallery is hosting a group show called Daring to be Different: Art with an Edge! featuring six artists whose work some might find unsettling but who believe therein lies much of its value.

Artist Grant Gilsdorf admits his work might feel edgy and challenging to viewers but he has always prioritized authenticity over mass appeal. Instinctually, comfort and complacency have always registered as dangerous to my creativity,” he says. I find myself constantly pushing new boundaries and testing the fortification of previously established ones...I’m not interested in a casual interaction with art, rather my works stimulate an emotional or intellectual response, and often those responses originate from the intersection of unease and beauty.” His painting Three Weary Graces is his personal take on the three Graces,” goddesses of Greek mythology whose personification of grace, beauty and charm have inspired artists for centuries. In Gilsdorf’s version they are depicted as depleted and haggard, but a small gold thread of hope remains. Inspired by the pandemic that forever changed our lives, Fractured depicts a moment of transformation—the new that is emerging and the vestiges of the past that remain.