CELEBRATION! 20 YEARS OF ART, FASHION, AND THE GARDEN | THE LEIBER COLLECTION | MAY 31 – OCTOBER 5, 2025

My collaboration with Brianna Ashe, Swing States, is on view at the Leiber Collection for their 20th anniversary exhibition.

ARTISTS:
Monica Banks, Scott Bluedorn, Perry Burns, Philippe Cheng, Jeremy Dennis, Sabra Moon Elliot, Saskia Friedrich, Jeremy Grosvenor, Mary Heilmann, Laurie Lambrecht, Jill Musnicki, Toni Ross and Brianna Ashe, Bastienne Schmidt, Yung Jake and Almond Zigmund

SMORGASBORD | ERIC FIRESTONE GALLERY | MAY 23 – JUNE 22, 2025

ARTISTS: Basie Allen, Penny Arntz, Miguel Arzabe, Kadar Brock, Quentin Curry, Lauren dela Roche, Astrid Dick, Colleen Herman, Huê Thi Hoffmaster, Cody Hoyt, Walter C Jackson, Matt Kleberg, Seffa Klein, Holly Lowen, Mack Ludlow, Holly Ballard Martz, Ryan McMenamy, Virginie Pernot, Ben Pritchard, Toni Ross, Cybele Rowe, and Bruce M. Sherman.

Smorgasbord is a group exhibition of contemporary artists celebrating variety and difference, both within the individual artworks and in the show at large. It is a cross-generational exhibition, and a playful celebration of life, marking the beginning of the summer season in East Hampton, New York. The artists on view are unafraid to mix and collide referents, mediums, materials, inspirations, and motifs, creating densely layered artworks reflecting a host of life experiences.

UNBREAKABLE | ONNA HOUSE | MAY 29 – JULY 12, 2025

Summer is almost here and it brings warmth sunshine and a new season at Onna House East Hampton. For this first show of the season, we celebrate the beautiful world of ceramics and the unbreakable bond between mothers and daughters. We highlight five pairs of mother-daughter artists along side 12 additional artists all working in harmony.

Artists: Sally Agee, Ann Agee & Lucia Pompetti, Amy Dov & Lori Goodman, Christina Jensen Vicente & Esther Jorgen Jensen, Isabel Rower & Maria Robledo, Nettie Sumner & Mercy Sumner, Carey Lowell, Conie Vallese, Helena Haefman, Heyja Do, Jaclyn Mednicov, Jaye Kim, Jialing Lee, Lena Harms, Marina Todres, Toni Ross, Yoona Hur

LIGHT, SAND, AND SEA | CLINTON ACADEMY | MAY 3 – MAY 26, 2025

The Light, Sand, and Sea exhibition celebrates the artists featured in “Light, Sand, and Sea: Hamptons Artists and their Studios” by Coco Myers and Jaime Lopez. It runs from May 3 – 26, 2025 at the Clinton Academy in East Hampton. Opening Reception May 10 from 5 – 7 PM.

WRONGS & RIGHTS | KNIZNICK GALLERY AT BRANDEIS UNIVERSITY | SEPTEMBER 12, 2024 – JANUARY 30, 2025

Wrongs & RIGHTS brings together five decades of work supporting the intergenerational battle for reproductive rights, while speaking in a wider sense to the erosion of rights in America after the June 2022 overturn of Roe v. Wade. Presenting over 20 pieces in various media, the exhibition is a mere sample of the countless works and rich perspectives on the subject, created by artists across all backgrounds, genders, and generations. We owe a debt of gratitude to artists and creators for their contributions to our fight for bodily autonomy and freedom.

FEATURING: Catherine Allport, Lisa Anne Auerbach, Andrea Bowers, Susan B. Chen, Judy Chicago, Patricia Cronin, Vaginal Davis, Lesley Dill, Bev Grant, Guerrilla Girls, Scott Hunt, Rachel Lachowicz, Marilyn Minter, Maynard Monrow, Michele Pred, Toni Ross, Jo Anna Zelano Saether, Frank Selby, Jo Shane, Courtney Stock, Hannah Wilke, Dawn Williams Boyd

Wrongs & RIGHTS is co-curated by Laura Dvorkin and Maynard Monrow of The Beth Rudin DeWoody Collection and was first presented at The Rudin Family Gallery, Brooklyn Academy of Music in 2022. The exhibition includes works both selected from the BRD Collection and chosen directly from artists’ studios.

