#artist-statement Stories

ARTIST STATEMENT
At Art Basel Miami Beach and Beyond, Jesse Krimes Ascends

On the heels of a monumental solo exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Jesse Krimes makes...

ARTIST STATEMENT
Javier Calleja Finds Clarity in Whimsical Figuration

For his first New York City exhibition in more than a decade, Calleja’s mysterious figures...

ARTIST STATEMENT
In the Oeuvre of Terence Ntsako Maluleke, Storytelling Runs Deep

With Jackson Hlungwani’s Gift II, the Johannesburg-based painter immortalizes a cherished...

ARTIST STATEMENT
Ron Norsworthy Imagines a “Narcissus” for Our Times

In his newly opened exhibition at Edwynn Houk Gallery, the queer image maker’s poignant collaged...

ARTIST STATEMENT
Franklin Williams Is (Still) In It for Himself

The California-based artist and educator combines folk art, textile craft, sculpture, and...

ARTIST STATEMENT
Alteronce Gumby Is Embracing Nature’s Interconnectedness

After he started hiking and connecting with the outdoors more, the Bronx-based artist and avid...

ARTIST STATEMENT
Mira Mariah’s Pastel Tarot Cards Bear Witness to Girlhood

Inking fashion girls and musicians in her romantic line art catapulted tattooer, poet, sculptor,...

ARTIST STATEMENT
Supernatural Phenomena Light Up Dominic Chambers’ Imagination

An activity as mundane as walking his dog at the park pushed the cerebral New Haven painter to...

ARTIST STATEMENT
Luke Agada Maps His Psyche’s Blurred Terrain

Anxiety, stability, chaos, and survival coalesce in the Chicago painter’s earthy and sinewy...

ARTIST STATEMENT
Wangari Mathenge Drifts Into Hypnagogic Repose

Observing footage of her own sleeping body in semi-lucid reverie and painting her fluctuating...

ARTIST STATEMENT
Alexandra Karakashian Relinquishes Control to Darkness

Likened to the scale and intensity of Korean monochrome painting, the South African artist wields...

ARTIST STATEMENT
John Pule Wades Into His Windswept Canvases

Completed from above in a process he likens to swimming, the New Zealand painter conjures an...

ARTIST STATEMENT
YoYo Lander Mines Infinite Meaning From a Sweater’s Folds

The California collage artist trods into the knotty depths of human experience through the subtlest

ARTIST STATEMENT
Vicky Colombet’s Aerial Vistas Flatten Time and Space

During her many transatlantic flights between Paris and her adopted home in New York, the...

ARTIST STATEMENT
Carolyn Mazloomi Quilts Cornerstone Moments 

The Ohio-based textile artist crafts portraits of key Civil Rights figures and changemakers in her...

ARTIST STATEMENT
Sarah Cain Washes a Room With Spirited Chromatic Surges

The California painter pushes her swallowing, psychedelic fantasias beyond the canvas to new...

ARTIST STATEMENT
A Glowing Candid of a New York City “Original”

From his perch on Prince Street and Broadway, Jean-Andre Antoine captures fleeting moments of...

ARTIST STATEMENT
A Lavender Horizon Laden With Hazy Moments of Discovery

Alan Prazniak’s blurry landscapes piece together fits and bursts of chromatic moments from his...

ARTIST STATEMENT
Ding Yi Draws Lines in the Great Expanse

The Chinese painter further widens his already macroscopic view to the universe at large, finding...

ARTIST STATEMENT
Chelsea Ryoko Wong Finds Solace in Unknown Places

A period of existential dread compelled the San Francisco painter to travel across North Africa,...

ARTIST STATEMENT
Calida Rawles Pictures the Healing Potential of Water

With dazzling hyperrealism, the California painter tenderly envisions her subjects immersed in...

ARTIST STATEMENT
Nina Chanel Abney Puts Her Own Spin on a Warhol Classic

A monumental standout from her solo show at Jack Shainman’s converted upstate school, the...

