The Midnight Hour

About

The Hole is delighted to present The Midnight Hour, a group exhibition curated by Scroll (one of our own gallery directors, Julien Pomerleau, and Rachel Ng). The Midnight Hour is about nighttime rendered in landscape, domestic settings, still life, and portraiture. In these paintings, darkness is uniquely dimensional, with celestial blues and blacks composed of—and deepened by—a range of hues. Here you’ll find the coolness of the night sky offset by the warm incandescence of street lights and shop windows, or the silvery light of the moon. Inside glows a candle or a lamp.

The works depict all facets of the night, from nocturnal contemplation and solitude to after-hours festivities, some barely glimpsed in the shadows, some vivid and bustling. Not all the subjects in these paintings appear to partake in the recommended eight hours of sleep. Instead, The Midnight Hourpresents happenings mostly outside of the bedroom, from Dan Attoe’s moonlit foragers above to Paul-Sebastian Japaz’s late-night cigarette smokers. Whether through interpretations of dreams or by picturing the people we become once the sun sets, the exhibition reveals all that goes unseen during the day.

The lineup of artists welcomes both new talent and familiar names: Olga Abeleva, Dan Attoe, Jason Birmingham, Jose Bonell, Krzysztof Grzybacz, David Hamilton, Anthony Iacono, Paul-Sebastian Japaz, Claudia Keep, Sung Hwa Kim, Jean Lee, Lindsay Merrill, Susan Metrican, Keita Morimoto, Francesco Pirazzi, Cait Porter, Nastaran Shahbazi, Masamitsu Shigeta, Aaron Michael Skolnick, Mai Ta, James Ulmer, and Mikey Yates.

Founded by Julien Pomerleau and Rachel Ng, Scroll is a New York–based curatorial project focused on fostering community and uplifting the works of emerging and overlooked artists. Following first exhibitions in September and November 2022, The Midnight Hour is its largest show to date, bringing together twenty-two artists from around the world.