SUMMER GAMES | ERIC FIRESTONE GALLERY | JUNE 28 – JULY 28, 2024

Exhibiting Artists:

Elise Asher • Martha Edelheit • Susan Fortgang • Regina Granne • Colleen Herman • Joel Longenecker • Christabel Macgreevy • Ces Mccully • Sana Musasama • Joe Overstreet • Pat Passlof • Toni Ross • Dannielle Tegeder • Paul Waters

OPENING DAY LINEUP | ERIC FIRESTONE GALLERY | MAY 25 – JUNE 23, 2024

OPENING RECEPTION | MAY 25, 2024 | 5 – 7 PM

Eric Firestone Gallery is thrilled to announce Opening Day Lineup, an exhibition celebrating the gallery’s fifteenth season in East Hampton. Opening Day Lineup utilizes an exuberant array of shapes, color, and pattern to create a dynamic conversation between contemporary and historic works. The exhibition showcases a variety of media including poured glass, glazed stoneware, pigmented plaster, fiber and shaped textiles, along with oil, gouache, and ink painting. A host of distinct perspectives and backgrounds are represented by the artists on view. 

Eric Firestone Gallery is also pleased to announce that The Garage will re-open by appointment beginning Memorial Day Weekend. The Garage is the gallery’s sweeping 7,000 square-foot warehouse space at 62 Newtown Lane. The curation will rotate through the summer, with a “salon” installation combining historic material represented by the gallery, and younger generations of contemporary artists. Continuing to introduce new voices and establish connections with historically significant artists remains central to the gallery’s mission and its long-standing presence on Newtown Lane in East Hampton. 

The work of three artists on view in Opening Day Lineup: Kelsey Brookes (b. Denver, CO, 1978), Richard Tinkler (b. Westminster, MD, 1975), and Elise Ferguson (b. Richmond, VA, 1964) utilize pattern and repetition to explore paths of energy, vibration, and metaphysical states. Brookes is a former scientist whose work is informed by research into mathematical and scientific concepts, along with his studies of natural and synthetic hallucinogens. Brookes reimagines molecular processes as tactile large-scale abstractions that reference Eastern contemplative traditions. Tinkler layers intricately repeated marks to create kaleidoscopic abstractions. His paintings and drawings reflect an approach that is instinctual and labor intensive, structured and hallucinatory. These patterned visions resemble psychedelic tapestries or mystical environments. Ferguson is a painter who creates works based on mathematical puzzles and geometric variation. Ferguson’s process involves scraping layers of pigmented Venetian plaster onto panels and drawing repeating linear forms using graphite pencil, sometimes reinforcing these borders by silk screening plaster onto the surface. The play of positive and negative spaces resulting from the repetitive silk screening process creates the optical illusion of constant movement. The undulating patterns encourage states of meditation and hypnosis.

Paintings from the 1960s by Susan Fortgang (b. New York, NY, 1944) and recent paintings by Uday Dhar (b. London, England, 1957) form a compelling pairing: both employing combinations of curving and linear forms across their surfaces to explore fragmentation and juxtaposition. Their work is abstract, but Dhar refers to his paintings as portraits, and Fortgang titles hers “interiors.” Dhar was born in England and raised in India before immigrating to the United States. The artist’s hybrid identity, as American, South Asian, and queer, has influenced Dhar’s interest in the tension between self-expression and cultural heritage. Dhar’s ongoing series American Portraits of the Zeitgeist emerged from the chaos of the pandemic and evolved into a dialogue around immigration policies. The idea of parts coming together is a metaphor for the discrete pieces of the artist fitted together, overlapping or adjacent, but functioning as a whole. 

Susan Fortgang approaches each canvas as an experiment, working out a specific problem or trying something new with every painting. She creates paintings with a physical presence, often using thick layers of paint to create textured surfaces or iridescent medium so that her works create optical effects as the viewer moves in space.

