Healing

May 3 – June 22, 2024

Healing

william cordova

Mitch Epstein

Tony Feher

Louis Fratino

Zipora Fried

Jeffrey Gibson

Josephine Halvorson

Marc Handelman

Arturo Herrera

Sheila Hicks

Merlin James

Cameron Martin

Marlene McCarty

Wardell Milan

Vik Muniz

Jennifer Packer

Kay Rosen

Erin Shirreff

Kara Walker

May 3 – June 22, 2024

This presentation of Healing is conceived in homage to the 1992 group exhibition of the same name that inaugurated the founding of the gallery, then called Wooster Gardens, by Brent Sikkema. Held during the height of the AIDS crisis, Healing, 1992, proposed a thoughtful meditation on our intertwined capacities for creation and caretaking. The show was organized by Sikkema and Olivier Renaud-Clément, and featured works produced by the participating artists specifically for the exhibition. “Somehow,” wrote Faye Hirsch, in a review for Art in America, “they present the hopeful possibility that memory will be enough, materializing as it does in the least expected places.”

The Healing of 2024 emerges from the convulsive years of another global pandemic, alongside a more proximal experience of grief for the gallery. Across eras and societal transformations, few things in life remain as constant as loss and its cataclysmic reframing of normality, on both a collective and individual scale; yet as such loss persists, so too does our impulse to gather, communicate, create, and, in the process, move towards a place of renewal. This contemporary exhibition is not intended as a direct mirror of the original Healing, but rather a continued throughline of making art as a means of understanding the uncertainty and tenderness found within our shared affective moment.

KARA WALKER

Born in Stockton, CA

Lives and works in New York

Kara Walker is best known for her candid investigation of race, gender, sexuality, and violence through silhouetted figures that have appeared in numerous exhibitions worldwide. Her subjects confront the legacies of American mythmaking within narratives of unflinching chaos and mayhem, reverberating in violent articulations from the past into the present. In many of Walker’s recent cut-paper works, her iconic silhouette figures are no longer solely opaque black; the fundamental reduction of bodily form through silhouette has been elevated through new dimensions of color and texture. Areas of water-based paint and ink cast varying shades over her subjects, inflecting a lifelike vividity to their suspended bodies.

Born in Stockton, CA, in 1969, Kara Walker was raised in Atlanta from the age of 13. She studied at the Atlanta College of Art (BFA, 1991) and the Rhode Island School of Design (MFA, 1994). Her work is currently on view in Harper’s Pictorial History of the Civil War (Annotated) at the Currier Museum of Art, Manchester, NH, and Kara Walker: Back of Hand at the Poetry Foundation, Chicago, IL. Other recent solo exhibitions have been presented at the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, CA (2023); the National Gallery of Australia, Canberra (2022); and the major survey A Black Hole is Everything a Star Longs to Be: Kara Walker, Drawings 1993-2020, Kunstmuseum Basel, Switzerland (2021). In 2019, Walker was selected by the Tate Modern for the Turbine Hall Hyundai Commission. She responded with a large-scale public “counter-memorial” in the form of a four-tiered fountain, entitled Fons Americanus

Walker’s work is in the collection of prominent museums and public collections throughout the United States and Europe, including the Kunstmuseum Basel’s Kupferstichkabinett (Department of Prints and Drawings); the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; the Tate Gallery, London; the Museo Nazionale delle Arti del XXI secolo (MAXXI), Rome; and the Deutsche Bank Collection, Frankfurt. She is the recipient of many awards, notably the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Achievement Award in 1997 and the United States Artists, Eileen Harris Norton Fellowship in 2008. Walker is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters (elected 2012) and American Philosophical Society (elected 2018) and was named an Honorary Royal Academician by the Royal Academy of Arts, London in 2019. She lives and works in New York.

Infinitude, 2024

Japanese water-based paint, sumi ink, and cut masa paper on Japanese mulberry paper

79.75 × 78.5 inches (202.6 × 199.4 cm)

Bureau of Refugees: Bob Foreman cut at Union Springs, 2007

Cut green, gold and red paper

23.5 × 20 inches (59.7 × 50.8 cm)

KAY ROSEN

Born in Corpus Christi, TX

Lives and works in Gary, IN, and New York

Kay Rosen’s investigation into the visual possibilities of language has been her primary focus since 1968 when she traded in the academic study of languages for what she describes as her endless study of language-based art. Through paintings, drawings, murals, prints, collages, and videos, Rosen has sought to generate new meaning from everyday words and phrases by substituting scale, color, materials, composition, graphic design, and typography for the printed page. While political issues often form the bedrock of Rosen’s artwork, she insists that her work is driven not by politics, but by language, and she follows it to whatever place it takes her.