ARTIST STATEMENT
Pauline Rintsch Drifts Into the Knotty Depths of Feminine Interiority

In an anguished diptych that mimics an open book, the German painter summons a smudgy, Balthus-like

ARTIST STATEMENT
Szabolcs Bozó’s Frolicking Scenes of Hungarian Folk Festivities

Inspired by his puppet-maker grandmothers who never had a chance to show their work, the...

ARTIST STATEMENT
Phil Davis Questions the Origin Stories You Think You Know

The artist and landscape designer’s solo show at Fernberger turns ephemeral references on their...

ARTIST STATEMENT
With ‘Showtime,’ Lizzi Bougatsos Sets an “Absurdist Stage”

The visual artist and experimental musician opens up about an assemblage made from stained vintage...

ARTIST STATEMENT
Anastasia Komar Prods at Science’s “God Complex” Question

Cutting-edge biotech, the Garden of Eden, and profound meditations on the future of civilization...

ARTIST STATEMENT
Parme Marin Catalogs the Dualities of Artistry and Motherhood

Marin merges a decade-long fashion career with expertise in ceramics and paintings in an incisive...

ARTIST STATEMENT
Jérôme Lagarrigue Walks the Line Between the Tangible and Intangible

In his first solo exhibition with Fridman Gallery—and on the heels of his feature in the Brooklyn

ARTIST STATEMENT
 Beneath ‘Colors of Gray,’ a Toxic Undercurrent

Even on first glance, Thu-Van Tran’s ‘Colors of Grey’ is rife with a sense of loss. Its...

ARTIST STATEMENT
Cole Sternberg Reimagines the California Dream

The California painter reinterprets the mythos of his state’s civic and cultural iconography,...

ARTIST STATEMENT
Barbara Earl Thomas Cultivates Divine Mystery

Some might see the Venetian Gothic architecture of the University of Pennsylvania’s Arthur Ross...

ARTIST STATEMENT
In Henry Curchod’s Oeuvre, All is Never As It Seems

The London painter’s gestural canvases hold unspoken secrets for those willing to look beyond the

ARTIST STATEMENT
A Poignant Migratory Symbol on a Historic Miami Building

In an ode to their Cuban-American heritage, photographer duo Elliot and Erick Jiménez portray the...

ARTIST STATEMENT
A Glimpse of Carrie Rudd’s Teenage Angst, Memorialized on Canvas

The rising Brooklyn painter often imbues her thick, cerebral, frenetic paintings with specific...

ARTIST STATEMENT
Matthias Weischer’s Painterly Scenes of Vacant Spaces

Using egg tempera on canvas, the Leipzig-based painter renders desolate, disorienting interiors...

ARTIST STATEMENT
Stan Squirewell’s “Remixed” 19th– and 20th–Century Portraits

As a self-described child of the hip hop era, the collage artist re-fashions historical photography

ARTIST STATEMENT
Ryan Robichaux’s Hazy Musings on Masculine Tenderness

By creating dream-like renditions of masculinity through “acceptable” interactions like a...

ARTIST STATEMENT
Zhang Zipiao’s Fleshy, Psychologically Charged Still Lifes  

Mesmerized by videos of gastrointestinal surgeries viewed over her mother’s shoulder as a child,...

ARTIST STATEMENT
Evan Paul English Untangles Queer Tensions

By subverting floral motifs and tropes of American domesticity, the Boise-born, Brooklyn-based...

ARTIST STATEMENT
For Gio Swaby, Love is Liberation

The textile artist celebrates the multifaceted power of her chosen medium, finding softness and...

ARTIST STATEMENT
ClownVamp Imagines a Cannon of Overtly Queer Impressionist Painting

The digital artist, whose recent exhibition, “Chester Charles: the Lost Grand Master,” was...

ARTIST STATEMENT
Jason Seife Meticulously Recreates Persian Rugs

Each hand-painted canvas by the Miami local is a reflection of his Middle Eastern heritage,...

ARTIST STATEMENT
For Grant Czuj, Home Is a Political Site

The formerly incarcerated artist invests a new series of house-shaped canvases with emblems of his...

ARTIST STATEMENT
André Hemer Studies the Sky

An amalgamation of skyscapes captured in Sicily, Indonesia, Thailand, and New Zealand, the...

