Suzanne Sattler’s delicate and spacious pencil drawings lure you into a dreamlike reality that examines our relationships with each other and the natural world around us. A swarm of insects exit the mouth and nose of a woman exhaling in a dubious dance of the grotesque and the beautiful. A dog-like animal was seemingly the host of a tenacious strain of parasitic insects as we see them escape from its deceased used body. A seated woman has the face of a flower, which attracts insects to hover around her, in hopes of a relationship and ultimately pollination. Suzanne’s drawings ask us questions of what relationships really mean, which kinds are symbiotic and which ones are deadly.

By contrast, Mel Kadel’s smaller, colorful drawings on coffee stained paper zero in on humans’ relationships with each other by concentrating on the battles within ourselves. In, Parts Of You, multitudes of the same girl stand on top of one another, climb, hang, and hold on to each other in order to form one whole person who is evidently falling in space. Mel’s characters feel claustrophobic, swirling in circles of confusion, and wrestling each other but then occasionally erupting with confidence, forming cosmic human pyramids and shooting vivid rays of light at the powers that be which bring us all down. Mel’s playfulness, humor and intricate renderings show us the wars we wage within our neurotic selves as well as when our positivity prevails over life’s monstrous perils.

Mel Kadel grew up in the Pennsylvania suburbs and has been living in Los Angeles for the last 10 years. Her work is created using tiny pens, coffee, q-tips, and glue.Suzanne Sattler grew up in Long Island, NY and currently lives and works in NY. Her work is created primarily with pencil and pen on paper. Both artists have exhibited in group shows at Cinders and this is their first 2 person show in NY.