Ian Faden & Wayne Bruce Dean

Happy Tears is a two-person exhibition of recent paintings by Ian Faden and tiny, ceramic sculptures by Wayne Bruce Dean, curated by Shehab Awad.

Encounters with cuteness can trigger explicitly contradictory feelings. When we see something cute, it sparks within us the desire to both protect, and consume it. ‘Cute aggression’ is displaying superficially aggressive behavior in response to encountering something cute, like gritting your teeth, or clenching your fist, or wanting so badly to squeeze, or pinch it. There is something inherently sadistic about cuteness.

When we see something that we perceive as cute, both stress and reward pathways are activated in our brain triggering the release of dopamine, oxytocin and serotonin, and inversely, adrenaline, cortisol, and noradrenaline. This is the human body’s way of regulating itself so that it is not overcome by emotion. Like how when you love someone so much that your brain triggers thoughts of losing them. Or how we cry when we are overwhelmed with happiness.

Happy tears can be tears of deception. We can escape in happy tears and hide our sad tears behind them. The cute image or object can also hide or contain sinisterness. A “lol” at the end of a shady sentence can soften its landing. Cute can be a deceptive tactic, a vehicle for promiscuous signaling. Cute shit glides under the radar due to its seemingly harmless appearance. There is manipulative power in cuteness. There is cunning in cuteness. Beware of the cute. But also just embrace it and squeeze it, and relish in the bubbly sensations it invokes within you. Please don’t touch the art.

Ian Faden was born in Boston, grew up in Massachusetts and graduated from Pratt Institute in 2011 with a BFA in Painting. While there he also studied in Venice. In 2014 he worked with the artist Brian Stremick to make a collaborative figure painting book, Ass & Dick, released at the The Bureau of General Services – Queer Division. In the Fall of 2015 he attended Vermont Studio Center. From the end of 2015 to 2020, he worked in the studio of the artist Eliza Douglas between New York and Frankfurt. He currently lives in Brooklyn with his cat, Tompkins.

Wayne Bruce Deanis a multidisciplinary illustrator, sculptor, writer, designer, and performance artist from Austin, Texas. His work intersects somewhere between anthropomorphic storybook denizens and surrealist wormholes. Dealing in the mysteries of consciousness, he toys with pop cultural artifacts and explores fantastical themes through a saturated, dreamy filter.

Shehab Awad is an independent curator, writer, and aspiring chef from Cairo, Egypt currently based in New York City. He/she is Founding Director of Executive Care, an agency that provides a variety of meaningful and attentive services to enhance the experience of living. Her/his writing appears in the Brooklyn Rail, and ArtAsiaPacific Magazine. Most recently, he/she was Curatorial and Development Manager at Participant Inc, NYC. He/she holds an MA from the Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College.