A Girl Is a Fire Contained

Artist Dylan Rose Rheingold experienced the palpable pressures of girlhood in her younger years, often feeling like she was shrinking or altering herself to fit into a mold that was created for an unattainable ideal. Through learning to accept the differences that characterize her, Rose creates space for other women to accept the pieces of themselves that they did not have the strength to before.

Rheingold’s latest exhibition, Best in Show, now open at M+B, explores the journey of girlhood. Through a series of mixed-media paintings, she conjures nostalgia as she draws from early memories, channeling the notion of competition as she recalls her high school’s color war competitions.

You grew up in a suburb outside of NYC — a child to a Japanese mother and a Jewish-American father. How have you learned to weaponize or reclaim this idea of “otherness” that often arises during adolescence?

Within my adolescence, that idea of 'otherness' wasn't something that I ever pushed away, but it was just something that I felt and I didn't really know how to express. But being submersed in a community that was so insular, there was so much of the same. And if you didn't fit into that box, you stood out. I kind of felt like I was almost floating; not really knowing where I should be. I don't think I ever had a point where I was ashamed or blocking out my origins, but I definitely wasn't as inspired or curious to explore my roots.

You allude to the many preconceived notions embedded within our minds as we mature. Social hierarchies are inevitable, as they allow us to categorize and classify people and their actions. As you’ve matured yourself, how have you unlearned these standards?

I think it's from honestly just putting yourself in a different environment. In college, I made so many friends from different walks of life and I became interested in their history. It made me take a step back and think, 'Whoa, why haven't I really taken the time to think about my own?' I started building this family archive of photos from both my parents’ sides. And I was making a bunch of collages at the time. I was really interested in Rauschenberg's collages — I'm a big fan of him. So I started making these collages and I didn't really have any intention of showing them. It was more just like an exercise for myself. But it really helped inform my voice and my thoughts, and I was able to create these obscure combinations and connections. I kept making these as I started grad school and started looking inward. I realized that what was so attractive about those images and pairing them side by side with both sides of my family was the contrast. I was able to see that otherness as a powerful thing and a cool thing. It's actually cool how different my mom grew up and my dad grew up. This should be celebrated. When you think about art history, American culture, the American dream, and what that actually means, I think it's a lot closer to these diverse families than anything else. I don't think that cookie-cutter mold is representative of the truth.

Your practice blends abstract figuration and surrealism. Why do you choose to portray your thoughts in this way?

Stylistically, the choices exaggerate certain things and hone in on and celebrate the awkwardness and flaws that we experience at that age. I got my BFA and MFA and I was taught how to draw very traditionally. At the time, I found that to be super frustrating because I was never really interested in realism. Looking back now, I'm really grateful for it because I think it did help me develop my own style. All of the paintings [in this show] are mixed media, so I start with an acrylic base and then I end up layering a lot. But within the layers, I use acrylic and oil stick pretty heavily. For this series, I actually started making my paint for the first time. So most of the dyes are made from pigments and this was my first time experimenting with that. But there's also China marker, there's also regular marker, and even on the dog pile paintings, all of the girls have somewhat chipped nail polish. I actually did use real clear nail polish and glitter on them. And I'm telling you all of this because I think it also plays into what we were just speaking about. Being able to use high-quality pigments and very professional mediums, but mixing those with materials that I think can directly relate to adolescents, in a nostalgic way. Using hints of neon that almost remind you of a highlighter or using a little bit of a crayon and just employing these techniques that aren't traditional.

I know for this exhibition you have chosen a more muted color palette than you usually do and even the space you selected was intentional. Tell me about how this body of work departs from your previous ones.