Hanging weavings by Toni Ross (b. New York, NY, 1957) will be on view. International maritime signal flags recur throughout her oeuvre and represent a form of communication at once functional and beautiful. These flags cross language barriers and are universally recognized. For Ross they are symbolic of healing and a recognition that collaboration is necessary. Dan Levenson’s (b. New York, NY, 1972) work is also concerned with how geometric forms can speak through time and space. A conceptual painter, his work takes the form of artifacts rescued from the ruins of an imaginary art school: the State Art Academy, Zürich. The resulting paintings follow a strict formalist pedagogy of this imaginary school, where each work is divided metrically to create abstract geometries, softened by their aged tactility. 

Paintings by Huê Thi Hoffmaster (b. Lancaster, PA, 1982) and Allison Gildersleeve (b. New London, CT, 1970) shift between abstraction and representation, using still life and landscape as an occasion for dense, active thickets of linear brushwork. The son of Vietnamese and American parents, Hoffmaster cultivates tension in his paintings between Eastern and Western aesthetic traditions, intuition and intention, stillness, and action. The floral bouquets of his compositions combine delicate blossoms with heavy bursts of color. Hoffmaster sees the flowers as stand-ins for human personalities and presences. Gildersleeve reinterprets the genre of landscape painting through warped perspective, high key color, and closely cropped scenes of nature. Gildersleeve’s images of the natural world are far from inert and tranquil but rather vibrate with dense brush marks. Her seemingly familiar environments jettison the natural order of things in favor of a space that uses memory as a guide. These will be shown alongside abstract paintings from the 1960s by Pat Passlof (b. Brunswick, GA, 1928; d. New York, NY, 2011) who believed, above all, in the intuitive intelligence of the interaction between the painter and the canvas. Her work resisted narrative but nevertheless evokes memories of place, sensation, and experience. 

Rob Wynne (b. New York, 1948) and Keiko Narahashi (b. Tokyo, Japan, 1959) create drawings in space: Wynne with poured glass wall works, and Narahashi with tabletop glazed stoneware sculptures. Wynne eschews the traditional technique of glassblowing, instead hand-pouring glass into shapes that together form short phrases of text, as well as resembling shimmering raindrops or dew on a spiderweb. The glass text pieces are deliberately reflective so that the viewer sees themself while reading these open-ended phrases. Narahashi is an artist interested in the translation of one material form into another. Her works originate as ink drawings, emblematic of the shapes of pottery, which are then transformed into three-dimensional forms on the wheel before being cut and flattened with a rolling pin. The resulting forms are both strange and familiar. They waver between human and nonhuman, figure and landscape, and arise out of the artist’s interest in Japanese ghost stories, where humans and animals mutate freely.

(MOSTLY) WOMEN (MOSTLY) ABSTRACT: PART II | ERIC FIRESTONE GALLERY | SEPTEMBER 9 – OCTOBER 14, 2023

OPENING RECEPTION | SEPTEMBER 9, 2023 | 6 – 8 PM

(Mostly) Women (Mostly) Abstract is a sweeping two-part exhibition across Eric Firestone’s East Hampton and New York City locations with a cross-generational group of artists. The exhibition focuses on abstraction and represents aesthetic conversations over time between contemporary artists and represented gallery artists and estates.

(Mostly) Women (Mostly) Abstract shows how content is embedded in abstraction. The work on view reflects multiculturalism, daily life, and domesticity, and employs references to sound, language, and place. The exhibition showcases artists who haven’t always operated in the center of the art world, but who charted a deeply personal path, and utilized experimental techniques, materials, and processes.

In broad terms, the exhibition considers the condition of “otherness” as manifest in abstraction, in terms of ethnicity, race, gender, and sexual orientation. The exhibition reflects Eric Firestone Gallery’s central mission: to examine the ever-expanding canon of Post-War painting and sculpture in New York.

Several works in the exhibition reflect domesticity, craft traditions, and decoration. Judy Pfaff, a pioneer of installation art since the 1970s, synthesizes sculpture, painting, and architecture into dynamic environments. Her work incorporates a host of materials, each chosen with careful intentionality. A major work from the late 1980s will be on view. Pfaff has said:

Most of the work I like has a funny kind of storytelling. One’s life is in it: including the cleaning, the cooking, the child-caring. The men I knew at Yale didn’t waste their time on silly things. I can, and I do—and that’s what I like in the work. Women are beginning to see that they can talk about themselves. Right now, that is available. It never used to be.