ARTIST STATEMENT
At a Frenzied Frieze, ektor garcia Offers Moments of Pause

Installed on the eighth level of The Shed and realized with the support of Maestro Dobel Tequila,...

ARTIST STATEMENT
A Giant Scrotum Flower Whispering Words of Encouragement

Ensconced between states of reflection and acceptance, the American debut of Theresa Chromati’s...

ARTIST STATEMENT
Karin Davie Charts the Journey of Making Art and Ascribing Meaning To It

For “To Boldly Go Where No Man’s Gone Before,” her new exhibition spanning two New York City...

ARTIST STATEMENT
Ricardo Cabret Softens Our Tech-Driven Tensions

The Puerto Rican painter and computer engineer allows his two spheres of practice to inform one...

ARTIST STATEMENT
Jo Fish Stretches the Body’s Athletic Potential

The Michigan-born artist’s De Kooning–like collages entangle anthropomorphic forms within...

ARTIST STATEMENT
Seffa Klein Spins Cosmological Webs

The rising Franco-American painter’s cerebral abstractions serve as vortexes into the sublime,...

ARTIST STATEMENT
Theo Pinto’s Illusory Canvases Glisten in the Arabian Desert

Accompanying a show at Dubai’s 1x1 Gallery is a triptych of portal-like canvases the Brazilian...

ARTIST STATEMENT
Filip Custic Wades Into the Subconscious

The Spanish-Croatian artist has welcomed superstars like Rosalía and Lil Nas X into his pristine...

ARTIST STATEMENT
Adjei Tawiah’s Exquisite Ode to a Close Mentor’s Legacy

A standout among the lucid, melancholic canvases featured in the emerging Ghanaian painter’s...

ARTIST STATEMENT
Pow Martinez’s Painterly Figures Are Very Online

In a particularly gripping new canvas on view at Silverlens New York, the Manila-based artist...

ARTIST STATEMENT
Robin Rhode Choreographs a Woman-to-Bird Metamorphosis

In a surreal series of photographic prints, the South Africa–born artist choreographs a fluid...

ARTIST STATEMENT
Lisa Edelstein Paints Unedited Everyday Moments

The decorated “House” actress, who discovered watercolors during the pandemic, throws it back...

ARTIST STATEMENT
Nicole Wittenberg’s Simple Scenes Paint an Otherworldly Stillness

The New York painter, who often spends summers sketching midcoast Maine’s luminous sunsets,...

ARTIST STATEMENT
Antonio Obá’s Serene Rumination About Earthly Existence

Within a wider body of work wrestling with his Brazilian identity, the painter illustrates a search

ARTIST STATEMENT
Tesfaye Urgessa’s Poetic Canvases Invite Closeness and Compassion

With intimately intertwined figures rendered in smooth brushstrokes and muted hues, the first...

ARTIST STATEMENT
You May View Nature Differently After Seeing Sarah Meyohas’s Holograms

By illuminating jewel-like clusters of glass panels with a spotlight, the crypto art pioneer and...

ARTIST STATEMENT
A Surreal Snapshot of Chaotic-Good Partygoers

Anything goes in the ascendant painter Maggie Ellis’s frenetic, Goya-esque canvases, one of which

ARTIST STATEMENT
With Prison Yard Soil, Jared Owens Paints the Inhumanity of Incarceration

The curator of a powerful Miami Art Week exhibition with Silver Art Projects and Art for Justice...

ARTIST STATEMENT
Didier William Imagines the Complexities, Fears, and Joys of Parenthood

Depicting a family overlooking a cliff as electricity surges through the sky, one of the Haitian...

ARTIST STATEMENT
Cristina BanBan’s “Mujeres” Exist On Their Own Terms

Imbued with intimacy and poise, the Spanish painter’s fleshy portrayals of the female form share...

ARTIST STATEMENT
Jean-Pierre Villafañe’s Paintings Piece Together Eternal Nights

The self-taught painter channels his architectural background to distort perspectives in his...

ARTIST STATEMENT
Kevin Brisco, Jr.’s Sensual Canvases Conjure Twilight Memories

Capturing the haziness seen and felt after sunset in a dimly lit room, the Queens-based painter...