Kay Rosen (b. 1943, Corpus Christi, TX) most recently had her first major solo show at a European institution, Kay Rosen. NOW AND THEN, at the Weserburg Museum for Modern Art, Bremen, Germany (2023-24). In 2021, Rosen was commissioned by the National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC to create a special site-responsive installation for the Gallery’s East Building; her large-scale painting, entitled SORRY, was on view through March 2022. A two-venue mid-career survey entitled Kay Rosen: Li[f]eli[k]e, curated by Connie Butler and Terry R. Myers was exhibited at the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art and Otis College of Art Design in 1998.

Rosen has been the recipient of numerous awards, including: a Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship, three National Endowment for the Arts Visual Arts Grants, an Anonymous Was a Woman Grant, and the SJ Weiler Fund Award. Her work is included in the permanent collections of the Art Institute of Chicago, IL; Collection Lambert, Avignon, France; Indianapolis Museum of Art, Indianapolis, IN; Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, IL; The Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY; The Progressive Art Collection, Mayfield Village, OH; and The Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY, among many others. Rosen lives and works in Gary, IN, and New York, NY.

Spring, 2020

Enamel paint on canvas

12 × 18 inches (30.5 × 45.7 cm)

VIK MUNIZ

Born in São Paulo, Brazil

Lives and works in New York and Rio de Janeiro

Vik Muniz is recognized for his photographs of reimagined, largely art historical imagery, which he creates out of a wide variety of materials—from chocolate and sugar to junk and toys. His practice is guided by an interest in reframing and renaming materiality; by utilizing unorthodox materials and multiple processes of image production, Muniz’s work seeks to complicate notions of value and the permeable distinctions between an art object and the idea of it. The layers of physical reconstitution and translated mediums embedded in each picture provoke for the viewer a reflexive experience of “when” and “how” an image takes form.

Vik Muniz (b. 1961, São Paulo, Brazil) lives and works in New York and Rio de Janeiro. His work was most recently on view in Flora Industrialis at Museo Universidad de Navarra, Spain (2023-24) and the group exhibition Reverso at Museo del Prado, Madrid (2023-24). Other notable solo exhibitions have been presented at the Figge Art Museum, Davenport, IA (2020); the Chrysler Museum of Art, Norfolk, VA (2018); Belvedere Museum, Vienna, Austria (2018); Museo de Arte Contemporáneo, Monterrey, Mexico (2017); the High Museum, Atlanta, GA (2016-17); and Maritshuis, The Hague, the Netherlands (2016). His work is included in the collections of major global institutions, including the Art Institute of Chicago, IL; The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, CA; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY; Museu de Arte Moderna de São Paulo, Brazil; Museum of Modern Art, NY; and the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, United Kingdom.

Muniz is involved in social projects that use art-making as a force for change. In 2010 his work with a group of catadores—pickers of recyclable materials—was the subject of the Academy Award-nominated documentary film Waste Land. In recognition of his contributions to education and social development including his work with the catadores, he was named a UNESCO Goodwill Ambassador in 2011. In 2017, he founded Escola Vidigal, offering preschool and after-school programs in art, design, and technology to children 4 to 8 years old at the favela Vidigal in Rio de Janeiro.

a

Equivalents (The Museum of Modern Art), 1996

5 from

portfolio of 9 gelatin silver prints Image: 5 × 4 inches (12.7 × 10.2 cm)

57.875 × 40.75 × 12 inches (installed), object depth: 2.125 inches (147 × 103.5 × 30.5 cm)

Verso (Woman Ironing), 2008

Mixed media object

MITCH EPSTEIN

Born in Holyoke, MA

Lives and works in New York, NY

Mitch Epstein has been confronting the cultural psychology of the United States through photography since the 1970s, moving through successive socio-political eras with a vibrant and introspective frame of engagement. Born in 1952 in Holyoke, MA, Epstein lives and works in New York City. His photographic series spans a wide range of themes, subjects, and locations, often with a focus on the confluence of humans and nature. He most recently exhibited his photographs and films (Salaam Bombay! and India Cabaret) at Les Rencontres d’Arles in the 12th century Abbey of Montmajour, Arles, France (2022).

