Andrew Kreps Gallery is pleased to announce Head stretch, a group exhibition including Felipe Barsuglia, Allan Gandhi, Luciana Maas, Flora Rebollo, Gokula Stoffel, and Erika Verzutti.

Head Stretch brings together a group of artists whose work is united not in thematics, but by place – a shared studio building in São Paulo affectionately nicknamed “Predinho,” or little building. In her own words, Erika Verzutti slowly infiltrated the building, becoming “an older friend, some kind of mentor, mostly a fan.” As a result, existing friendships led to new connections, studio visits, board games, and late-night conversations, an analog version of the “infinite scroll,” leading to an exhibition shaped by the kaleidoscopic dialogues that develop in parallel to artistic practice.

This applies to the title itself, which took on individual meanings with each of the artists included. For Flora Rebollo, it immediately recalled the familiar gesture of craning one's head around to see the work of another. With Gokula Stoffel, it evoked the attenuated proportions of one single tall figure within a narrow canvas. Paint stretches the faces of Allan Gandhi’s characters, as their edges dissolve into the brushstrokes of food they eat, or the smoke escaping their mouths. Felipe Barsuglia’s heads, with their exaggerated eyes and ears, express a desire to find more space to see and listen. And for Verzutti, the title emerged from a feeling of expansion brought on by these exchanges, how they were reflected in her own practice, and a desire to stretch the heads of the exhibition’s viewers by allowing them to share in the risks taken by the works included.

Within this sense of community, a small idea, or locale, can become an expansive one, which is mimicked in the works’ installation; paintings crawl up the gallery’s walls, and crowd themselves into corners, creating new associations as disparate visual languages and materials abut one another. Seen collectively, they demonstrate that an artwork exists beyond its own frame, as each viewer brings with them their own experiences. Luciana Maas’ many Pinocchios bring Verzutti’s memories of her own childhood, watching a Japanese cartoon devoted to the same character, and the flood of exaggerated emotions that accompanied it. Throughout the exhibition, Verzutti has inserted her own sculptures and drawings, allowing the work of others to open them to new readings, and to serve as a reminder that sometimes the best thing you can do for your head, is to get outside of it.