ARTIST STATEMENT
Oscar yi Hou Reveals the Complexity of Asian-American Identity

In his richly layered portraits, the British-born Cantonese painter and UOVO Prize winner surrounds

ARTIST STATEMENT
Yukimasa Ida Crystallizes Memories of a Sacred Landscape

After a spiritual journey to Spanish dolmens, the Japanese painter captures the landscape’s...

ARTIST STATEMENT
Robert Peterson’s Intimate Portraits of Black Peace and Strength

Flipping the script on how Black families are often portrayed, the Oklahoma-based painter lovingly...

ARTIST STATEMENT
An Electrified Canova Masterpiece Oozing With Homoerotic Heat

Cheekily nodding to a Neoclassical statue’s covert portrayal of same-sex desire, up-and-coming...

ARTIST STATEMENT
Nate Lewis’s Dancing Figures Awaken a Sense of Healing

Propelling his signature paper-carving techniques to new heights, the former critical-care nurse...

Artist Statement
Egyptian-Honduran Artist Jackie Milad Pays Tribute to an Avant-Garde Feminist Poet

With her 11-year-old son's drawings interwoven throughout, the mixed-media piece dedicated to...

ARTIST STATEMENT
A Vivid Robe Empowers Zadie Xa’s Ancestral Past

The Sobey Art Award winner explores the Korean peninsula’s pervasive pagan spirituality before...

ARTIST STATEMENT
Paola Pivi Weaves Landscapes of Reverie

Delivering a welcome dose of whimsy during turbulent times, the Anchorage-based artist transforms...

ARTIST STATEMENT
Cara Despain Excavates the Buried Injustices of Cold War Artifacts

Reckoning with the reverberations of uranium mining and atomic weapons testing in her home region...

ARTIST STATEMENT
Patrick Quarm Peels Back the Layers of Navigating Fraught Social Spaces

With an array of vivid textiles sourced in Africa, the Ghanaian-American artist weaves together a...

ARTIST STATEMENT
Eto Otitigbe’s Blueprint for Excavating Unseen Histories

Seeking to bring history’s repressed narratives to light, the Philadelphia artist meticulously...

ARTIST STATEMENT
A Monumental Photobooth That Captures Queer Intimacy

Drawing from coexisting feelings of anxiety and catharsis, Chloe Chiasson ruminates on what was...

Artist Statement
Wu Tsang’s VR Film and Sound Installation Takes Viewers on a Journey Through the Eyes of a Whale

At the Venice Biennale, the filmmaker, visual artist, and MacArthur 'Genius' Fellow flips the...

ARTIST STATEMENT
Emotions Flow Through Inès Longevial’s Evocative Portraits

The ascendant French artist’s introspective drawings capture fiery feelings and fleeting...

ARTIST STATEMENT
A Fantastically Frenzied Mosaic of Nostalgia, Faith, and Tragedy

A highlight of Cameron Welch’s latest solo outing, the monumental “Fugue State” collages...

ARTIST STATEMENT
A Regal Headdress Comes Alive With Relics of BIPOC Activism

On view at two solo shows in Massachusetts, intricate handmade collages by Helina Metaferia shaped...

ARTIST STATEMENT
Kevin Sabo’s Fussy Divas Can’t Be Bothered

With subtle shade and drag-like flair, the Richmond up-and-comer lets his freak flag fly when...

ARTIST STATEMENT
A Resplendent Rendering of Stephen Thorpe’s Interiority

By layering visuals of ornate rugs and lush wallpaper into an architectural corner, the British...

ARTIST STATEMENT
Mario Navarro’s Witty Musings on Modernist Legacies

With a dash of humor, the Brooklyn artist imagines random objects—a traffic cone, lipstick, and...

ARTIST STATEMENT
Harold Mendez’s Photographic Tribute to a Beloved Artist

During a cultural exchange trip in search of Cuban printmaker Belkis Ayón’s final resting place,

Artist Statement
Joy Yamusangie’s Fictional Jazz Club Traverses Themes of Gender, Race, and Identity

Inspired by the life of Billy Tipton, the talented American jazz artist who lived secretly as a...