Epstein has been the recipient of numerous awards, including the Prix Pictet Photography Prize (2010); the Berlin Prize in Arts and Letters (2008); and a Guggenheim Fellowship (2003). His photographs have been published in monographs including Sunshine Hotel (2019); Rocks and Clouds (2018); New York Arbor (2013); American Power (2009); Recreation: American Photographs 1973-1988 (2005); and Family Business (2003). His photographs can be found in the public collections of The Art Institute of Chicago, IL; The Museum of Modern Art, New York; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, CA; and Tate Modern, London.

Untitled, New York 1995 (Woman in Midtown Taxi), 1995 Vintage analog C-print

JOSEPHINE HALVORSON

Born in Brewster, MA

Lives and works New Marlborough and Boston, MA

Josephine Halvorson’s paintings emerge from chance or repeated encounters with objects or sites, followed by a sustained plein air session in which she captures the natural likeness of the subject in paint. Working within arm’s length of her subject over a period of time, Halvorson’s position foregrounds close attention and environmental documentation. Subtle shifts of shadow and thought are held in the indelible mark of paint, rendering visible that which is felt but not necessarily seen: time, perception, and history. Her Night Window series was created while in residence as a fellow at the French Academy in Rome at the Villa Medici in 2014-2015.

Originally from Cape Cod, Halvorson attended The Cooper Union School of Art (BFA, 2003), Yale Norfolk (2002), and continued her interdisciplinary education at Columbia University’s School of the Arts (MFA, 2007). Her work was most recently presented in the solo exhibitions Josephine Halvorson: On the Ground at the Ogunquit Museum of Art, ME (2022) and Contemporary Voices: Josephine Halvorson (2021) at the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum in Santa Fe, where she was also the Museum’s first Artist-inResidence in 2019. In 2019, Halvorson was awarded the James and Audrey Foster Prize with a solo exhibition at ICA Boston.

Halvorson has been awarded fellowships from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation (2021), the US Fulbright (2003-4), and the French Academy in Rome (2014-15), as the first American pensionnaire; in 2009, she was a recipient of the Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation Grant. Her work is included in the public collections of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; the High Museum, Atlanta, GA; the Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH; ICA Boston, MA; and the Orlando Museum of Art, FL. Halvorson is Professor of Art and Chair of Graduate Studies in Painting at Boston University, and currently lives in Massachusetts.

Night Window, May 27-28, 2015, 2015 Oil on linen

31 × 22 inches (79 × 56 cm)

Night Window, July 27-28, 2015, 2015 Oil on linen

31 × 22 inches (79 × 56 cm)

Night Window, April 25-26, 2015, 2015 Oil on linen

31 × 22 inches (79 × 56 cm)

Night Window, August 7-8, 2015, 2015 Oil on linen

31 × 22 inches (79 × 56 cm)

WILLIAM CORDOVA

Born in Lima, Peru

Lives and works in Lima, Miami, and New York

Exploring the ephemerality of displacement and migration, william cordova seeks the encoded reverberations of ancient and non-Western spiritual systems within our contemporary secular landscapes. His multimedia installations and bodies of work bring to light the visual and sonic synchronies across abstract patterns, sacred geometries, and historical and contemporary revolutionary movements and creative cultures.

cordova (b. 1969, Lima, Peru) graduated with a BFA from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 1996 and earned an MFA from Yale University in 2004. Recent solo exhibitions include can’t stop, won’t stop (geometria sagrada), Sikkema Jenkins & Co., New York (2024); can’t stop, won’t stop: tenets of southern alchemy, Moss Arts Center, Virginia Tech University, Blacksburg, VA (2023); and on the lower frequencies I speak 4 U, Baltimore Museum of Art, MD (2022).

cordova has organized and presented curatorial projects at Project Row Houses, Houston, TX (2024) and The LeRoy Neiman Gallery at Columbia University, NY (2022). His work is included in the collections of the Ellipse Foundation, Cascais, Portugal; Harvard University, Cambridge, MA; La Casa de las Americas, Havana, Cuba; Museo de Arte de Lima, Peru; NSU Museum, Fort Lauderdale, FL; Pérez Art Museum, Miami, FL; The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, NY; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY; and Yale University, New Haven, CT, among others.

