Readymade is proud to announce the opening exhibition of the 2025 season, Portrait of the Artist as an Endangered Species. Featuring work by artists currently or previously in the DNA Artist Residency program, Freight+Volume NYC artists, Cape-based artists, and invited guests, the exhibition will run from May 31st - August 3rd, 2025.  There will be a public reception on Saturday, May 31st from 6:00-8:30 PM.

When James Joyce penned his first novel in 1916, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, his alter ego Stephen Dedalus rebelled against the conventions of his time in Ireland, culmination in a self-imposed exile to Europe.  In other words, he had a choice, and he chose a path away from the trappings of comfort, habit and custom.

Recently, more and more artists are faced - in many ways forced - with the same choice, and it's become an increasingly difficult one.  In a time defined by political, economic and cultural uncertainty, censorship, extremism and instability, the role of the artist becomes a necessary and defiant act.  Exile is imposed by forces beyond their control, and their exile takes place at home, where they live. Their entire ecosystem is threatened.

Readymade Gallery reopens its doors for our third season with A Portrait of the Artist as an Endangered Species, an exhibition that utilizes and expands upon self-portraiture and figurative painting to examine the precarious state of the artist in today's society.  Like the Cape's infamous Piping Plover, and other fragile wildlife - the artist's natural habitat is threatened and shrinking. The basic elements necessary to sustain a creative life - freedom of speech, education, public and private funding from fellowships, grants, residencies, galleries, art fairs, non-profit institutions - are becoming increasingly difficult to sustain. The recent drastic defunding of the National Endowment or the Arts (NEA), the alarming rollback of grants due to government overreach, and the twin forces of political and social censorship have left the creative community at the risk of extinction. 

Curated as both a commentary and a recontextualization, the exhibition demonstrates fresh connections and affinities between the featured artists, and their approaches to the show's thesis. Some artists, such as well-known performance artist Karen Finley, a veteran of public defunding and currently the subject of a mixed media solo at Freight+Volume in NYC, focus on the solitude and isolation of the artist's current existence.  Kim Dorland's expressive and painterly depiction of a lone woodsman also testifies to this solitary path.  In Early Morning Mallorcan Bel Fullana offers a single naked female figure, seemingly ravaged by time, nature and external forces.  Likewise, Brooklynite Nancy Elsamanoudi depicts a despondent, topless girl on the verge of tears, stirring a lobster pot with the hapless creatures boiling inside.  NYC and Spain-based Cristina de Miguel's Self Portrait NYC also portrays a mixture of the artist's simultaneous vulnerability and strength, as well as a kind of playful outsiderism.  Cape-based Richard Neal contributes two brooding "cookie tin" portraits of individuals distressed, smoked and blackened beyond recognition. Tabitha Vevers, notable Provincetown-raised painter, lends a mixed-media Double Self Portrait with a sliding blueprint face beside a hammer of ominous connotations. The ageless and legendary Provincetown transplant Brit artist Peter Hutchinson is represented by an early photo self portrait Hunter with Spear, suggesting Darwin's survival of the fittest, and of the artist.  Mary de Vincentis (NYC) brings a delicate narrative of a bedridden figure, surrounded by buzzing flies, poetically titled Spared Insects Paying Respect.  Jim Peters depicts the darkened, bare bones and passionate existence of artist lovers in his painted constructions Corner in the Studio and Into the Deep.  Dylan Hurwitz presents a lone, naked, abject figure on a beach, with bystanders strolling in the distance, setting up an "us vs them" dynamic in his imposing Clique (Herring Cove). Becky Brown exhibits a colorful word-infused painting listing the many forms of Apocalypse. Finally Sam Jablon rounds out the premise of the exhibition with two small word paintings - Nothing is Wrong and Doomed.  

Other artists include Jackie Reeves, Daniel Ranalli, Ryan Kish, Meredith Iszlai, Peter Schenck, Derrick Rose, Thomas Hoffmann, Garrett Dutton (aka"G-love"), Robert Hodge, Kahn & Selesnick, and Rose Briccetti.  At the end of the day, Portrait of the Artist as an Endangered Species seeks to celebrate the resilience of our creative, collective reality and provide a road map towards a means of survival.