ARTIST STATEMENT
Liz Liguori Paints With Light

By exposing photosensitive paper to the ephemeral movements of light through space, the former...

ARTIST STATEMENT
Heidi Hahn’s Plaintive Portraits Reveal a Spectrum of Emotion

Through deft use of texture, the Brooklyn painter renders her own experiences—privacy,...

ARTIST STATEMENT
Hana Yilma Godine Imagines Scenes of Transcendent Repose

Drawing on everyday scenes from her hometown of Addis Ababa and often using traditional fabrics...

ARTIST STATEMENT
Dominic Chambers Illuminates Black Bodies at Meditative Leisure

Part of the New Haven artist’s latest series that depicts Black subjects in states of restful...

ARTIST STATEMENT
Auguste Wibo’s Provocative Phalluses Are Dripping With Intrigue

By adorning silicone-cast phalluses bulging from their canvases with Prince Albert piercings by...

ARTIST STATEMENT
In Miami, Kathia St. Hilaire Envisions the Divine

Using her novel technique of reduction relief printing, the up-and-coming painter renders a...

ARTIST STATEMENT
Jeffrey Meris Draws Power From Reclaimed Roofing Materials

Using asphalt roofing paper scattered across the Bahamas after storms, the up-and-coming sculptor...

ARTIST STATEMENT
Becky Suss Recalls the Formative Interiors of Her Childhood

Part of a series that recalls the artist’s childhood bedroom, a new painting on display at Art...

ARTIST STATEMENT
Marcellina Akpojotor Meditates on Generational Legacy

Using images from history and her family archive, the Nigerian artist renders densely layered...

ARTIST STATEMENT
Ben Evans Illustrates Poolside Melodrama

At once playful and plaintive, the ascendant painter’s cartoonish rendition of a tennis match...

ARTIST STATEMENT
Baseera Khan Uses Artifacts as Armor

Appearing at the New York artist’s solo exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum, a new “performance...

ARTIST STATEMENT
Jen Stark Brings Her Trippy, Technicolor Dream World to Life

Using augmented reality and projection mapping, the Los Angeles artist envelops the William Vale...

ARTIST STATEMENT
Claudia Wieser’s Interactive Stage of Human Experience

Clustered at the vista where the Manhattan Bridge frames the Empire State Building, “Rehearsal”

ARTIST STATEMENT
At the Olympics, a Robotic Installation That Traces Athletic Movements

Analyzing video footage from different Olympic sports, four robotic arms programmed by Jason Bruges

ARTIST STATEMENT
Daniel Gibson Embeds His Roots Into Sun-Soaked Landscapes

For his latest solo exhibition at Almine Rech, the Angeleno artist infuses personal histories into...

ARTIST STATEMENT
Across 12 Soaring Glyphs, Hayal Pozanti Traces the Written Word

A permanent commission at New York’s recently unveiled Stavros Niarchos Foundation Library sees...

ARTIST STATEMENT
A Technicolor Textile Work Woven With Totems of Queer Existence

One standout piece from Brian Kenny’s latest solo exhibition sees the New York artist stitch...

ARTIST STATEMENT
A Leather American Flag That Articulates Our Current Anguish

Reimagining the stars and stripes using black leather and metal rivets, Bond Hardware’s Hitch...

ARTIST STATEMENT
A Mural That Travels Through Space and Time

Debuting alongside an exhibition of his plaster glass furnishings, Patrick Naggar adorns the facade

ARTIST STATEMENT
At Maison Margiela, Marco Brambilla Reinvents a Duchamp Masterpiece

To kick off Frieze Week, the celebrated video artist transforms a Marcel Duchamp painting into a...

ARTIST STATEMENT
In Charcoal, a Clamorous Fever Dream of Americana Subtleties

Sketched during the recent election cycle, Anna Park’s riotous “Hero Mentality” mimics the...

ARTIST STATEMENT
A Luminous Pavilion Where Breathing Flows Freely

At a meditative new installation by Ekene Ijeoma, viewers inhale and exhale within a giant circle...