untitled (vi•raco•chan•go), 2020

Enamel, paper collage, gold leaf on paper

130.25 × 123.5 inches (330.8 × 313.7 cm)

LOUIS FRATINO

Born in Annapolis, MD

Lives and works in Brooklyn, NY

Louis Fratino (b. 1993, Annapolis, MD) creates paintings and drawings that contemplate the intimacy of personal memory and the quiet sublimity of everyday figures and spaces. His figurative subjects include lovers, friends, family, and the artist himself, rendering the human body as a site of vast emotive expression. Sexuality and queer desire are understood as natural and constant, suffusing the atmosphere of his scenes in vibrant and comforting familiarity. Invoking an art historical lineage of modernist painters—including Henri Matisse, Pablo Picasso, Marsden Hartley, and Georgia O’Keeffe— Fratino’s work mines the possibilities of communion and connection, amplified through the seductive power of the painted surface.

Louis Fratino received his BFA in Painting with concentration in Illustration from the Maryland Institute College of Art, Baltimore, MD (2015). Fratino is currently featured in the 60th International Art Exhibition of the Venice Biennale, Stranieri Ovunque—Foreigners Everywhere, curated by Adriano Pedrosa. He is a recipient of a Fulbright Research Fellowship in Painting, Berlin (2015-16) and a Yale Norfolk Painting Fellowship, Norfolk, CT in 2014. His work is included in the collections of The Baltimore Museum of Art, MD; The Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, CA; Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, CA; Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, TX; RISD Museum, Providence, RI; and the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY. Fratino lives and works in Brooklyn, NY.

Cedar bath, 2024 Oil on canvas

JEFFREY GIBSON

Born in Colorado Springs, CO

Lives and works in Germantown, NY

Jeffrey Gibson’s multimedia practice synthesizes the cultural and artistic traditions of his Cherokee and Choctaw heritage with the visual languages of Modernism and references to contemporary queer and popular culture. His practice explores a hybridity of mediums and creative lineages to challenge mainstream conceptions of Native American art and the underlying essentialist narratives around Indigenous histories and communities.

Born in 1972, in Colorado Springs, CO, Jeffrey Gibson spent his formative years in the major urban centers of the United States, Germany, Korea, and England. He received a Bachelor of Fine Arts in painting from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 1995 and Master of Arts in painting at the Royal College of Art, London, in 1998. Gibson is currently representing the United States at the 2024 edition of the Venice Biennale. His exhibition, the space in which to place me, marks the first solo presentation by an Indigenous artist to represent the country at the Biennale.

Gibson’s work is included in the permanent collections of the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Bentonville, AR; Denver Art Museum, CO; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MA; National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa; Portland Art Museum, Portland, OR; Seattle Art Museum, Seattle, WA; Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of the American Indian, Washington, D.C.; and The Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY, among many others. Gibson is a recipient of numerous awards, notably a MacArthur Foundation Fellowship (2019); Joan Mitchell Foundation, Painters and Sculptors Award (2012); and Creative Capital Foundation Grant (2005).

THE STARS ARE OUR ANCESTORS, 2022

Acrylic paint on canvas inset in custom frame, acrylic velvet, acrylic felt, glass beads, seaglass beads, druzy crystal, vintage pinback buttons, vintage plastic arrowhead, seashell, abalone, artificial sinew, nylon thread, cotton canvas, nylon and cotton rope

69 × 39 × 4.625 inches (175.3 × 99.1 × 11.7 cm)

TONY FEHER

Over a career spanning more than 30 years, Tony Feher’s unique body of work has recast the utilitarian and ubiquitous into elegantly arranged sculptural pieces and installations. His poetic interpretations of color, form, and scale move beyond any specific referentiality held by a singular medium or material and towards a transcendent, compassionate archaeology of life.

Tony Feher (b. 1956, Albuquerque, NM) was raised in Corpus Christi, TX and received a BA from The University of Texas. In 2012, an in-depth retrospective of Feher’s work was organized by Claudia Schmuckli and first presented at the Des Moines Art Center, IA; the survey traveled to the Blaffer Art Museum at the University of Houston, TX; the deCordova Sculpture Park and Museum, Lincoln, MA; the Bronx Museum of the Arts, NY; and the Akron Art Museum, OH.

