Untitled piece by Adam Weekley.

Youthful Indiscretions

Between the two of them, Amanda Besl and Adam Weekley are responsible for more minimal moments of curious intimacy in one gallery show than one has seen in a long time. The Studio Hart Gallery lately seems to thrive on small-scale exhibitions well suited to the space, a long box of a room joining a café next door.

Both artists concentrate on cropped images; in Weekley’s work there is a theme apparent in his studied, truncated figuration, dressed upper and lower torsos and legs in crew socks, long underwear, all meticulously rendered in Prismacolor. Weekley’s skewed perspective to ordinary bits of attire and appearance is further emphasized by revealing, variously, fields of chest and leg hair, and a subtle bulge of genitals through cotton sweatpants. His diffident figures blow smoke in wispy ribbons, stand motionless near a dead mouse. His images incline a viewer to mine the body humors, twining threads of melancholy contemplation.

Besl’s wet teenagers glisten in briefly caught, snapshot-like paintings that glow with sunlight. Her figures stare out of the frame with bright startled eyes and dripping hair. Besl’s painterly investigations into the leisure life of young women treat her subjects as feral creatures—as if left to themselves they would not be seen.

Her work takes a sounding on the depth of the wholly mysterious adolescent female.

The joint exhibition runs through May 26.