Announcing Details of the 2022 Artistic Program

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE— Independent New York is pleased to announce the artistic program for this year’s edition, selected by founding curatorial advisor Matthew Higgs and co-produced in collaboration with leading galleries, non-profits and museums worldwide. Over two hundred artists, forty-seven solo and duo artist presentations and special projects have been commissioned especially for this year’s fair, presented by sixty-six galleries and institutions.

Embracing a hybrid model and digital opportunities for storytelling, the fair will continue to present their critically acclaimed online platform, which will open the week before the event, from April 28 and running four weeks after the event, until May 31. Home to over 50 new editorial features, these stories were produced on the occasion of the online platform, a research oriented, digital companion to the physical fair. Over the coming weeks, Independent will be launching the individual interviews, artist takeovers, videos, talks and podcasts on Independent Features, our website, including never-before-seen performances and an inside look at artists working in their studios.

A list of the solo, duo and special project presentations follows below:

Vinicius Gerheim | A Gentil Carioca
A Gentil Carioca will feature works by Brazilian-based artist Vinicius Gerheim in a solo presentation. Following a successful solo exhibition at the gallery last year, this presentation will highlight Gerheim’s newest series of paintings, which combine themes of sexuality and religion, and the resulting oppressive effects of both. Patterning and sensory rhythms feature prominently in the emerging artist’s paintings. For the online platform Independent Features & Voices on Art have partnered to co-produce a podcast episode with Marcio Botner, Co-Founder of A Gentil Carioca. 

Joan Nelson & Jessica Jackson Hutchins | Adams and Ollman
For their presentation at Independent, Portland-based gallery Adams and Ollman will present a duo exhibition with works by Joan Nelson and Jessica Hutchins. The two artists are united by their exuberant use of color and its effect on exalting mundane everyday details. Nelson takes an assemblage approach in her practice, both with her layered technique to painting landscape and her art historical influence from movements such as German Romanticism and the Hudson River School. Hutchins’ practice evokes materiality through her sculptural installations of domestic objects such as pianos, sofas, and tables. She intuitively brings ritual to her practice through her collages and paintings, and speaks to transformation through her large-scale ceramics. 

Lois Dodd & Patricia Treib | Alexandre Gallery
Alexandre Gallery will present a duo presentation of Lois Dodd and Patricia Treib. Dodd will exhibit her “flashings,” small paintings that are made on aluminum roofing material, which imply the quickness through which Dodd is able to capture the essence of her subjects. Treib also incorporates natural landscape into her practice, joining both artists with their intimate reflections on the natural, observable world throughout its changing seasons. Independent Features commissioned writer Hunter Braithwaite to co-produce an essay on the artists.

Kenny Schachter | Allouche Benias** 
Allouche Benias will present work by New York-based artist, writer, and curator Kenny Schachter. Kenny Schachter has been making art in new media since the early 1990s when he began with monumentally scaled large-format computer prints. His works comment on technology from a cultural perspective. For his debut at Independent, Schachter will exhibit his ‘Crypto Mutts’ Non Fungible Tokens (NFT) series, which pay homage to art historical figures, such as Picasso, Marcel Duchamp, and Yves Klein. This will be Independent’s second interdisciplinary NFT installation, following Cory Archangel and JODI’s presentation in 2021 at the fair. 

Oren Pinhassi & Olivia Reavey | Helena Anrather** 
Helena Anrather will bring a dual-artist presentation with works by New York-based Oren Pinhassi and Boston-based Olivia Reavey for its Independent debut. These artists have a shared interest in subverting traditional notions of the erotic through playful and inquisitive associations with the body. Oren Pinhassi’s work explores the body in relation to everyday objects, investigating the boundary between desire and fear. As a female photographer, Olivia Reavey reclaims her power by inverting the male gaze, capturing intimate moments when her male subjects are presenting their masculinity in imposing ways.

Pam Evelyn | The approach 
The gallery will present site specific works by London-based  Pam Evelyn for her US debut. The 25-year-old UK artist embodies a monumental approach to painting. Evelyn creates non-representational, abstract forms on large-scale canvases that are inspired by intuition and impulse. Evelyn is currently a candidate in MFA at The Royal College of Art, London. Recently, Independent Features commissioned Martin Herbert to write on Evelyn’s practice. Herbert’s prose futhers a much deeper complexity within the work, “Something of the texture of being alive today, amid the compound pressure of twenty-first-century reality (which need not be itemized here), is encoded in it: a sense of how one struggles through life’s reversals and hairpin bends.” Read it here.