Feher’s work can be found in important public collections including The Art Institute of Chicago, IL; Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Alicante, Spain; Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, TX; The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, CA; The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, NY; and the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY, among others. Feher passed away in 2016 in New York City.

Untitled, Circa 1992-3

Glass jar with metal screw lid, 98 objects arranged in an oval Jar: 6 × 3 × 3 inches (15.2 × 7.6 × 7.6 cm)

Objects in oval: 9 × 8 inches (22.9 × 20.3 cm)

CAMERON MARTIN

Cameron Martin’s paintings feature overlapping and undulating forms in varying transparencies, patterns, and geometries, producing visual phenomena that tap into histories of abstraction and present-day digital interfaces. Using a vivid chromatic palette, Martin meticulously applies paint to the canvas using techniques that intentionally complicate the distinction between the handmade and the mechanical. His compositional strategies explore the potential for abstraction transmit new visual information, and to carry and convey meaning parallel to what is assumed in figuration.

Cameron Martin received his BA from Brown University and continued his studies at the Whitney Independent Study Program. He has exhibited at venues including the Whitney Museum of American Art, Saint Louis Art Museum, Columbus Museum of Art, City Gallery (Wellington, New Zealand), and Tel Aviv Museum. His work can be found in the public collections of the Buffalo AKG Art Museum, Buffalo, NY; The Minneapolis Institute of Art, Minneapolis, MN; the Saint Louis Art Museum, St. Louis, MO; and The Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY, among others. Martin is a recipient of the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship (2010), the Joan Mitchell Foundation Fellowship (2008), and the Artists at Giverny Fellowship and Residency (2001).

Bastine, 2010

Acrylic on canvas

72 × 72 inches (182.9 × 182.9 cm)

JENNIFER PACKER

Born in Philadelphia, PA

Lives and works in New York

Jennifer Packer’s painted figures, still lifes, and interiors are exceptional for their immersive fields of color, worked tenderly by the artist’s hand. They are images made with the utmost care—for the subject, and for the artist herself. Her floral still lifes echo the same fragility and closeness of looking expressed in her portraits. Situated within the historical tradition of still life painting, Packer’s compositions are concerned chiefly with painting as a language for the transmission of information through touch: a delicate interpretation of the painted medium in response to loss and trauma. In this way, Packer’s flowers serve as an act of grief, commemoration, and healing.

Jennifer Packer (b. 1984, Philadelphia, PA) received her BFA from the Tyler University School of Art at Temple University (2007) and her MFA from Yale University School of Art (2012). Recent major solo exhibitions include Every Shut Eye Ain’t Sleep, Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, CA (202122); The Eye is Not Satisfied With Seeing, Serpentine Galleries, London, UK (2021) and The Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY (2021-22); and Tenderheaded, The Renaissance Society, Chicago, IL (2017).

She was the 2012-2013 Artist-in-Residence at the Studio Museum in Harlem, and a Visual Arts Fellow at the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, MA, from 2014-2016. Her work is included in the public collections of The Art Institute of Chicago, IL; The Baltimore Museum of Art, MD; The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, NY; The Studio Museum in Harlem, New York, NY; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, MN; and The Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY. Packer was included in P.5 - Prospect New Orleans (2021) and the 2019 Whitney Biennial. She currently lives and works in New York.

Beauty’s No Cure, 2023

Oil on canvas

27.125 × 18.5 inches (69 × 46.9 cm)

ERIN SHIRREFF

Born in British Columbia, Canada

Lives and works in Montreal, Canada

Erin Shirreff’s diverse body of work, which includes photography, video, and sculpture, is united by her interest in the ways we experience three-dimensional forms in an age in which our perception is almost invariably mediated by still and moving images. Her work explores the gap between objects and their representations, and the materials—and materiality—of image-making.

Erin Shirreff (b.1975, British Columbia, Canada) lives and works in Montreal. Her work is currently on view in Erin Shirreff: Folded stone at SITE Santa Fe, NM, through May 27, 2024. Other recent solo presentations of her work have been shown at the Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, MA (2021–22); San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (2019); Kunsthalle Basel, Switzerland (2016); Buffalo AKG Art Museum, NY (formerly the Albright-Knox Art Gallery) (2016); and the Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston (2015).

