Gladstone is pleased to present ‘It's Not Up to You,’ an exhibition of new works by contemporary artist Shahryar Nashat. Examining the complex relationship between the body and its representation in the production of art, Nashat embeds traces of the act of creation as an aesthetic byproduct within the work. Visceral, yet meditative, the works in this exhibition expand upon Nashat's continued exploration of themes of identity, mortality, and resilience.

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"The hustler is the artist as a young man, gazing into the camera, a smug, somewhat lazy look in his eyes. He is about to dye his hair – it won’t work. We are witnessing a moment of transition, the blurring of a line between a life and its outcome. The hustler is his own canvas, the painter as well as his pigments. To be an artist is to turn the collateral of survival into a living. The artist is a hustler and the hustler works alone. He stains and cleans up after himself as best he can. He wears a plastic glove and he looks at us, lazily, provocatively. His picture appears several times in the exhibition. Shahryar Nashat often works with this type of repetition, as if to see what matter accumulates, whose face emerges – this time his own." — Kristian Vistrup Madsen