This was my first time working on a body of work that was made in such a controlled setting, which was very challenging. It's the first time I have a show that's really site-specific. When you walk into the space, I want it to feel like an auditorium or a gymnasium. And the way that it's going to be installed is going to be that half of the space is red and half of the space is blue. This is definitely a bit of a jump for me being that it's a body of work that's all taking place within the same moment in time. Even the way that I made these works was interesting. It may seem a little bit different to my audience, but making them felt the same. It just felt like I was doing a series of studies, which is something that I usually do anyway. I'm just not really exhibiting the studies themselves, so this goes one step further. My last show, which was called Lost in the Dress Up Bin, also drew a lot of parallels from adolescent experiences to adulthood and navigating the space between girlhood and womanhood. I think that the parallels I made between performance and identity in that show are the same concepts I am exploring here. I am examining how women feel like we need to perform or that we subconsciously have an audience. We hold that gaze in so many ways and that affects our identity and how we view ourselves.

I am examining how women feel like we need to perform or that we subconsciously have an audience. We hold that gaze in so many ways and that affects our identity and how we view ourselves.

You mentioned the dichotomy and the interconnected relationship between movement and mistake in your show notes. Can you expand upon that and what characterizes that relationship?

In my painting process, when I make a mistake, I never try and cover it up or start over. When I was in a more traditional mindset, I was oil painting and making under paintings. It's something you learn to do so you can have a solid foundation to start from. But as I've gotten older, I like to build off of my mistakes and I layer a lot, but I keep that line work visible so you can see the movement and the flaws. You can see the growth of how these figures are interacting over time and I think it's a more realistic view of my process. I think that's more relatable than seeing something that's supposed to be perceived as realistic because that's what life is.

In the context of this body of work, it's also a reflection of what it means to be a woman. Building off of your mistakes is just growing up. How has this work and the self-reflection that it spurred affected your outlook on womanhood and the relationships we foster with one another?

I had definitely been recalling certain memories and interactions from when I was younger. I also had the realization that, in my mind, one of the reasons that the art world hasn't really taken this period of life very seriously — this idea of girlhood — is that maybe the issues or conflicts that occur during that time don't feel heavy enough. But I really do feel like even those situations and the hard times that people go through at that age, they really shape you and follow you until you're older. I think about how different maybe certain people would be if they were let in a bit more during these formative years, you know? I also watched 13 Going on 30 again last week. It's definitely still one of my favorites and I think the way they address nostalgia and social hierarchies is actually pretty eye-opening. Girls can be so cruel. Of course, we support women, but we can also acknowledge that girls are not always the kindest and the waters are not always so warm. I wish we talked more about these things when I was younger because I think some framework adjustments could have made all the difference.

These issues may seem so small to an adult, but when you're that age, those things are everything. It's not surprising that there is often animosity between women because we're taught to compete with each other our entire lives. It's about analyzing what teaches us to act that way towards each other because these things are often taught and learned behaviors. If you could go back in time and speak to your younger self, what would you say? Do you think there's anything she needed to hear?

If I could go back in time and tell my younger self something, it would be just to be a bit more unapologetic about being myself. I'd tell myself not to be concerned about how my values or my interests may differ from my peers. Knowing that that's actually a good thing and something worth embracing rather than shying away from.

I think that's something that's really hard to understand when you're that age. It's funny how we grow up and become a bit more courageous to be the most authentic versions of ourselves. What do you hope other women can take with them from this show as a lesson or empowering message to carry with them after they depart?

I just hope they can feel like they can be seen and heard. I want them to know that these people I am portraying are not the cookie-cutter mold, but they are real and they have depth to them. They're beautiful because they are different. When I think about my younger self going to museums, I would only ever see very traditional impressionist paintings of women with children or women doing very domestic, leisurely activities like reading or taking a bath. Something else that is subconscious in my practice is my inclusion of eye bags on faces. That's something I've been doing since I was a little kid. I found a sketchbook the other day from when I was in elementary school and all of the people had little curves under their eyes. At the time, it was nothing intentional. At the end of my BFA, someone commented on it and asked, 'Is this a statement on flaws?' It really made me take a step back because it was so unintentional but then I didn't want to correct it because it encapsulated my vision anyway. I never felt like there was a space where I saw people who were like me, occupying that in-between space, or just figuring things out. So I think that's what I'm trying to capture.

Best in Show will be on display at M+B Galleries until November 11th.