Ruby Sky Stiler & Rachel Carey George | Nicelle Beauchene 
Nicelle Beauchene Gallery presents an intergenerational dialogue on abstraction between two artists. Featuring Ruby Sky Stiler and the historic Gee’s Bend Quiltmaker, Rachel Carey George (b.1908-d.2011). Alongside six new mixed-media relief paintings by Stiler, a historic quilt by Carey George from the 1970s will center the presentation. George was a key member of Gee’s Bend, the community of black quiltmakers that emerged in the 1960s from Gee’s Bend, Arkansas. Since the community’s museum debut in the 1990s, advocates of the consortium are empowering the individual artists to present work outside of the group.  Historical research for the quiltmakers, continues to be further contextualized. Both artists, Stiler and George, employ material processes that piece together disparate forms, be they scraps of fabric or paper, to think through patterning as a tool that embeds abstraction with narrative potential. 

Pier Paolo Calzolari | Marianne Boesky Gallery 
Marianne Boesky will be presenting work by Pier Paolo Calzolari, a central figure in the postwar Italian art movement, Arte Poevera and one of the most important contemporary Italian artists working today. Calzolari’s new series Shop Signs contemplates isolation and human connection, using commonplace signifiers such as a teapot or shoe to transcend language and appreciate the simplicity of everyday life.

Joseph Tisiga | Bradley Ertaskiran** 
For their Independent debut, the Montreal-based gallery Bradley Ertaskiran will present works from three series by the First Nations artist Joseph Tisiga. The artist draws upon his cultural heritage, as part of the Kaska Dena nation located in the northwest coast of Canada, as a point of departure to explore notions of identity as a construct. Tisiga’s interest in the metaphorical transformation of ancestral memory is enhanced by the third series of works, which includes sacred “dolls” that are hand-sculpted by the artist’s mother and represent the artist’s connection to holy spirits. Tisiga’s presentation at Independent will coincide with his US museum debut exhibition currently taking place at the Michigan State University, MSU Broad Museum.

Devin Troy Strother | BROADWAY 
BROADWAY will present work by the rising artist Devin Troy Strother. The Los Angeles-based artist’s practice explores ways in which the Black experience is often performed and culturally coded in America, through specific references to 1990s nostalgia, basketball aesthetics, and personal history. The artist will present new painted bronze sculptures as well as paintings for his Independent debut.

Kent O’Connor | Matthew Brown Los Angeles 
Matthew Brown Los Angeles will present work by recent Yale MFA graduate and Los Angeles-based artist Kent O’Connor. O’Connor’s portraits evoke both serious attention to detail and comical exaggerations in absurdity. By juxtaposing his technical and emotive skills, O’Connor offers a fresh new take on the traditional subject of portraiture and still life. This will be a New York debut for the rising artist at Independent. 

Rachel Eulena Williams | CANADA  
Canada will present work by Rachel Eulena Williams for this year’s fair. The artist’s practice takes a performative approach to reframing the use of color and material culture in art history. Grounded in the tradition of Black Abstraction, Williams’ sculptures subvert the hierarchy of whiteness in its proximity to color. She also incorporates material such as rope, fabric, hammock, and glue to reference movements of the 20th Century, surrealism and support/surface. Canada and Independent Features commissioned writer Elizabeth Karp-Evans to co-produce an essay on the artist. Set to be published later this month.

Marguerite Humeau & Calvin Marcus | C L E A R I N G 
C L E A R I N G will present a duo-exhibition with works by London-based artist Marguerite Humeau and Los Angeles-based artist Calvin Marcus. Marguerite Humeau is participating in this year’s Venice Biennale. Humeau’s sculpted subjects are rooted in science, nature, and the experimental. Her works subtly touch on the current waves of change happening in nature that can be attributed to humans in today’s time of the Anthropocene. Marcus, through his work, picks apart the idea of being an artist. He humorously paints seemingly-arbitrary subjects almost to poke fun at the inherent self-importance of painting. 

Devin N. Morris | Deli Gallery** 
Deli Gallery will present new works by Brooklyn-based artist Devin N. Morris. This new series will reflect the artist’s time spent at the Verãozão residency in Brazil. Morris offers a new take on racial and sexual identity, drawing upon his personal experiences growing up as a in Baltimore as a gay black man to present the domestic space as a site for intimate, visual experimentation.

