Saturday, February 21, 2026 at 1:00 PM to Saturday, March 28, 2026 at 1:00 PM
Serious Topics, Down the Driveway
The paintings in Stalking the Good Life are all about foraging for the elusive butterfly of freedom. Depicted are humans “getting away from it all” in remote, decayed and abandoned areas: empty parking lots, sun-bleached motels, recreational spaces gone to seed. These are disjointed versions of a beach resort vacation getaway, places where the promise of leisure has long since departed but the yearning for escape remains.The figures are shown celebrating with reckless abandon, in love with life. Some are simply passing time, communing with a special landscape. Others are grieving their excessive decisions. These paintings all take place in the gleaming light of day, under a free-flowing, candy-coated sky that sets the stage for an intoxicated dreamscape of the good life.Wiedel combines commonplace and occasionally bleak landscapes with vividly rendered images inspired by biker parties, illustrated religious tracts, counter-cultural rituals, and celebratory scenes from everyday life. His paintings can be read as satire, social criticism, psychedelic excursions, or simply joyful celebrations of freedom. He works in a style that is both illusionistic and painterly, aiming to elicit an uneasy sensation that our own reality is not too dissimilar from these disturbing fictional worlds.