or, The River

MARTYNA ALEXANDER
ANDREW HAYES

September 12th - November 14th
Opening reception: September 12, 6-9pm
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MARTYNA ALEXANDER, Red Flag, 2026, 18 × 20 inches, acrylic and graphite on canvas

old friends is pleased to present or, The River, new works by Martyna Alexander (b. 1989, Ann Arbor, MI) and Andrew Hayes (b. 1981, Tucson, Arizona).

Martyna Alexander’s dreamlike topography emerges through washes of acrylic, overlaid with marks suggestive of an unknowable order. Andrew Hayes’ formalistic sculpture pairs paper and steel, the two substances alchemized, mirroring one another in fluid motion. Both artists speak spatially, their works boundless, sensual, and sensory.

Alexander paints landscapes as if seen through a haze, in pigmented stains that seep and sink into the canvas weft. She allows space to remain perceptual and indistinct, intentionally obscuring any discernible landmark. Floating through the composition are hallucinatory gestures, in graphite or soft pastel, pulled from the artist's own lexicon of organization. Red Flag radiates with desert heat, each cell in the superimposed graphite grid blazed with a single red mark. There is no containing Alexander’s landscapes; their atmosphere seeps into the room. Like a mirage, they shimmer into and out of being. 

Hayes marries disparate materials; beginning with old, mass-printed books, he bends, contorts, and slices the pages, then anchors these compositions between subtly carved metal structures. Steel glints, not coldly, but with a seductive, supple quality. Though the paper retains certain literary visual identifiers (marbled edges, tabs, the ghost of text), Hayes anonymizes all content - he responds solely to its material potential. Hayes’ sculptures are precisely choreographed; undulating metal giving way to splayed pages, frozen at the apex of movement.

Both artists allude to narrative, a suggestive presence of space or story, yet intentionally conceal definition. Their works speak to a symbolic dimension, a space where reference dissolves into abstraction. The sensory impression remains - a metallic taste, the scent of wet grass, an auric residue.

or, The River will be on view at old friends, 3149 N. Halsted St., Chicago, IL, from September 12th through November 14th. Gallery staff are available to guide viewers through the exhibition via Zoom upon request. Please email office@oldfriendsgallery.com with any questions or inquiries. 

Martyna Alexander (b. 1989, Ann Arbor, MI) is a Detroit-based artist working in a diverse range of media to explore the subconscious world stemming from innate biological and cultural pasts. As an artist-designer, Alexander has used her longtime design career as a way to explore more subjective forms of understanding through painting. She allows her design skills to inform her visual vocabulary and channel that analytical process into abstract, solutionless artworks. Alexander has held solo and group exhibitions at various galleries internationally, including Blue Spiral 1, Asheville, NC; H.F. Johnson Gallery of Art, Carthage College, Kenosha, WI; Cluster Museum, Ann Arbor, MI; Gracida, Chicago, IL; Michigan Central, Detroit, MI; NewLab, Detroit, MI; New Space, Tokyo, Japan; Old Friends, Chicago, IL; and Playground, Detroit, MI.

Andrew Hayes (b. 1981, Tucson, Arizona), studied sculpture at Northern Arizona University. He left school to learn more about metal fabrication by working in the industrial welding trade. Hayes attended Penland School of Crafts as a Core Fellow, and later returned as an Artist-In-Residence. Hayes has been living and working in Asheville, NC since 2018. He has held solo exhibitions at numerous galleries internationally, including Blue Spiral, Asheville, NC; Gallery LOD, Kungsholmen, Stockholm, Sweden; Galleri Sebastian Schildt, Stockholm, Sweden; Hodges Taylor, Charlotte, NC; Hunterdon Art Museum, Clinton, NJ; Seager Gray Gallery, Mill Valley, CA; Steneby Art Hall, Dals Långed, Bengtsfors, Sweden; Wellenhallen, Leksand, Sweden, and has been included in exhibitions at Arkansas Museum of Fine Arts, Little Rock, AR; and Center for Craft, Asheville, NC, among many others. His work is included in a number of collections, including Yale Art Museum; Metals Museum; Museum of Fine Art, Houston, TX; and Black Mountain College.