Joshua Abelow

Joshua Abelow’s painting practice incorporates drawing, photography, creative writing, and curating. 

He obtained his BFA in Painting from RISD in 1998 and his MFA in Painting from Cranbrook Academy of Art in 2008. He worked for painter Ross Bleckner in New York for seven years. His first solo exhibition in New York City was held at James Fuentes in 2011. From 2010 – 2015, Abelow maintained an influential art blog titled ART BLOG ART BLOG. 

Contemporary Art Writing Daily writes, “The wider artworld came to know Abelow through his Art Blog which – coming to prominence against the sterile façade of Contemporary Art Daily’s hegemony – felt human, resistant, and no-qualms subjective key to a very specific NY scene, felt warm in reestablishing the local against the global, like grocery co-op charm to Walmart’s efficiency. It felt NY again. And as interest increased for those looking for the freshest produce Abelow became, if not a ringleader, then a purveyor of visibility, a figure of some small access in a scene…” 

In 2014, Abelow founded Freddy, a curatorial project focusing on work by underrecognized and emerging artists. To date, Freddy has presented 59 projects. 

Abelow has held more than twenty solo exhibitions in a wide variety of cities including New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, San Francisco, Providence, Omaha, Wichita, Copenhagen, Sydney, São Paulo, Toronto, Milan, and Brussels. In March, he will present a two-person exhibition with his fiancé, Katya Kirilloff, at Parapet Real Humans in St. Louis followed by a family show including work by his sister, Tisch Abelow, and late grandmother, Paula Brunner Abelow, at Swanson Kuball in Long Island City, New York. Additionally, Abelow will present a solo exhibition of paintings and photographs at Arnold’s, Baltimore.