This tendency also manifests itself in the work of Jenny Snider (b. 1944), Tamara Gonzales (b.1969), Nina Yankowitz (b. 1946), and Toni Ross (b. 1957). Snider credits her involvement with second-wave feminism for expanding her understanding of art to include the handmade arts of daily life: sewing, quilting, folk, and outsider art. Textiles and nature often inspire Tamara Gonzoles’s works, while others are created through her own generative mark-making on paper or canvas. Over the last ten years Gonzales’s travels to Peru, and her visionary experiences and friendships with the Shipibo people have become a source of both inspiration and collaboration in her work.

The ceramic sculpture of Sana Musasama (b. 1957) is similarly informed by her global travels, and interests in women’s studies and indigenous artistic practices. For Musasama, clay was the geographical catalyst that first brought her to West Africa where she studied pottery with the Mende people in Sierra Leone. Later venturing to Japan, China, Cambodia, and South America, she continued her quest, expanding her interests to tribal adornment practices. She is challenged by issues concerning women’s safety, specifically rituals involving rites of passage and female chastity.

Sculptor Helen O’Leary (b. 1961) has described her work as reflecting a feminism that speaks to women’s resourcefulness and strength. Born and raised in Ireland, she, along with her mother and sister, farmed the land and managed the home after her father’s premature death. Her work stitches together hundreds of tiny pieces of wood, like sticks found on the land, to form works both monumental, yet also vulnerable and precarious.

Other work in the exhibition employs a softening and loosening of the grid and compositional structures that defined (and limited) modernist painting. This is visible in the stain paintings of Pat Lipsky (b. 1941) and the improvisational webs of Richard Tinkler (b. 1975).

Uday Dhar depicts abstracted flowers, which he describes as a metaphor for multiculturalism and gender fluidity. Because flowers have both male and female reproductive capacities and can be pollinated in a variety of ways, he sees them as emblematic of hybridity and related to his experience as an American artist of Indian descent. Similar concerns inflect the abstracted flowers of Vietnamese American painter Huê Thi Hoffmaster (b. 1982). Hoffmaster’s clustered lines also suggest calligraphic writing. Despina Stokou (b. 1978) combines text and dense layers of brushwork. She removes words from personal and political narratives, which then become layered on her canvases.

This exhibition also showcases several mid-century women abstractionists, including Pat Passlof (1928–2011) and mosaicist Jeanne Reynal (1903–83).

MAISON PALO | PALO GALLERY | OPENING SEPTEMBER 8, 2023

OPENING RECEPTION | SEPTEMBER 8 | 6 – 8 PM

Artists:
Lorenzo Amos, Bill Armstrong, Natalie Ball, Marion Baruch, Georg Baselitz, Alma Berrow, Sebastian Brajkovic, Marcantonio Brandolini, Will Bruno, Aurelija Bulaukaite, Paul Cadmus, Alexander Calder, Tancredi De Carcaci, Judy Chicago, Ronan Day-Lewis, Edgar Degas, Dean Dempsey, Auudi Dorsey, Nathaniel Dorsky, Kim Faler, Walton Ford, Pedro Friedeberg, Patrica Geyerhahn, Tyler Goldflower, Rogan Gregory, Michael Hafftka, Lewinale Havette, Roger Herman, Jane Hilton, Esme Hodsoll, Kat Howard, Serban Ionescu, Poppy Jones, Charlotte Kingsnorth, Sasha Kurmaz, Scooter Laforge, Liam Lee, Jara Sastre Lopez, Roberto Lugo, Dora Maar, Esther Mahlangu, Julius Margulies, Rifka Midler, Amadeo Morelos, Tim Noble, Marguerite Piard, Leon Pozniakow, Marianne Raschig, Kitty Rice, Faith Ringgold, Toni Ross, Sayar & Garibeh, Sage Schachter, Steven Shanabrook, David Smalling, Caleb Stein, Sagarika Sundaram, Keith Tolch, Bouke De Vries, Susannah Weaver, Ai Weiwei, Sandy Williams IV, LaRone Wilson, Rachel Wold, Deanio X, Sarp Kerem Yavuz, Najla El Zein

About the Curator
Sophia Herring is an Arts and Culture journalist based in New York. She regularly contributes to publications including Architectural Digest, The Guardian, The New York Times, and The Art Yinka Shonibare, Hybrid Mask (Senufo), 2022 Newspaper. In the fall, Herring will return to her studies at Columbia Journalism’s Master of Arts program with a focus in Arts and Culture. Before getting into journalism, Sophia studied Architecture and worked at firms including CWB, Leeser Architects, and Selldorf, where she spent six months in their interiors department.

