NEW YORK, NY.- Hales opened Autofriction, artist Sarah Faux's second solo exhibition with the gallery.

In a new group of large-scale canvases and 'cut-out' collages, Faux explores the delights and contradictions of living in a body. With energy and wit, this exhibition furthers Faux's painterly inquiries into the hidden lives of our senses and ourselves. The show's title, Autofriction, plays on 'autofiction,' a literary genre that pursues truth within the personal. The friction here also alludes to touch, self-pleasure, or to discord within one's sense of self.

Throughout the exhibition, Faux's vibrant colours and intertwining shapes slide and slip, pushing and pulling, as imagery comes in and out of focus. By letting go of narrative, Faux's motifs emerge unburdened - zippers, fingers and limbs moving through ambiguous spaces - touching, gripping and clasping. Joyfully dissociative, Faux's compositions feel just as likely to coalesce into a familiar scene of intimate connection as they do to rip themselves apart.

Building on earlier experiments in collage, Faux's cut-outs create unexpected, irregular shapes that activate the negative space of the wall. This dialogue continues within her paintings, where bold swathes of colour in densely worked sections are held in tension with areas of raw, untouched canvas. In her large-scale diptychs, Faux cuts the picture plane into uneven parts, reiterating that every whole is made from pieces. Therein lies the self: its parts held together by sheer friction.

Sarah Faux (b. 1986 Boston, MA, USA) received her MFA in Painting from Yale University in 2015. She gained a joint BA/BFA from Brown University and the Rhode Island School of Design in 2009. Faux lives and works in Brooklyn, NY.

Faux has been the recipient of numerous residencies and grants, including a Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant (2023-2024); The Clyfford Still Museum Residency, Denver, CO (2024); a Keyholder Fellowship at the Lower East Side Printshop, New York, NY, USA (2018-19), and Yaddo, Saratoga Springs, NY, USA (2017, 2012).

Solo exhibitions include Sweetbitter, Hales New York, USA; Whatever I see I swallow at M+B, Los Angeles, CA, USA; Perfect for Her at Capsule Shanghai, China; Seether at Thierry Goldberg Gallery, New York, NY, USA; and Gemini, Stems Gallery, Brussels, Belgium. Faux has also exhibited in many group shows, including Sim Smith, London, UK; Althius Hofland, Amsterdam, Netherlands; Lyles & King, New York, NY, USA; and Loyal Gallery, Stockholm, Sweden. Faux's paintings have been written about in Cultured Magazine, Artsy, i-D, Vice, Surface Magazine, The Wall Street Journal, Modern Painters and Hyperallergic, among others.