Her work is included in the permanent collections of the Centre Pompidou, Paris; Dallas Museum of Art; Los Angeles County Museum of Art; Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; The Museum of Modern Art, New York; National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa; Nouveau Musée National de Monaco; and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, among others. Shirreff was an artist-in-residence at the Chinati Foundation (2011), and Artpace in San Antonio (2013), and is the recipient of a Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation Grant. She earned an MFA in sculpture from Yale University in 2005.

Pages (no. 29), 2018

Book pages, pins

Framed dimensions: 12 × 12 inches (30.5 × 30.5 cm)

Pages (no. 27), 2018

Book pages, pins

Framed dimensions: 12 × 12 inches (30.5 × 30.5 cm)

Pages (no. 30), 2018

Book pages, pins

Framed dimensions: 12 × 12 inches (30.5 × 30.5 cm)

Pages (no. 36), 2018

Book pages, pins

Framed dimensions: 12 × 12 inches (30.5 × 30.5 cm)

Pages (no. 43), 2022

Book pages, pins

Framed dimensions: 15 × 15 inches (38.1 × 38.1 cm)

Pages (no. 40), 2022

Book pages, pins

Framed dimensions: 15 × 15 inches (38.1 × 38.1 cm)

MARC HANDELMAN

Born in Santa Clara, CA

Lives and works in Brooklyn, NY

Through paintings, installations, artists’ books and other media, Marc Handelman’s work engages the afterlives of the genre of landscape. From the sustained imperial rhetoric of American landscape painting in corporate advertising, political branding, and white nationalist mythology, to the essentialization of the domain we call nature, Handelman’s work explores the intimacy of aesthetics in the conditioning of knowledge and the legitimization of colonial and environmental violence.

Handelman received his MFA from Columbia University in New York. He has exhibited extensively throughout the United States as well as internationally in such venues as PS1 MoMA, The Studio Museum in Harlem, Artists Space, The Orlando Museum of Art, The Royal Academy of Art in London, The Royal Swedish Academy of Fine Arts in Stockholm, Grafikens Hus, The Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art, The American Academy of Arts and Letters, The Portland Museum of Contemporary Art, The Rubin Museum, The Matsumoto City Museum of Art, and the Storefront for Art and Architecture, among others.

Handelman has taught in the MFA Programs at Bard, Columbia University, Brooklyn College, and Yale University. He is currently an Associate Professor of Painting at The Mason Gross School of the Arts, at Rutgers University where he serves as Chair of the department of Art & Design. He lives and works in Brooklyn, NY.

Towards a Form of Voluntary Dispossession (for Édouard Glissant) #8, 2016-17

Watercolor and mixed media on paper mounted on panel Set of 5, 19 × 66.875 inches (48.3 × 169.9 cm) overall, 19 × 13.375 inches (48.3 × 34 cm) each panel

MARLENE MCCARTY

Born in Lexington, KY

Lives and works in New York

Marlene McCarty has worked across various media since the 1980s. She was a member of the AIDS activist collective Gran Fury and was the co-founder of the trans-disciplinary design studio Bureau along with Donald Moffett. Using everyday materials such as graphite, ballpoint pen, and highlighter, McCarty probes issues ranging from sexual and social formation to parricide and infanticide. Her subjects are often depicted engaging in unorthodox or transgressive social formations, breaking down the traditional, accepted interactions among humans and other species, as well as between humans and nature. The drawing featured in Healing is from her series Into the Weeds, which explores the complex ecocultural role of plants within society to confront issues of reproductive health, physical autonomy, public space, and the symbiosis of growth and decay. Achilea millefolium, more commonly known as yarrow, has been used since ancient times to heal wounds and relieve pain.

Marlene McCarty (born 1957, Lexington, KY) studied at the University of Cincinnati, College of Design, Architecture and Art (1975-77) and Schule für Gestaltung, Basel, Switzerland (1978-83). A solo exhibition of drawings, entitled Marlene McCarty: Thicker than Water, was presented at the UK Art Museum, Lexington, KY, in 2022-23. Her site-specific installation AGAIN, which developed from the 2019 earthwork project Into the Weeds, is on view at the Lyceum at Silo City, Buffalo, NY. A major survey exhibition of her work, Hard-Keepers, was presented at the Royal Hibernian Academy in Dublin in 2013. Her work is in the collections of major institutions including The Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn, NY; Kunsthaus Zürich, Zurich, Switzerland; The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, CA; and The Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY. McCarty lives and works in New York.