Art

Canon at Kapp Kapp

May 09, 2024

One of contemporary painting’s characteristic inventions was the prospect of rendering the artist’s hand as an entirely invisible entity. Andy Warhol most notably thematized this effect in his silkscreen paintings, trading out his authorial mark for a machine-like repeated printing process, and Wade Guyton’s more recent inkjet on canvas works further outlined the possibilities (and limits) of a technologically mediated artistic practice. Together, Warhol and Guyton’s printing-as-painting idiom mirrored the mechanics of an accelerating image economy that today has reached an apex in the popularization of AI image production.

As Warhol and Guyton’s influence looms large for young painters, for whom the tools of emerging technologies at their disposal remain vast but the challenge of artistic novelty appears ever heightened, the question emerges: how can one reanimate this ghost of the painter’s hand?

In the exhibition Canon at Kapp Kapp, the trio of young artists Thomas Blair, Kunning Huang, and Waseem Nafisi pose their response. The three artists each independently arrived at the employment of printing-as-painting processes in their work years after having graduated together from the Cooper Union. Aligned by a sensitivity to the stakes of art historical progress, their collisions of classical and contemporary methods boldly point forward.

By Evan Lincoln
Images courtesy of Kapp Kapp.

Thomas Blair, Crashed Car (Flat)

White Car Crash, 2024. Courtesy of the artist and Kapp Kapp.

Upon entering the show, the viewer meets Blair’s Crashed Car (Flat) (2024), a cropped snapshot of a wrecked vehicle, doused with splashes of violet and rust on its body. Upon closer examination, the image feels unstable or uncanny, not quite hand painted but also not entirely photographic. This effect of image hybridity epitomizes Blair's inkjet paintings — depicting generated images of car crashes (an overt Warholian homage to the Death & Disaster series), they interrogate how the feeling of a painterly moment can be manufactured in an iterative negotiation between human and machine.

In his towering White Car Crash (2024), layers of ink appear to vibrate and bleed into one another, an indication of Blair’s multistep process of producing images in AI, slicing them into layers, then repeatedly running each layer on canvas through a printer. The result is a reverse engineered painting — Blair’s approximation of a human touch via machine achieves, paradoxically, a potent expressiveness.

Kunning Huang, Untitled (nature of art), 2024. Courtesy of the artist and Kapp Kapp.

In Huang’s answer to the “problem,” his referential strategy summons the history of Chinese imagery and rice paper, attaining a lyrical balance between past and present. In the anterior of the gallery, his piece titled Untitled (nature of art) (2024) broadcasts the tongue in cheek thematic tagline “Nature of Art,” alongside imagery lifted from an early Qing Dynasty painting manuscript — a graceful pond scene, complete with grass stalks and dragonflies. But the objects and their surroundings seem tonally inverted and actively glitching, indicating Huang’s treatment of rounds of image processing in the preparation stages of his practice. Quilted in tiles, each panel of the work undergoes an intensive process: a specially rigged Canon printer impresses onto an acrylic sheet and thereafter, Huang rubs the printed ink directly onto rice paper, continuing a technique performed in ancient Chinese woodblock printing. The porous nature of the material causes the CMY ink colors to separate, culminating in a pleasurably pixelated texture. In this manner, Huang’s historically enriched approach demystifies present day conceptual concerns and technologies as existing within deeper lineages.

Waseem Nafisi, Bar Peasants (after Malevich), 2023

Second Impressions (after Malevich), 2023. Courtesy of the artist and Kapp Kapp.

Nafisi similarly leads with an art historical reference — the paintings of Kazimir Malevich — in his playful interventions into the thrust of post-modernity. In Bar Peasants (2023), a distorted copy of a brightly colored Malevich painting is bisected by a stretcher bar that literally juts out from either side of the canvas, while also appearing to nudge forward a horizontal sliver of the image — yet this tromp-l'œil unit remains physically flat on the canvas. Nafisi accomplishes this effect by constructing a to-scale miniature “stretcher bar” fixed onto a page from a Malevich monograph, then photocopied and printed onto the canvas. As Malevich serves as a stand-in for the crushing sensation of art history standing on one’s shoulders, Nafisi triumphantly pierces the purified image to assert his place in the “now.”