Jiang Cheng | Downs & Ross  
Downs & Ross will introduce a new series of portraits by Beijing-based painter Jiang Cheng. The artist’s abstracted renderings of tightly fore-cropped faces dissolve legible markers of identity. His paintings connote the momentariness of subjective positions – effectively synthesizing a unique assembly of Eastern and Western genealogies of outline, process, and capture.

Roy Ferdinand | Andrew Edlin Gallery 
Andrew Edlin Gallery will present historical works by the self-taught artist Roy Ferdinand. The life-long New Orleans native, who passed away in 2004, pulled from both personal experiences and local stories of the Black communities in the years before Hurricane Katrina. While harboring ambitions towards science fiction narratives, Ferdinand ultimately continued with his own unique form of realism. 

Audie Murray | Fazakas Gallery 
Fazakas Gallery, a specialist in First Nations Canadian contemporary art, will present Audie Murray for the first time in New York. The indigenous artist is both part of and descended from the Métis tribe. Her personal and familial history is intimately intertwined with her practice, through which she uses a range of performance based and sculptural works to reclaim a decolonized take on indigenous labor. The artist also takes inspiration from pioneering female artists such as Eva Hesse and Hilma af Klint, by combining everyday objects of personal, cultural significance with themes of embodied sculpture from her art historical predecessors. For the online platform, Independent Features and Voices on Art have partnered to co-produce a podcast with the artist. Listen here.

Trude Viken | Fortnight Institute
Fortnight Institute will present work by Norwegian artist Trude Viken. The artist was discovered by the gallery through Richard Prince, who had come across the artist’s work and is a supporter of the program. Trude’s work takes inspiration from internal emotions, identities, and experiences which are usually kept hidden. By exploring well-known fables, such as Snow White, dream sequences, and self-portraiture through her practice Viken blurs the boundary between interiority and exteriority. 

Siobhan Liddell and Reverend Joyce McDonald | Gordon Robichaux 
Gordon Robichaux will present a duo-exhibition of artists who use found materials in their practice. Siobhan Liddell’s career has spanned over 30 years; she was a recipient of the Rome Prize in 2011, participated in the 1995 Whitney Biennial, and is on the faculty at the Yale School of Art. The subject of her works share a common thread - the many, intangible paths a mind can take. She adds sculptural components to her light and airy paintings, many of them found objects. The Reverend Joyce McDonald’s modest materials include the likes of clay, tinfoil, dirt and sculpted portraits and mini busts of her family members. She expands her messages of hope and strength through the artworks. Independent Features commissioned writer John Chiaverina to write on the artists. 

John Miller | Maxwell Graham / Essex Street 
Maxwell Graham / Essex Street will make their Independent debut with Civic Center, a new body of work by American artist and critic John Miller, taking place in parallel to the artist’s solo debut at the gallery. A noted artist and intellectual, Miller creates work unrestricted to any one medium, trademark or style. Over his 40 year career, Miller has consistently remarked on a wide spectrum of social life. The location, Civic Center in New York, is where so many protests in the past years have begun—and where they have ended. Miller’s series of work attempts to expose a tacit version of the ‘civic‘ that aims not so much to serve citizens as it does to manage and control them. On the occasion of this debut, Independent Features has commissioned writer John Chiaverina to write a feature on John Miller’s new work

Emma Kohlmann & Roger Herman | Jack Hanley Gallery 
Jack Hanley will present an intergenerational, dual-artist project with new paintings by Emma Kohlmann and ceramic vessels by Roger Herman. These artists meditate on themes regarding anthropomorphic abstraction, evoking the body through surprising nuances to challenge the gender binary and traditional material culture. Kohlmann draws upon her background in feminist theory to create ink and watercolor paintings that depict abstracted nude bodies and anthropomorphic, botanical figures. Herman, although born and raised in Germany, has been a key member of the Los Angeles art community since the late 1970s, when he moved to California and became a key member of the West Coast Neo-Expressionist movement. Work by Herman and his contemporaries are currently up for reassessment.

