NYLONS, on view at Entrance NYC, presents the culmination a two year long collaboration between Rhys Gaetano and Alix Jean Vollum. Using Rhys Gaetano’s signature making method of beeswax encaustic and steel on panel, the two artists worked to abstract classic 1950’s American hosiery advertisements sourced by Vollum.
Rhys Gaetano (b. 1983, New York, NY); BFA: Cooper Union, NY; lives and works between Brooklyn and upstate in Oxford, NY, in his studio next to an apiary. Gaetano’s first show with Entrance, ‘All in if You Are,’ was staged in September 2021 as a two person show with his friend and frequent collaborator, artist Ray Smith. Gaetano exhibited a new series of poured encaustic wax paintings and a sculptural disco ball titled ‘101.1’ that rotated in the room, playing the eponymous radio station for the duration of the show. Gaetano was a founding member and active participant in the activities of the art collective Bruce High Quality in 2006, anonymously exhibiting internationally in commercial venues and institutions with the group that came to define the downtown New York arts scene for more than a decade and a half. Gaetano began using his own name around 2019. His new encaustic wax on panel paintings depict moments of personal memory through abstracted representation of American commercial iconography.
Alix Vollum (b. 1989) co-founded Sleepy Hollow Fine Art, a gallery in Portland, Oregon, curating shows of emerging and outsider artists. She has shown at Kimberly Klark in New York, AliasBooks East in Los Angeles, and VI Dancer in San Francisco. She divides her time between Oregon and upstate New York.