In Second Impressions (After Malevich) (2024), he employs a similar technique of flattened physicality, in this instance introducing a hand-painted wooden feature in the foreground. True to theme, the only occurrence of paint in this exhibition of paintings is merely an image of paint. This ironic demonstration reveals a self-conscious strategy by Nafisi: the painter’s hand itself becomes an image.

It may come as no surprise that as art school peers, Blair and Huang both trained as photographers, while Nafisi studied more traditional painting — all three departed their mediums and converged in the center at technologically-driven painting practices. The culmination of these young artists’ experiments suggests that painting can trudge through the societal jungle of images and increasingly intelligent technologies of today by borrowing from the toolkit of the past — a promise that digital acceleration can, in fact, enhance the joie de vivre of making and experiencing art.

Canon is on view at Kapp Kapp, 86 Walker St 4th Floor, New York, NY 10013 until May 11, 2024

Art

Creative Capital Helps Artists Flourish

May 08, 2024

The practice of art is always free — it just requires a curious mind and the whimsy to create entire universes out of the mundane. That creative capability lies dormant within us all and a true artist is not afraid to ignite that passion without trepidation. But not all who dare to light that flame have access to the necessary tools — and a flame without accelerant is sure to fizzle out without being tended to.

Allowing that burning passion to flourish without bounds, nonprofit organization Creative Capital embarked on a mission to highlight artists pushing the bounds in their respective mediums — but the organization takes that support one step further by actually providing grants, services, and tools to height-seeking creatives. Through a democratic, open-call grantee program, the org helps shape the careers of artists of all ages and demographics, aiding through funding that has totaled $55 million in grants to date.

Interview by Kayla Curtis-Evans
Feature Photo by Madison Craig, additional photos by Pablo Barrera and TC Meggs

In January, Creative Capital announced this year’s grantees, a beautifully colorful and expansive list of artists sending powerful messages through the visual arts and film/moving image. A total of 54 artists will each receive up to $50,000 of unrestricted project funding as well as opportunities to build their network and creative community. So Creative Capital is not only helping to ignite the fire in each artist but assuring that it burns on fiercely even beyond each new work. “We’re committed to not only helping these brilliant artists realize their projects, but to also create the conditions that will enable their artistic practices to thrive,” President and Executive Director Christine Kuan echoed.

This year’s grantee group is made up of 80% artists of color — 20% of which are Native or Indigenous individuals. Northern Cheyenne painter and printmaker Jordan Ann Craig is among that category. Craig uses her work to fuel her imperative pursuit of bringing visibility to the place she comes from.

Jordan Ann Craig always infuses her upbringing into her work, speaking from her personal experiences. Her Creative Capital-supported project will be in collaboration with her mother, Brigit Johnson. Within this work, Books Not Returned to the Library, Craig and Johnson are speaking with authority on an epidemic that has flown largely under the radar for the general public: the rapid disappearance of Native women occurring every single day, at unimaginable rates. This work will include handmade books, each representative of one missing or murdered Native woman, girl, or two spirit — telling their stories on a larger scale, as they deserve to be told.

Below, office spoke to her about her Creative Capital-funded project and what it means to open doors for others, as it has been done for her.

Kayla Curtis-Evans — How do you continually infuse your Northern Cheyenne heritage into your work?

Being a Northern Cheyenne woman, I feel everything I make is inherently Indigenous and Northern Cheyenne. In my practice, I bring in specific design elements inspired by Cheyenne and Northern Cheyenne beadwork and quillwork. I study beaded and/or quilled moccasins, baby carriers, and pouches, adorned in beautiful Plains Indian motifs. I feel very lucky to have incredible art to study and bring into my own art.

How does your current setting of Northern New Mexico influence your artistic outlook?

Color is very important to my work and how I experience my surroundings. In New Mexico, color is highly concentrated and vivid. I often bring that saturation and contrast into my paintings. I am also surrounded by an amazing community of makers and artists in Northern New Mexico which keeps me motivated.