Janice Guy | Higher Pictures Generation 
For their presentation at Independent, Higher Pictures Generation will present historical work by Janice Guy, a feminist photographer known for her radical experiments in the late 1970s, at a time when the German school of photography was being lead by exclusively white male artists, many of whom studied alongside Guy at the Kunst Akademie Dusseldorf. Her work was brought to renewed attention through two critically acclaimed shows curated by Matthew Higgs at White Columns in 2007. Guy is known for her lens-based exploration of the female form, primarily her own. She is also known as a legendary gallerist and downtown figure. Since the pandemic, she has been revisiting this series resulting in a tightly edited body of work that will be the subject of a solo presentation this spring at Independent. 

Moyna Flannigan | Ingleby Gallery** 
Ingleby Gallery will present paintings by Edinburgh-based artist Moyna Flannigan. The artist is best known for her figurative portraits of female characters, who are most often depicted in surreal, abstracted forms. The artist employs the background as a non-representational space where her culturally amalgamated figures float. Yale trained, and widely exhibited in the UK and across Europe, Moyna Flannigan has taken cultural references from America into account in her figurative works. Permanent collections include, Museum Arnhem, Netherlands, Hessel Museum of Art, Bard College, USA, and Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art. This marks an Independent debut for both the gallery and artist.

Geta Brătescu & Ion Grigorescu | Ivan Gallery 
Geta Brătescu (1926-2018) and Ion Grigorescu (b. 1945) are both regarded as pioneers of conceptualist practices in post-war, Communist Romania. Besides the mutual traits of their work–complex, process-based activity, employed in various techniques and media–they were also friends and collaborators throughout their careers. Brătescu is known for her textile sculptural installations and collages that were a provocation to the official Communist regime. Grigorescu’s work is preoccupied with documenting aspects of reality that include his own body, family and daily life, as well as the social and political context.

Sophie Barber | Alison Jacques 
Following the success of UK-based Sophie Barber’s debut at Alison Jacques in 2021, the gallery will present new work by the artist for her first solo in New York. Barber juxtaposes contradictory elements to create a distinct style that takes aim at the distortion of contemporary media. To construct her subject matter, the artist appropriates found imagery from pop culture, YouTube videos, art historical references, and her own personal history. The dizzying glitches found within her material are complimented by their extreme range in scale, from two inches to eighteen feet. Barber also implements a thickly impastoed texture to the surface of her works, making seemingly glamorous, online personas feel tactile, constructed, and even comical. For the online platform Independent Features and Voices on Art have partnered to co-produce a podcast with the artist. Listen here.

Martine Barrat | Nina Johnson** 
For their first presentation at Independent, Nina Johnson will present photographs by the legend Martine Barrat. Barrat has been an active and prominent artist in New York since the 1970s, when she first began working with youth groups in Harlem to create music and video workshops as part of the Human Arts Ensemble. Barrat received critical acclaim and institutional recognition for her projects throughout the late 1990s and early 2000s, including the publication of Do or Die (1993), which included forwards by Gordon Parks and Martin Scorsese, and the major retrospective of her work at La Maison Européenne de la Photographie in Paris, “Harlem My Heart” (2007). This presentation at Independent is her first exhibition in several decades.

Vanessa German | Kasmin** 
Kasmin will present works by Philadelphia-based artist Vanessa German, a self-taught artist whose practice offers a new take on social healing by subverting traditional hierarchies of power. German’s sculptures draw upon the Central African tradition of Congolese Nkisi sculptures — empowered objects embellished with mystic materials to heal, protect, and ward off evil — by adding locally found materials to her figures, offering protection against the perils of contemporary urban life. For the online platform Independent Features and Voices on Art have partnered to co-produce a podcast with Nick Olney, Managing Director of Kasmin. Listen here.

Hanna Hur | Kristina Kite Gallery** 
Kristina Kite Gallery will present work by Hanna Hur, a Korean-Canadian artist based in Los Angeles. Hur takes a meditative approach to her practice—performing the ritual of crafting geometric paintings through laborious, repetitive pattern making. The effect is uncanny, a divide between minimalism, Korean textile imagery and California light and space that is both illusive and seductive in its mystery.

H.R. Giger, Oto Gillen and Valerie Keane | LOMEX 
For this special project, the gallery will curate a skybox presentation centered around a sculptural furniture installation in collaboration with the Estate of H.R. Giger. H.R. Giger (b. 1940-d. 2014 Switzerland) is a well-known artist and set designer, whose “biomechanical” sculptures are best known for shaping the artistic direction of the Ridley Scott film Alien. His work has continued to inspire new generations through his psychological, oddly sexual and biological themes. The installation will serve as a departure point for living artists in the gallery’s program in an immersive installation led by artists of the gallery, Oto Gillen and Valerie Keane.