WEED: Modern Masters Lower Chakras Bound (Achilea millefolium), 2020-21 Graphite and ballpoint pen on paper, in artist frame 53 × 38 inches (134.6 × 96.5 cm)

MERLIN JAMES

Born in Cardiff, Wales

Lives and works in Glasgow, Scotland

Merlin James’ quietly textured oeuvre is informed by a deep understanding of the painted medium, its material history, and deployment across a range of formal and representational sub-genres. Working neither directly from life nor from photographs, James draws on impressions and memories over time to reimagine familiar spaces and presences. Gauzy veils of paint foreground the physicality of the medium’s own application, while imbuing an amorphous screen of memory to recollected landscapes, figures, and still lifes.

Merlin James (b. 1960 in Cardiff, Wales) studied in London at the Central School of Art and the Royal College of Art. His work has been exhibited widely, including in recent solo shows at A-M-G5, Glasgow, UK (2018); OCT Boxes Museum, Shunde & OCT Art and Design Gallery, Shenzhen (2018); Long Game, CCA Glasgow (2016); Kunstverein Freiburg (2014); Parasol Unit, London; KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin (2013). In 2007, James represented Wales at the 52nd Venice Biennale. He also curates the exhibition space 42 Carlton Place, in Glasgow. James currently lives and works in Glasgow, Scotland.

Night Sea, 2012-15

Acrylic on canvas

25.5 × 16.5 inches (64.8 × 41.9 cm)

WARDELL MILAN

Born in Knoxville, TN

Lives and works in New York

Building upon a conceptual foundation in photography, Milan’s practice encompasses drawing, collage, and painting to explore ideas of the body and its figuration within the world. He constructs striking human subjects with reclaimed photographic elements, contending with the medium’s visual lineage and its claims to representation. These composite, fragmented figures inhabit ambiguous painted landscapes, navigating through recontextualized historical and contemporary environments. In Milan’s work, the body—the physical, the psychological, and the photographic body—is understood as a multifaceted, intersecting site of gender, race, sexuality, and history.

Wardell Milan (b. 1977, Knoxville, TN) received his BFA from The University of Tennessee, Knoxville (2001) and his MFA from Yale University (2004), both in Photography. Recent notable exhibitions include Wardell Milan: Recent Work at the Benton Museum of Art, Pomona College, Claremont, CA (2022-23) and his first major solo museum show, America. God Bless You If It’s Good To You, at the Bronx Museum of the Arts, NY (2021). Milan’s work is included in the public collections of the Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto, Canada; The Art Institute of Chicago, IL; The Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn, NY; Daniel and Florence Guerlain Contemporary Art Foundation, Paris, France; Denver Art Museum, Denver, CO; Hessel Museum of Art, Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson, NY; Museum of Contemporary Photography, Chicago, IL; The Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY; The Morgan Library & Museum, New York, NY; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco, CA; The Studio Museum in Harlem, New York, NY; and The Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY. Milan is represented by Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco, on the west coast; he lives and works in New York.

In Memoriam, I. B. Sikkema, 2024

pastel, acrylic, oil on panel

40 × 30 inches (101.6 × 76.2 cm)

Graphite,

SHEILA HICKS

Born in Hastings, NE

Lives and works in Paris, France

Sheila Hicks’ boundary-crossing career of over six decades is informed by a broad range of cultural and geographical contexts and material sensibilities. Her cosmopolitan perspective began with early research in Latin America in the late 1950s, followed by a permanent move to Paris in 1964 and successive intense, collaborative periods of work in Mexico, India, Chile, Morocco, Saudi Arabia, Japan, and South Africa. These transcultural dialogues contributed to the development of Hicks’ highly personal voice and artistic expression embracing art, architecture, design, and craftsmanship.