Tell me about your experience so far with Creative Capital and what it means to you to have this organization assist you in spreading this message.

Having Creative Capital support my collaborative project with my mother is huge. Our project is a big undertaking, and we are currently at the beginning phases of our timeline. Having Creative Capital’s support and resources will undoubtedly help us carry out a successful project.

Your installation, Books Not Returned Library, will explore the major epidemic of Native women rapidly disappearing. How does your work act as an amplifier for the many Native stories that go unheard?

Books Not Returned Library is a collection of handmade books in which each book tells the story of a missing or murdered Indigenous woman, girl, or two-spirit. This library is overwhelmingly full, a powerful indicator of a severe and heartbreaking problem in our society. Collectively and individually, the books share the horrific reality of the violence happening against Indigenous women and girls. These books are a physical place for stories to live on. Every person has a story, and many of these stories have been untold or erased. This library is Brigit Johnson’s vision and idea. As her daughter and collaborator, I’m helping her bring this library to life. We are doing this for the countless Native women whose stories have been swept under the rug, including my mom’s sister Amy Johnson, who went missing in 1986.

Tell me about the research that will go into this project, as each “book” in the library will tell the story of a missing or murdered Indigenous woman. How did you discover the stories you wanted to bring to the surface?

Books Not Returned Library is at the beginning stages of research. With the generous funding awarded by Creative Capital, my mother and I are embarking on a research-heavy project that will require community engagement as well as consulting from a range of experts. We will be working with librarians, MMIWG2S experts, bookbinders, craftsmen, and most critically, the many families impacted by MMIWG2S.

You create abstract paintings, prints, and artist books. In this project’s case, you depart from those mediums, the books providing an in-depth visual analysis of just how grave this phenomenon is. Walk me through the process of creating these books and the technical skills applied.

Book Arts is truly a beautiful craft and art. I have been enamored by handmade books ever since I learned binding techniques in college. Each book will be handmade with love and attention to detail. We will be using traditional bookbinding techniques, and add details like letterpressed text to the spines.

Why is it important to you to use your vision to advocate for stories that do not always receive visibility — what do you hope the collective reaction is to telling these stories on a larger platform?

We want viewers to experience the gravity of the MMIW2S epidemic through Books Not Returned Library. We want people to feel overwhelmed, angry, and saddened by the amount of books in the library which translates to missing or murdered life. We want change, we want dialogue, and we want justice. More people need to know of this overlooked huge issue in our society. We are humanizing the available data to ultimately encourage change while also providing a safe space for families affected by MMIW2S to heal and share their loved ones’ stories.

How can we continue to support artists in the ways Creative Capital does?

My mom used to say, “If you just open the door for her, she will thrive.” I have been so lucky in my career that some big doors have opened up for me, giving me the chance to grow, succeed, compete, and thrive. As artists, we get a lot of “no’s” and closed doors. Taking a chance and providing a platform where you can say yes to artists and open those doors can be life-changing.

Art

'Whose Muse?' at Palo Gallery with Paul Henkel

May 07, 2024

As a young gallerist, Paul Henkel has the personality of an old-timey collector, interested in identifying talents lurking within his immediate circle and building intimate and collaborative relationships with these he acts as a patron of. Those familiar with Paul’s style would soon realize how much of a traditional dealer he is. Paul’s connoisseur approach, rooted in the vast knowledge of classical painting traditions he possesses, results in a program sensitive to this age-old medium’s historical specificity and discursive contexts, boasting a roster from Natalie Frank to David Smalling.

The architectural layout and design of Palo Gallery, Paul’s brainchild, tucked away on the quieter Bond Street, feels like an intimate salon of the Parisian avant-garde. Indeed, residents of artists’ lofts and studios in East Williamsburg, Bushwick, and Ridgewood, many of whom are producing exciting works for tomorrow’s frontier, regularly congregate at Palo Gallery and go all out for openings, often leading to block parties. Some of these artists would go on to work with Paul closely.