Jennifer Bolande | Magenta Plains 
For their presentation at Independent, Magenta Plains will bring a historical presentation of work by Jennifer Bolande, who emerged in the late 1970s and early 1980s in the East Village among artists such as Jack Goldstein, Sherrie Levine, Jeff Koons, and Marcel Broodthaers. Bolande is well known for her idiosyncratic approach to combining sculpture and photography. This presentation of works for Independent will include a mini survey of photo series, sculpture, and installations. For the online platform, Independent Features and Voices on Art have partnered to co-produce a podcast episode with the artist. Listen here.

David Shrobe | moniquemeloche 
David Shrobe explores themes of Black identity, history, and memory by subverting traditional approaches to classical portraiture. His assemblage style applies to both his technical and conceptual interests—using found and inherited objects to evoke the artist’s upbringing in Harlem, and evoking an allegorical lexicon to bridge narratives of the diasporic past, present, and future. Independent Features commissioned writer Francesca Gavin to write an essay on the artist. Read it here.

RJ Messineo | Morán Morán 
For their presentation at Independent, Morán Morán will exhibit large scale paintings by the Brooklyn-based artist RJ Messineo. The artist’s practice deals with interior spaces, investigating the intimate relationship between architecture and the body. The artist’s series for Independent builds upon these themes while taking a more abstract approach to consider how her paintings serve as blocks or units within a larger conceptual framework. For the online platform, Independent Features and Voices on Art have partnered to co-produce a podcast episode with the artist.

Meghan Brady | Mrs. 
Mrs. located in Queens, is returning to Independent for a second year. The artist's introspective practice explores contradiction as a major theme, obscuring the boundary between painting and drawing to construct her own lexicon and method of communication. Moving to Midcoastal Maine has played a large part in expanding Brady’s practice, enabling her to experiment on wall-sized unstretched canvases, with expressive compositions and dynamic palettes. 

Jennifer J. Lee | Klaus von Nichtssagend Gallery 
For their presentation at Independent, Klaus von Nichtssagend Gallery will exhibit a series of small-scale, photo-realistic paintings by Brooklyn-based and Korean-American artist Jennifer J. Lee. This series of work depicts found photography from Internet iconography, including Internet forums and online shopping sites. By subverting the conventional gaze of appropriation and painting on thick jute burlap, Lee’s work offers a new take on the material and mechanical process of photography.

Peter Nadin & Maximilian Schubert | Off Paradise 
Off Paradise will present an intergenerational exhibition of works by the great Peter Nadin and Maximilian Schubert. This first ever dialectic includes a masterwork by Nadin in parallel to the emerging innovator of a new sculptural technique by Schubert. Both artists explore the subject of New York’s sky. Peter Nadin is best known for his early and imaginative conceptual practice and deliberately departing from the art establishment to farm in upstate New York, where he continues to paint. Maximilian Schubert’s debut at Off Paradise was critically praised and will return to Independent with new work that has yet to be exhibited. For the online platform Independent Features and Voices on Art have partnered to co-produce a podcast episode with artist Peter Nadin. 

Zoé Blue M. | PAGE (NYC) 
PAGE (NYC) will exhibit a series of new paintings by Los Angeles-based  Zoé Blue M. The artist is known for her figurative imagination, which depict metaphorical characters in complex narrative scenes. Emerging to tell stories of her early years in Los Angeles, Blue M. is an MFA candidate at UCLA.Themes such as California wildfires, “eccentric” fashion, and personal history play a central role in Blue’s style and concept.

William T. Wiley | Parker Gallery 
Parker Gallery will bring a historical series of large-scale paintings from the late artist, William T. Wiley (b. 1937, Bedford, IN - d. 2021, Kentfield, CA; lived and worked in San Francisco, CA) who passed away last year. Wiley played a key part in establishing the Bay Area Funk Movement in the early 1960s, which included artists such as Robert Arneson and Roy De Forest. Wiley’s important multi-media paintings from the 2000s showcase his extreme skill as a draftsman and his whimsical approach to depicting architectural landscapes. 