Sheila Hicks (b. 1934, Hastings, NE) received her BFA (1957) and MFA (1959) in painting from the Yale School of Art. Notable recent solo presentations include Hilos que Viajan, Centre Pompidou Malaga, Spain (2023); Sheila Hicks: a little bit of a lot of things, Kunstmuseum St. Gallen, Switzerland (2023); Sheila Hicks: Off Grid, The Hepworth Wakefield, London, UK (2022); Reencuentro, Museo Chile de Arte Precolombino, Santiago, Chile (2019); Campo Abierto (Open Field), The Bass, Miami Beach, FL (2019); and Life Lines, Centre Pompidou, Paris, France (2018). She has created monumental site-specific works for the Ford Foundation Headquarters and Federal Courthouse in New York; The Duke Endowment in Charlotte, North Carolina; King Saud University in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia; and the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey amongst others.

Hicks’ work can be found in the permanent collections of The Art Institute of Chicago, IL; The Centre Pompidou, Paris, France; The Jewish Museum, New York, NY; Louis Vuitton Foundation, Paris, France; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY; Museo de Bellas Artes, Santiago, Chile; The Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY; Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo, Japan; The National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.; the Pérez Art Museum, Miami, FL; Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, The Netherlands; and Tate Britain, London, United Kingdom, among many others.

Hicks is the recipient of numerous awards including the Smithsonian Archives of American Art Medal (2010). She was named a Chevalier dans l’ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the government of France in 1987 and elevated to Officier in 1993. She was also awarded the title of Chevalier by the Legion d’Honneur in 2023. She holds Honorary Doctorates from Yale University (2019), the Ecole nationale supérieure des Beaux Arts de Paris (2014), and the Rhode Island School of Design (1984).

ARTURO HERRERA

Born in Caracas, Venezuela

Lives and works in Berlin, Germany

Arturo Herrera’s diverse body of work—which most prominently includes collage, felt sculpture, and wall paintings—references the complex legacy of abstraction through modernist visual languages. His compositions often employ found material and referential iconography to prompt a multiplicity of references and readings for viewers to interpret. Herrera says, “By obscuring parts of an image, we are seeing less but expanding our idea of what is missing. The less that the image reveals, the more we can expand it.”

Arturo Herrera (b. 1959, Caracas, Venezuela) received his BFA from the University of Tulsa, OK (1982) and his MFA from the University of Chicago at Illinois (1992). A solo survey of his work, Arturo Herrera: You are here, is on view at SITE Santa Fe, NM through May 27, 2024. Other notable solo exhibitions include Arturo Herrera: Between at The Contemporary Dayton, OH (2022-23) and Constructed Collage at Ruby City, San Antonio, TX (2022). His site-specific installations can be found at The Bass Museum of Art, Miami, FL; Bloomberg European Headquarters, London; and Tate Modern, London.

Herrera’s work can be found in the public collections of the Art Institute of Chicago, IL; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY; Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, CA; The Museum of Modern Art, NY; Museo Reina Sofia, Madrid; and the Tate Modern, London, United Kingdom. He is the recipient of fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, The Pollock-Krasner Foundation, ArtPace San Antonio, The Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation and the DAAD, Berlin. Herrera lives and works in Berlin.

Felt #6 (warm gray), 2008 Wool felt

162.25 × 66.5 inches (412.1 × 168.9 cm)

ZIPORA FRIED

Born in Haifa, Israel

Lives and works in New York

Zipora Fried’s meditates on the relationship between the surface presence and the subconscious, and the potential of the artist’s hand to create and negate form. Her meticulously crafted sculptures and drawings are the effort of lengthy, labor-intensive processes, culminating to form a singular “monument” or landscape of color. Layers of line, pigment, and material build upon one another, occluding rational meaning for a phenomenological experience. Nancy Princenthal writes, “Perhaps the most accurate way to describe her variously slippery objects is to say that all are everything: landscapes are portraits, and fully abstract; images are objects, none of which quite stand still.”

Zipora Fried (b. Haifa, Israel) studied at the Academy of Applied Arts, Vienna. Her work can be found in the collections of the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY; Fogg Art Museum, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA; Magasin 3, Stockholm, Sweden; The Albertina Museum, Vienna, Austria; and the Austrian Government’s Permanent Collection of Contemporary Art. She lives and works in New York.

#3 Night, #9 Night, and #7 Night, 2016 Colored pencil on paper

15 × 10.875 inches (38.1 × 27.6 cm) each