Gabe Cortese b. 1994

Gabe Cortese’s paintings construct intimate, psychologically charged worlds shaped by queer narratives of desire, vulnerability, and relational tension. Working fluidly between figuration and still life, Cortese approaches narrative as fragmented and open-ended, allowing meaning to emerge through repetition, association, and subtle shifts in perception rather than linear storytelling. His scenes often feel suspended in time, holding traces of events already passed or just about to unfold, where emotional weight resides as much in absence and restraint as in what is directly depicted.

Drawing from the compositional structures and visual language of Renaissance and Mannerist painting, Cortese reconfigures historical modes of gesture, illumination, and spatial tension to center contemporary experiences of queerness, sexuality, and intimacy. Figures—often derived from composites of the artist’s own body and that of his partner—function as mutable sites of projection through which affection, longing, and the dynamics of looking unfold. At times, objects and fragments take on heightened narrative significance, compressing emotion into distilled arrangements of candles, flowers, blades, shadows, and architectural thresholds that operate less as fixed symbols than as shifting carriers of affect.

In his Spring 2026 solo-exhibition at Nazarian / Curcio,  Cortese moved toward increasingly pared-down compositions that emphasize stillness, proximity, and quiet tension. Through subtle spatial relationships and carefully modulated light, his paintings allow desire and transformation to remain in continuous exchange, creating images that are simultaneously tender, theatrical, and unresolved.

Gabe Cortese (b. 1994, Key West, FL; lives in Providence, RI) received his MFA from The University of Central Florida in 2021 and his BFA from The University of Central Florida in 2017. Select solo exhibitions include Nazarian / Curcio, Los Angeles, CA; Bremond Capela, Paris, France; G/ART/EN, Como, Italy; Auxier Kline, NYC, NY; M + B, Los Angeles, CA; The Cabin LA, Los Angeles, CA. Select group exhibitions include Le Mont Art Space, Taiwan; Nazarian / Curcio, Los Angeles, CA; Orlando Museum of Art, Orlando, FL; Green Family Art Foundation, Dallas, TX; G/ART/EN; Como, Italy; Woaw Gallery, Beijing, China; Quappi Projects, Louisville, KY; Auxier Kline, Brooklyn, NY; ParkHaus15, Orlando, FL; , Snap! Space, Orlando, FL; Tom of Finland Foundation, Los Angeles, CA; Terrace Gallery, Orlando, FL; Fusion Gallery, Orlando Science Center, Orlando, FL; Pop Gallery, Orlando, FL; Museum of Art shop, Orlando, FL; City Arts Factory, Orlando, FL; Double Leg Gallery, Orlando, FL; UCF Art Gallery, Orlando, FL. 

Cortese’s work is in the collection of the Institute of Contemporary Art, Miami, FL; The Orlando Museum of Art, Orlando, FL; X Museum, Beijing, China; and the Tom of Finland Foundation, Los Angeles, CA.