Paolo Salvador | Peres Projects
Peres Projects will present work for the first time by Paolo Salvador. Salvador’s practice draws upon mythological allegories and ancient iconographies from his Peruvian indigenous identity. The artist explores both contemporary Peru’s post-colonial implications, as well as its historical roots in the Incan Empire. By combining these macro and micro perspectives, Salvador is able to connect the universal experience of displacement with references to traditional and medicinal flora and fauna, with intimate autobiographical experiences through narrative imagery based on photographic self-portraits. Independent Features commissioned writer Francesca Gavin to co-produce an essay on the artist. 

Yuri Shimojo and Yu-Wen Wu | Praise Shadows** 
Praise Shadows will present a dual-artist feature with Yuri Shimojo and Yu-Wen Wu. Shimojo is Japanese and Wu is Taiwanese-American. Yuri Shimojo’s practice is informed by the tradition of Japanese performing arts and her samurai lineage, using traditional Japanese watercolor to create abstract black and red ink paintings that evoke the interconnected emotions of joy and pain. Yu-Wen Wu is an interdisciplinary artist whose work draws upon her immigration from Taipei to Boston at an early age. Known for her site-specific public art commissions, her practice explores themes of Asian American identity through issues of displacement, assimilation, and migration.

Renate Druks | The Ranch 
The Ranch will present historical work by Renate Druks (b. 1921, Vienna, Austria - d. 2007, California), who was born in Vienna and emigrated to California in the 1940s. During her time in Los Angeles, Druks studied at the Art Students League, spent time at the San Miguel de Allende art community  in San Miguel, Mexico, and hosted infamous thematic costume parties including “Come as Your Madness,” which inspired Kenneth Anger to make his cult film, Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome in 1954. She continued painting in Los Angeles until her death in 2007. A believer in the symbology of astrology and tarot, Druks’ cat portraits represent the divine feminine, the keeper of secrets, and her untamed spirit. This presentation at Independent follows her solo exhibition at The Ranch, her first in over 50 years. 

Bony Ramirez | REGULARNORMAL 
REGULARNORMAL will present work by Bony Ramirez, whose work draws upon the history and culture of the Dominican Republic, where he was born and raised. The artist adheres paper life-sized figure drawings onto painted wood panels, referencing the displacement of the Caribbean diaspora as a result of colonization. By both educating and challenging his audience, Ramirez’s practice offers a decolonized take on European portraiture, using Mannerist and Renaissance forms of composition to portray black and brown figures who were historically left out of this narrative.

Paddy Bedford | Ricco/Maresca Gallery 
Ricco/Maresca Gallery will present work by the self-taught Australian Indigenous artist, Paddy Bedford (b. 1922, Bedford Downs Station, Australia - d. July 14, 2007, Kununurra, Australia), marking his US debut. A national treasure, Bedford was both an artist and a Gija tribe lawman. Bedford’s paintings are part of his ceremonial practice. The paintings combine traditional motifs from his ancient belief system, memories of his parents’ country, and accounts of colonial takeover from the early 20th century. Although Bedford’s career spanned less than ten years, he was able to achieve critical and institutional acclaim and is now regarded as one of Australia’s most important artists. He had a retrospective at the MCA Sydney in 2007. For the online platform, Independent Features & Voices on Art have partnered to co-produce a podcast episode with Frank Maresca, gallery co-founder. Listen here.

TIDE | Ross+Kramer
For Ross+Kramer’s second presentation at Independent, the gallery will present work by Tokyo-based, Japanese artist Tatsuhiro Ide, or TIDE. The artist is known for his trademark character, a grumpy cartoon cat, which is influenced by Shigeru Mizuki's manga and monochromatic cartoon iconography from the 1920s. By juxtaposing childlike themes with sinister overtones, TIDE’s paintings interrogate the boundary between light and dark.

Alice Mackler | Kerry Schuss Gallery
Kerry Schuss Gallery will present new ceramic sculptures and paintings by Alice Mackler, her second exhibition at the fair since 2014. Mackler’s new body of work for Independent represents a dramatic growth in her conceptual approach to sculpture making, re-investigating the female form through large-scale ceramics. 

