Rare is pleased to present Beneath the Surface, a group show featuring new works by Nicholas Hall, Zach Horn, Tom Snelgrove, and Daisuke Tsuchigahata. Although each artist utilizes mediums distinct from those of his fellow exhibitors, all four provide viewers with seductive, luxurious surfaces that belie the underlying social and philosophical content of their work.

Nicholas Hall's cut paper and collage works originate with found posters and calendar pages illustrating scenes from nature. Through a meticulous slicing and layering process, Hall combines and reconstitutes these images into spatially intriguing, pattern-rich landscapes that encourage viewers to observe the world from a new perspective and to explore its untapped possibilities.

Like Hall, Tom Snelgrove finds the inspiration for his work in the natural world - his starting point to examine what he refers to as the "natural unrestrained interconnectivity" between all creatures and objects. In marked contrast to their candy-colored, pristine surfaces, Snelgrove's oil paintings revel in this interconnectivity through surreal combinations of human and non-human, natural and man-made subject matter that generate sympathy as well as discomfort, and understanding mingled with awe.

Daisuke Tsuchigahata views the world in terms that are more black and white. He sees all landscapes as comprised of two components - objects that will eventually disappear and those that will endure, which he renders primarily in two colors - black and white. In his multi-media, futuristic canvases of stunning virtuosity, Tsuchigahata stretches and contorts black panty stockings and string to create highly detailed cities while relying on white cotton, chalk, and mineral pigment to depict pure, clear skies. In reducing the fragility of the human condition to a simple relationship between two colors, the artist makes visual poetry.

Taking a different tact, Zach Horn turns inward to examine his own life - his relationships, memories, and psychology - to generate exquisite, tightly articulated graphite drawings that taken "together . . . would be a map of [his] brain." Horn's preference for smooth surfaces, rounded edges, and soft lighting parallels a metaphysical expressionism as revealed in his mutated forms, distorted proportions, and warped perspectives.

Nicholas Hall obtained a BFA in painting in 2002 from the Pratt Institute and has participated in various group shows in New York, including Strange Fruit at RARE in 2012. Tom Snelgrove, who recently completed The Arctic Circle Expeditionary Residency Program, has exhibited at the Oodaaq Festival, Rennes, France; Het Nutshuis, The Hague, Netherlands; Simultan Festival, Timisoara, Romania; and Pierogi Gallery, Brooklyn, NY. Daisuke Tsuchigahata, who lives and works in Kanagawa, Japan, has exhibited with Gallery Yuki-Sis in Tokyo and Sagamihara Shimin Gallery in Kanagawa. Zach Horn, currently an adjunct professor at the University of Massachusetts in Boston, has shown with Gallery Benoit, Boston, MA; Nave Annex, Somerville, MA; Eckerd College, St. Petersburg, FL; and Gibson House Museum, Boston, MA.