By Qingyuan Deng
Image courtesy of Palo Gallery. Photography by Lily Burgess

Recently, Paul curated a show, Whose Muse?, at Palo Gallery. Expansively and liberally installed, Whose Muse? demonstrates a boundless curiosity for the contemporary contour of portraiture painting and its limit. Problematizing the assumed parameters of muse as a passive recipient, Paul’s curatorial maneuver focuses on how the status of muse is granted but never a given. In line with his commitment to emerging talents, Paul highlights rising stars in the exhibition, who also happen to have posited some of the most enigmatic and provocative thesis on the absence and presence of muse in the contemporary landscape of portraiture painting.

For example, Lorenzo Amos’ Girl with pink hair / Analiese hides his painterly gaze in the abundance of gestures and impressions. Alternatively, Ronan Day-Lewis designates archives of images floating on the Internet as his source of inspiration, in the case of The Space Between Us. Asher Liftin’s Miles Reading takes the digital impulse to explosive ends, bracketing otherwise unseen pixels as units of perception. Elsewhere, Charlie Gosling’s self-study series outright denies viewers access to the artist’s face, the locus of recognition and identification. A similar act can be seen in Leah Ke Yi Zheng’s Untitled (melting woman). The muse (or a fleeting image of the artist) seemingly disappears.

(left) Lorenzo Amos, Girl with pink hair / Analiese, 2024. Courtesy of Palo Gallery.

(right) Ronan Day-Lewis, The Space Between Us, 2024. Courtesy of Palo Gallery.

Leah Ke Yi Zheng, Untitled (melting woman), 2023. Courtesy of Palo Gallery. (left)

Asher Liftin, Miles Resting, 2024. Courtesy of Palo Gallery. (right)

This exhibition is called Whose Muse? and most artists in the show seem to be troubling this historically problematic notion of the muse. Shall we start with your curatorial strategy responding to the question of muse?

This whole conversation started because we wanted to do a show on portraiture. I found that there is a small group of very brilliant artists, loosely inspired by British academic painting, who are working in a very real portrait mode of paintings. Quickly, when it comes to showing portraiture, the inevitable question is who is being depicted and what’s the relationship? My curatorial strategy toys with the historical idea of muse, and the difference between the muse and portraiture subject, the latter often appearing in paintings commissioned by powerful figures in an official capacity.

My research discovers that contemporary women artists are not only painting a great deal of self-portraiture that deviates from the historically troubled muse but also intimate familial relations that are more balanced in terms of power dynamics. Ultimately, I am interested in complicating the trope of male artist and their muse. Through proper research, it is much more apparent that Kiki Montparnasse or Elizabeth Siddal, who have unfair reputations for being poor, helpless women, were brilliant artists in their own right. Siddal had just as much influence on the pre-Raphaelites as anyone in their circle. To me, the muse as a participatory subject in the creation of the work becomes a running thread. The question mark in the exhibition title is to look at the breadth and complexity of these relationships, especially in the 21st century, where we have artists who are working without an actual model. Ronan Day-Lewis just grabbed an image of one of these weird images people post on Flickr for his painting. It was a picture from someone’s digital camera from the 2000s. He cropped and painted it into an incredible portrait in the sepia tone. Ronan will never meet them and has no relationship with them, he’s just fascinated by the mystery of their lives.

I am glad you mentioned the role of digital technology. As I understand it, there are quite a few artists in the show who are responding to how technology complicates this more expensive reading of muse-artist relationship. Could you talk more about those artists a bit more?

We live in a world where we are inundated with the idea of a portrait, right? We can take hundreds of portraits a day on our phones, but it is not the same as a true relationship to or study of a human. In most cases, the traditional portraiture is just as much a painting of the artist as that of the sitter. In spite of sounding arrogant, I wanted to put together an exhibition that encourages looking at images and depictions of other people again. Asher Liftin made two portraits for the show. One of them was based on an iPhone picture of his friend Miles, taken when they were visiting the last Venice Biennale. Asher broke the photo up into pixelated four colorway practice, which becomes a fascinating interplay between digital pixels and printed inks.