Altoon Sultan | Chris Sharp Gallery**
Chris Sharp Gallery will present a reinvestigation of works by the Vermont-based artist Altoon Sultan and her career, which started in New York in the late 1970s. The artist is known for a multimedia practice and the gallery will focus on her small-scale, egg tempera paintings on parchment stretched over wood, a 15th-century technique used to create illuminated manuscripts. Sultan draws much of her inspiration from art history, studying antiquated forms such as egg tempera and bas-relief for their use of material and color. Her presentation at Independent will focus on abstracted, decontextualized sites of rural Vermont. For the online platform Independent Features, we commissioned writer Francesca Gavin to co-produce an essay on the artist. Read it here.

Gina Fischli & Tenant of Culture | Soft Opening
For their presentation at Independent, Soft Opening will present a duo-exhibition with London-based artists Gina Fischli and Tenant of Culture. Both artists work with sculpture and approach the medium by starting with everyday, familiar elements and subverting their traditional modes of production. For Fischli, her practice draws upon classic Modernist design, most recently through a reinterpretation of Josef Albers’ square paintings, and explores their allure as a consumable object. Similarly, Tenant of Culture explores themes of material culture through her background in garment design, reconstructing wearable objects at various stages of the garment cycle to question the materialist overproduction of capitalism.

Walter Pfeiffer & Celia Hempton | Sultana
Sultana will present an intergenerational dialog for their Independent debut with legendary Switzerland-based artist Walter Pfeiffer and Celia Hempton, a rising artist living and working in London. Although from different generations and geographical locations, both Pfeiffer and Hempton draw upon the same subject matter: the sexualized body. Pfeiffer, a pioneering photographer during the 1970s queer underground scene, captures the male body through an editorialized lens, drawing upon an editorial style reminiscent of fashion magazine spreads with pops of bright, fluorescent colors. Hempton offers a new take on the “female gaze,” confronting the male phallus through her intimate, yet matter-of-fact approach to painting. Pfeiffer’s presentation at Independent will overlap with his first institutional solo exhibition in the US at the Swiss Institute, New York (May – Aug 2022). 

Katja Novitskova & Kris Lemsalu | Temnikova & Kasela**
Temnikova & Kasela will present the work of Berlin-based artist Katja Novitskova and Estonia-based artist Kris Lemsalu. Novitskova’s work engages with found imagery through digital collage, sculpture, and installation to explore the ecologies surrounding image production. Lemsalu formally studied ceramics, and now experiments with these traditional techniques to create installations of delicate porcelain sculptures cast as animals, humans, or objects of clothing with found natural materials including fur, leather, and wool.

Kohshin Finley | Tilton Gallery
Tilton Gallery will present Los Angeles based artist Koshin Finey’s new portraits for his debut at Independent. Finley states, “My paintings document the life of my friends and family, portraying them as figures fully present in their own stories, not ones created for them.” Drawing on the artist’s ties within his community, and painted with studied introspection, the subjects of the artist’s work show a quiet strength, dignity and resilience. 

Uman | Nicola Vassell
For their debut at Independent, Nicola Vassell will present the work of Somalian artist Uman. Uman was raised in Kenya and came to the United States in 2004, she first came to the art world's attention in a solo show at White Columns in 2015. The self-trained artist embodies a sense of displacement throughout her work, reflecting on the experience of being an immigrant in the US. Uman’s practice explores gender and cultural fluidity through paintings, drawing upon her experiences as a trans woman. For the online platform Independent Features, we commissioned writer Barry Schwabsky to co-produce an essay on the artist. 

Jojo Gronostay & Birgit Jürgenssen | Galerie Hubert Winter**
For their presentation at Independent, Galerie Hubert Winter will show an intergenerational duo with Vienna-based artists, Jojo Gronostay and Birgit Jürgenssen (b. 1949, Vienna, Austria; d. 2003).  Jürgenssen, a leading pioneer of the feminist avant-garde in Vienna, is best known for her photographic portraits of the female form and its transformation. Gronostay, a German artist with Ghanaian roots, studies the relationship between Europe and Africa through his conceptual photographs and sculptures. Gronostay studied at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna from 2015-2020, in the same master class that Jürgenssen established in 1982 and helped develop for over twenty years. For the online platform Independent Features, we commissioned writer John Chiaverina to co-produce an essay on the presentation. Set to be published later this month.

**Indicated first time exhibitors.

VIP Preview Day
Thursday, May 5th, 11AM-8PM

Public Fair Days
Friday, May 6th, 12-7PM
Saturday, May 7, 12-7PM
Sunday, May 8th, 112-6PM

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Supported by: CROZIER