About Palo Gallery
Established in 2018 in New York City by third-generation art collector and dealer Paul Henkel, Palo Gallery brings to bear a tradition of art scholarship and patronage, working as a true thought partner with artists to realize their visions and create dynamic presentations. Extensive research by the Palo curatorial team ensures that each exhibition is advised by the art historical canon and contemporary cultural touchpoints. In 2022, Palo Gallery opened its new 3,400-square-foot flagship space designed by Selldorf Architects in the NoHo district of Manhattan as the only dedicated partner showcasing Vica by Annabelle Selldorf. A destination of discovery, Palo Gallery’s multifaceted program ranges from tightly curated, thematic group exhibitions to insightful art historically informed solo exhibitions spanning a breadth of artistic endeavors.

Since its inception, Palo Gallery has sought to incorporate thematic elements into its curatorial practice – whether it be group shows or solo presentations. Early exhibitions marked the gallery’s foray into concept-driven presentations focusing on themes of memory and our most primitive instincts. Memories Manifest (2021) saw seven artists working in response to each other and the theme of memory, while Primordial (2021) investigated the ways that thoughts, emotions, reactions, and experiences speak to our most primitive instincts. The large-scale Real Wild (2022) presented an array of representations and interpretations of iconography from the American Wild West, a setting of which many of us have a collective archetype that the exhibition sought to re-contextualize. Building on the success of these conceptual group exhibitions, Palo has continued navigating contemporary cultural topics via art historical narratives with a number of solo exhibitions. Today, the gallery continues to showcase thematic presentations that offer Palo Gallery and its artists a unique opportunity to explore pivotal cultural and historical topics at a level that transcends those achieved via a standard solo exhibition.

THREADS OF EXPRESSION: TEXTILE ART UNRAVELED | SHIN GALLERY | AUGUST 30 – OCTOBER 28, 2023

OPENING RECEPTION | AUGUST 30 | 6 – 8 PM

Shin Gallery is thrilled to present Threads of Expression: Textile Art Unraveled, a celebration of textile art in all its inherent and transformed meanings. Throughout history, the purpose of textiles has evolved from purely utilitarian to a vessel for true expression, reflection, and even dissent. Embedded within the very fibers of these works is deep-seated cultural heritage, community, and women’s liberation.

With the earliest evidence from Eurasia dating back to the 7th millennium BCE, textiles are one of the oldest art forms. Over time, humans refined their textile practices – the invention of silk and the advent of the Silk Road – catalyzing unfounded cultural diffusion and economic growth. The technological advancements born from the Industrial Revolution transformed the production of textiles, as well as our relationship with textile art and the associated processes. The cost of production decreased, affording artists the opportunity to experiment with fabric and textiles without the need to produce solely within the bounds of utilitarianism.

For much of history, the production of textiles and textile art was considered “women’s work” and was disregarded as mere craft or a hobby, overshadowed by the hegemonic male painters who dominated the sphere of art. Instead of abandoning the form and conforming to the expectations of the ruling monolith of male artists, many women artists took advantage of this notion and used textile art as a vessel for meaningful political discourse regarding their rights and visibility.

Upon the invention of the loom in Ancient Egypt, weaving quickly became one of the most commonly produced textiles, as woven fabric was easily customizable and had diverse applications. Many cultures have extensive weaving traditions, informed by the materials regionally available and the structures that define their societies, allowing these works to be intimately tied to the land upon which they were created. In politically fraught times of post-colonial societies, textile art can be a powerful and revolutionary way to reconnect with one’s culture, as epitomized in Polish artist Barbara Levittoux-Świderska’s precariously woven work, Gold Rain, which represents the post-war era it was created in by bringing traditional weaving techniques into the limelight once again.

