Four paintings in the Allan Lane solo exhibition, “There’s Something I Should Tell You Before You Wake Up”, share one visual aspect: a dark cord that trails from a figure’s head, neck, or body and drifts off the canvas without saying where it goes.
Lane is the publisher of dosage MAGAZINE, and the show hangs at The Gallery at the Gas Lamp Hotel, 140 N. 2nd Street in Old City, through November 27. He is at the gallery himself during open hours, Thursday through Saturday from 12 to 5 p.m., or by appointment.
The Cord at the Center of the Allan Lane Solo Exhibition
The cord rises from the head of the standing nude in “abort/retry/fail” and rings the crouched figure in “The Preferred Reaction is no Reaction.” In “Need Not Be Said” it sweeps across the neck as it exits/enters the figure’s mouth, and in “What happened to me should not happen to anyone / I would not allow this to happen to you” it curls off the shoulder. None of the four explains it.
Near the big canvases hang two framed pen-and-ink drawings from 2002, “Study for abort/retry/fail” and “Girl With Gun.” The study shows the same standing figure that became the 2026 painting, 24 years later. The image was waiting a long time for its canvas.
Left: “Need Not Be Said” 2026. Acrylic on canvas. 40 x 30 in.
Right: “What happened to me should not happen to anyone / I would not allow this to happen to you” 2026. Acrylic on canvas. 60 x 48 in.
Five Sides to Every Story in the Allan Lane Solo Exhibition
Four works come from the Five Sides to Every Story series: “Why Do You Think That Is Air You Are Breathing?,” “Please Stop Screaming At Me,” “abort/retry/fail” and the title painting, “There’s Something I Should Tell You Before You Wake Up.” The series turns inward, toward emotional trauma and realization, both personal and public. Lane calls the paintings “visual representations of afterthoughts.”
Lane explained, “My figurative works are cerebral conversations rooted in emotional trauma, reckonings, realizations, overthinking, and the afterthoughts. It’s all the same conversation based on connections and disconnections. I remember more than I would ever confess.” He concluded, “I can show you better than I can tell you.”
The portraits sit differently. “Middle Passage,” from 2025, presses two faces together at 60 by 48 inches, with a small study for it nearby. “Self Portrait in Red Room-Breathing, Still” puts a bearded face against a red wall. Lane often paints himself, sometimes two or three times on one canvas, and describes the work as an intrusive investigation of candid expression.
Seeing the Allan Lane Solo Exhibition in Old City
Lane returned to painting after more than thirty years away from the canvas, and ten of the 12 works on the walls are from 2025 and 2026. The other two are the drawings.
Prints are available to buy at the Allan Lane solo exhibition alongside the original works. Visit allanlanestudio.com for more insight on the artist and his work.
None of the four cords explains itself, and the title promises a confession the paintings never put into words. That silence is what you carry out of the room.
Cover image: Hugh E Dillon/Philly Chit Chat
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