Apoxy's "Native Species" are in The Fridge!
Apoxy's solo show at The Fridge DC runs through January 31st
JAN 20, 2026
First thing first, Alex… I mean The Fridge is back and we are better off with it. The beloved arts venue, dedicated to the underserved and underground arts and music scene is reactivated by its owner Alex Goldstein. The gallery is raising funds to keep its mission going and needs your help. The timing of Alex and The Fridge’s return to the DC scene couldn’t have been more crucial. At a time when the White House and the government is lost to corruption and bigotry, governors of the city are still drunk on neoliberal snake juice, gentrification is in full swing and the AI data centers are infesting the beltway like medieval sea monsters, The Fridge represent a precious space in swamp that seems doomed to sink. So, please consider to chip in. Alex, who owns and runs The Fridge comes from family of art aficionados, and he has a background in graphic design and graffiti himself. If most galleries recruit artists because they chase an aesthetics and commercial success, Alex cultivates relationships to curate to keep the alternative art scene alive. He does so in a city where art is commonly attacked by officials and suffocated by economic disparity.
Photo by Murat Cem Mengüç.
And that’s where Apoxy’s solo show titled Native Species comes in. It is a well timed and conceived intervention. Most graffiti artists keep an anonymous profile and remain underground, while painting very visible works in public space. Apoxy belongs to a class of his own, for his work is mostly found on the DC waterways. He has been rigging a boat and a ladder to embellishing the underside of the Anacostia River overpasses for decades. “I have a long history on the Anacostia, this little abandoned wasteland of a river has been my playground since I was very young”, he writes in a short essay he composed as an introduction to his show. He describes his wild colorful bubbling edifices as “flowers”. “With no shortage of invasive predators it was obvious that if the flowers were to survive in the wild, they would be forced to adopt”, he states.
Photo courtesy of Apoxy.
A boat confiscated by the United States Park Police and the pressing personal time suggests that Native Species is Epoxy’s attempt to open up new horizons for his art. The show comprises of two main walls, one holding a wide range of smaller works, juxtaposed with black and white photographs of the 1990’s graffiti scene in the city, all taken by Apoxy himself. The second wall holds much larger pieces, including a stunning triptych and a piece painted on a found piano cover.
Triptych on salvaged wood by Apoxy. Photo Murat Cem Mengüç.
The triptych alone is worth your trip to The Fridge, if you ask me and deserves to be housed at a museum. Like all other works in the show, it is mainly painted on drift and found wood panels Apoxy collected from around the Anacostia River. The background of the piece evokes the feeling of cheap plywoods raised to fence abandoned lots, while colorful “flowers” of the painter contort and push upwards and outwards on the foreground. It is as close as you can get to the experience of looking at an outdoor graffiti in an indoor space, but then some. The triptych format suggests something akin to an altar piece, something specifically opened for view on sacred occasions of a metaphysical calendar. There is a real sense of divinity here but no scriptures to decode. “[I] had grown tired of both my name and, and letters in general,” Apoxy informs us and sure enough we see no words, no visible tags. Instead, it is an assembly of marvelous, pseudo geometric shapes, half recognizable objects, and emerging magical structures.
Untitled paintings on salvaged wood by Apoxy. Photo by Murat Cem Mengüç
“There is a city (in my head)” Apoxy explains which suggests a utopia he has germinated over the years he spent on the river and now he wishes to share. Still calling them flowers, he adds, “I am not saying the flowers are graffiti, and I am not saying they are not… While I have painted a considerable amount of these in the studio, they undoubtedly belong in to the wild, on their native river.” Luckily, he also informs us that he has acquired a new boat and a new mooring, which means his work on the waterways will resume. Like his “flowers”, he belongs to the DC rivers.
Native Species by Apoxy is on view through January 31 at The Fridge, located at 516 1/2 8th Street SE Rear Alley, Washington, DC 20032.
Untitled painting on salvaged piano cover by Apoxy. Photo by Murat Cem Mengüç.
Graffiti under an Anacostia overpass by Apoxy. Photo courtesy of Apoxy.
