Like a Nightingale with a Toothache

Jane Dickson, Ryan Gander, Robert Gober, J Grabowski, Robert Hawkins, Colter Jacobsen, Ross Knight, Matthieu Laurette, Lee Lozano, Alice Mackler, Gordon Matta-Clark, Marlon Mullen, Alessandro Paiano, Richard Prince, Claude Rutault, Maaike Schoorel, Mose Tolliver, B. Wurtz

Conceived as the gallery’s fifth anniversary exhibition, and unveiled just a hair earlier, “Like a Nightingale with a Toothache” assembles a group of artists fundamental to the gallery’s history and spirit. Its title is borrowed from Erik Satie. "Comme un rossignol qui aurait mal aux dents" (Like a Nightingale with a Toothache) is an in-text annotation found on one of his composition sheets for d’Holothurie (1913).

Sur une indication de jeu d’Erik Satie. On a performance indication by Erik Satie.

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Off Paradise is a gallery located on Walker Street founded by Natacha Polaert in 2019. The name evokes the old neighborhood of Five Points, at the center of which was a small, triangular park, full of hopes and grime, called Paradise Square. It also invokes Paradise Alley, the artists’ and poets’ colony on the then-godforsaken corner of Avenue A and East 11th Street that is referenced in Jack Kerouac’s novel The Subterraneans. Off Paradise is a fictional place, right off Paradise, adjacent to it, but not exactly it.