Tradition is not stagnant, and meaningful works can be produced by combining ancient techniques with the ethos of modern art. Artists like Anne Ryan, who uses cloth and string as collage materials, and Rosemarie Trockel, who employs conceptual practices to create machine-knitted paintings, create abstract weavings with a distinctively painterly approach, establishing their oeuvre as serious fine art rather than mere hobbies. Weaving has remained a significant technique that has transcended countless art movements, demonstrating its versatility as a medium. For example, undeterred by the stifling machismo of the Surrealist movement, Leonora Carrington persisted in creating fantastical worlds free from the boundaries of her own reality.

Embroidery is a testament to the human instinct to beautify. With time and care, objects of utility are infused with beauty, blurring the lines between art and practical technology. Adorning our objects, spaces, and selves is a deeply human instinct, and the beautification of functional objects is a pure manifestation of our humanity. Often tedious and time-consuming, the process of embroidery is a labor of love, with every piece carrying the care of the hand, as seen in the indigo-dyed Japanese Boro Quilt. This piece was mended and repaired repeatedly over time, preserving the integrity of the original fabric despite the scars of time and use. Tracey Emin’s Sleep uses fabric as a means of expressing emotion: she employs a cotton pillowcase, purposely marked and made to look as if it were used, printed with the phrase, TRACEY BE BRAVE. A bed is a personal and vulnerable place, and sharing it is a form of trust in the other. Making the bed becomes an exciting or scary area with potential outcomes. Going into another’s bed is like entering another self, making the bed a place where the true self hides.

Artist Magda Bolumar echoes this sentiment – embroidery as a carrier of human emotion – with a constellation of works on canvas that establish confluences between organic and constructive elements. In these works, she first paints an acrylic base layer, then adds unique geometric forms and patterns that are simultaneously biomorphic and graphic on top of each piece with thread. These rhythmic patterns are based on grids and are often placed above an intensely colorful, nebulous background. Similarly, Woty Werner’s work demonstrates the progression of styles throughout art history – American painters exploring Cubism and Surrealism, and finally being dominated by Abstract Expressionism. Her woven pictures parallel each other over time, reflecting the abstract and figurative art she collected. Her early works included symbolic motifs and transitioned to a more abstract style later in life. Additionally, Jessica Rankin presents her acrylic on linen piece, Thus, the Light of the Sun, on which she first creates abstract, fluid marks resembling the sun and the planet’s atmosphere in acrylic and then adds fringes sewn onto the work with embroidery thread.

Painting is an intrinsic part of Threads of Expression: Textile Art Unraveled, and the artists in this exhibition merge painterly mark-making with the field of textiles to create a visual vernacular that vibrates between art and technology. One artist, April Street, is celebrated for her paintings and installations. At first glance, it is difficult to grasp what one is seeing when approaching Street’s multimedia work. Upon closer inspection, one can identify a pattern-like, intricately painted image of braids and flora, made with acrylic and nylon on wood panel and canvas. Small holes punctuate the surface of the piece, creating tension and making Street’s curious imagery even more mysterious. Street’s work references history, mythology, and art history, combining the experimentation of Second-wave feminism with references to the theatrics, illusionism, and palette of 17th-century Dutch still-life painting. Toni Ross also integrates textiles into her work in the context of nature, blending natural and synthetic materials – for example, stoneware coupled with thread – to bridge the two elements together. Another artist working in the realms of both painting and textiles is Hyon Gyon. Her vibrant abstract works oscillate between sculpture and painting. The pieces she contributes to this show consist of a varying array of materials such as fabric, oil, thread, and charcoal on canvas. Organic forms reminiscent of eyes and limbs, built up with textured layers of paint and fabric, seem to explode from the surface of Hyon Gyon’s dynamic paintings while exuding a primal and passionate energy characteristic of the artist’s hand.

Threads of Expression: Textile Art Unraveled features a diverse collection of textile-based works with a broad spectrum of influences, exploring the creation of optical languages situated at the boundaries between textiles and image-making, fine art and technology, and the outdoors and the man-made. This exhibition is an all-encompassing survey of textile art that demonstrates its intrinsic value and celebrates the artists who reject assumed limitations in form, expanding the practice of textile art to encompass painting, sculpture, and collage.