David Smalling’s painting is not of anyone, it is a surrealist contortion of a figure in marble. He has gone completely meta with it, using Photoshop to make almost a fetishization of the idea of a traditional, erotic muse such as Venus de Milo.

At the same time, I am balancing that with people who completely reject the technological side of things. Phoebe Helander only works with live models. Esme Hodsoll just told us she needs another three months of sitting!

Lorenzo Amos is in the middle. He would say his biggest inspiration are Mapplethorpe, Freud, Menzel, and Goya. Lorenzo sits with his models for hours, gets them to close and sit and frame up. But he takes photos of them with his iPhone, and that is his reference images to turn into these very painterly paintings.

I’m also thinking about artists using projectors to project images on a canvas. When you put them next to Lucien Freud, which is probably the other end of the spectrum, a very slow considered study, tensions rise.

(left) Phoebe Helander, Orange Eyeshadow, 2022. Courtesy of Palo Gallery.

(right) Esme Hodsoll, Boy In Bed, 2016. Courtesy of Palo Gallery.

You mentioned Freud. There’s a whole group of artists in the show hadn’t been thinking about technology, just because they were making works at a different time. I’m interested in the intergenerational lineup that you’re opting for here. Is this a historical survey? Or are you trying to establish interplays and tensions between the historical and contemporaneous.

I would love to do a historical survey of portraiture, but I don’t think we have the access or the wall space to go as far back as I would like to go. However, you can’t look at the state of new academic painters, like Lorenzo Amos or Sergey Kononov without considering Freud because he is certainly one of the most important post-war artists working with the idea of muse. Freud also had quite a reputation for being rather horrible to his subject. Nicola Bowery and Sue Tilley have both written books about their complicated relationships with Freud. But he is the ‘father’ of many of these painters working today and having this exhibition without his work felt some somewhat off.

I also selected a George Grosz drawing Artist and Model in the Dunes, which is a very sexualized study he did in the dunes in North Germany. It’s very cheeky, as Grosz was always slightly tongue in cheek, and still felt very relevant to the context of portraiture. Having a few artists who represent more of the history, even if it's the last 100 or so years was very important to look at this larger picture of portraiture.

George Grosz, Artist and Model in the Dunes (1940). Courtesy of Palo Gallery.

I’m also curious as to, now that you have completed curating the show, what are some of the insights you wish for people to take home?

When I go to the Met, or a lot of other museums, I have noticed that aside from the really, famous ones, like Mona Lisa, a lot of people move past portraits. It is less interesting than a grand landscape or history painting to many people. To me, portraitures often the most interesting. Because of this technical technological profusion that replaces portraits with images of people, we have lost touch with looking at considered portraiture. The show is an attempt to encourage considered looking and think through what representing a person really means. As a story or a vessel, a portraiture is always a complex network of contradictions, intricacies and tensions. Most importantly, I want people to physically be at the gallery to look at these portraits that fill our walls. Even right now, as I start looking at works together, and seeing connections that I hadn’t considered before, my perspective is constantly being slightly shifted. As much as we can put things together as a PDF, it is never the same as having them in the same space.

It seems that your curatorial strategy here goes beyond identifying different modalities of contemporary portraiture, be it seated, observed, or self-portraits, and really fleshing out the more intellectual and aesthetic implications of creating portraitures in the age of device saturation.

I started with the idea of putting portraits into three categories because we have these three rooms. I have left that idea behind because I thought it was too reductive. A portrait of a model can be just as much an act of self-portraiture as a physical self-portrait, and a self-portrait can be just as distant as copying a found image into a painting to me. I want to be unconstrained in my curation here and explore these more intricate, sensitive relationships when it comes to technology, subject, and agency. It is more exciting and a lot harder to put together a show that avoids using easy marks, but I think it’s going to turn out to be a very interesting conversation.

Whose Muse? is on view at Palo Gallery, 30 Bond St. New York, NY 10012 until June 1, 2024.

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