Venus Over Manhattan

(New York, NY) – Venus Over Manhattan is pleased to announce Reflections on Porgy & Bess, a major solo exhibition of new paintings by Chicago-born, New York-based artist Claude Lawrence. Spanning the gallery’s spaces at 39 and 55 Great Jones Street, this presentation—Lawrence’s first with Venus—debuts a suite of exuberant, monumentally scaled canvases created in response to composer George Gershwin’s 1935 masterpiece Porgy & Bess. Lawrence’s abstract paintings unfold sequentially, echoing the opera’s sweep and emotional impact through the artist’s radiant abstraction and confident improvisation. Born in 1944, Lawrence has spent many decades as a jazz saxophonist, painting throughout but shifting his primary focus in recent years to the visual arts. The exhibition at Venus, bridging his dual passions for music and painting, will be his first in New York City in a decade. On view through May 4, Reflections on Porgy & Bess will be accompanied by a catalogue. On April 10th, the gallery will host a jazz performance and book signing with the artist. Raised in one of the world’s great jazz capitals, Claude Lawrence found an early calling in music, attending a vocational school and falling in with a circle of Black musicians and visual artists. For many years, he toured the USA as part of a jazz trio, bouncing most frequently between NYC and Chicago. In the 1980s, he began to pursue painting with an energy that reflected his musical ambitions. For Lawrence, there is an innate and powerful union between the visual and aural worlds, and today, at the age of 80, he continues to play the saxophone while painting full time. Music informs the essential intention and execution of his work. As a Black abstract artist, Lawrence belongs to a lineage that includes Norman Lewis, Jack Whitten, and Peter Bradley, among many others. He knew many of these artists personally, as they ran in similar circles in Chicago and New York. But as his own practice evolved, so did the distinctiveness of Lawrence’s individual style: strategies familiar from improvisational jazz, particularly the free-associative thought and confident, intuitive strokes of gesture and tone, led him to huge sweeping marks, saturated and alive, that refuse to be easily defined. His consistently unexpected yet masterful decisions about color and gesture are both a testament to the impact of jazz on his way of perceiving and creating, and also reflect a freedom rarely seen in painters with such an identifiable style. Lawrence is an artist that is of his time, who also operates free from its constraints. Like many Black artists, Lawrence faced pressure to make art that explicitly depicted racial issues and foregrounded stories of inequity. But in a quietly defiant way, he joined fellow abstractionists in choosing to instead to create art that felt authentic to their instincts and priorities, modeling the type of freedom of expression and autonomy that contemporary civil rights movements sought to achieve. Furthermore, Lawrence has consistently pushed back against the notion that abstraction isn’t political: “Many jazz artists supported social issues by playing for huge crowds and raising money for the Civil Rights Movement. The music did not have to be ‘about’ the issues of civil rights. Music could be in the service of these issues and I believe the same of art.” Thirty years ago, Lawrence left the bustle of city life behind to settle in Sag Harbor, New York. Nestled at the eastern end of Long Island, Sag Harbor has long been a significant destination and cultural landmark for Black artists and patrons. This 19th century whaling village became a summer haven for Black doctors, lawyers, and businessmen in the 1920s and 30s. As its Black community expanded, Sag Harbor welcomed poets, authors, and painters, hosting such luminaries as Langston Hughes, Duke Ellington, and Al Loving. The village became known nationally as an epicenter of Black art and creativity, aligning with the larger creative context of Long Island’s Hamptons communities, where Jackson Pollock, Lee Krasner, Willem de Kooning, and Mark Rothko, among many others, lived and worked. In Lawrence’s latest paintings, made in his Long Island studio, the artist undertakes a dialogue with the 1935 Gershwin opera Porgy & Bess, which tells the story of a fishing community in the port city of Charleston, South Carolina, and the lives of its inhabitants. Porgy is a disabled beggar who falls in love with Bess, a beautiful woman in a troubling relationship with her violent and possessive lover. Gershwin’s masterwork combines opera, jazz, choir, and spirituals in what finally amounts to a luminous tribute to quintessentially Black American musical forms. Naomi Andre, a scholar who writes on Black opera, acknowledges that “practically nowhere else in the operatic repertory (before or since) do we have the chance to see so many Black people onstage—and in the audience.” Though written by a white Jewish composer, Porgy & Bess holds special significance in the history of integration and expansion of opportunity for Black artists. First performed in 1935, Porgy & Bess featured a classically trained, entirely Black cast. Anne Brown, the actress playing the role of Bess, was the first Black vocalist admitted to The Julliard School. When the production’s tour reached Washington DC in 1936, the cast protested segregation at the National Theater, leading to that institution’s first integrated audience for a performance. While the popularity of Porgy & Bess has fluctuated over time, it claims the undeniable legacy of having helped mobilize integration in theater and presenting a story of Southern Black life on a truly national scale for the first time. Through the vividness of its central figures’ struggles and through its defining characteristic of mingling and collaging of musical forms, Porgy & Bess remains powerfully relevant today. As Lawrence has said, “There are two ways of seeing the world. From the outside in, and from the inside out. These are my people, I know them.” For the new paintings on view at Venus, Lawrence has pulled inspiration from the sounds, themes, and characters of the opera, unifying psychological and expressive forces. Just as Gershwin has deployed musical motifs, Lawrence unites his compositions through repeated visual strategies that include layering and juxtaposing specific colors and duplicating energetic geometric shapes. Overture, which features a frenetic mix of bold primary colors and interlocking shapes, lays out the thematic and visual through-lines of the exhibition. This canvas establishes a tension between rich patches of color laid down in counterpoint to quick and lively strokes of black­—a visual strategy that repeats through the entire body of work on view. Numerous works in the exhibition take their titles directly from the songs or lyrics of Porgy & Bess, including The Stories You’re Liable to Read in the Bible, Gone, Rise Up, and most notably Summertime. The song Summertime is the most acclaimed and widely familiar number from Gershwin’s production, one that has been covered by such legendary Black performers as Ella Fitzgerald and Nina Simone, and that occupies a permanent place among standards in the American songbook. By composing his own renditions of these classic songs at the intersection of paint and gesture, Lawrence contributes to the opera’s history of re-interpretation and recontextualization, carrying it into the 21st century for a new audience to interpret.

(New York, NY) – Venus Over Manhattan is pleased to present Pole Position, a solo exhibition of new paintings by artist Michael Kagan. Pole Position debuts Kagan’s exhilarating Formula One portraits, a series which features racecar drivers and their machines. This work represents a significant shift for Kagan, diverging from the depictions of astronauts, spacecrafts, cockpits, and mountaintops which first brought him acclaim. The title, Pole Position, refers to the lead car on the starting grid, as determined by the fastest driver during qualifying races. Opening February 15, Pole Position will be on view at 55 Great Jones Street through March 9, 2024. For a long time, the international world of F1 racing did not appeal to American audiences. They preferred motorsport events such as NASCAR and IMSA which are strictly domestic. In 2019, however, the release of the hit Netflix series Drive to Survive turned F1 racing into an American pop cultural hot spot. The television show explored the private lives and icy cool demeanors of F1 drivers, and audiences found their dauntless personalities magnetic. Now, alongside the major races in Abu Dhabi, Baku, and Istanbul, there are two new tracks in Miami and Las Vegas. Reflecting on this burst of attention, Michael Kagan found inspiration in the racing giants and produced a set of heroic portraits, immortalizing these men into unforgettable and iconic imagery. He engages the spectacle of rapid celebrity, and his work interrogates the capricious nature of such fame. How, for example, could a sport have gained so much traction in the USA when there wasn’t a single American driver? What does it mean for media giants like Netflix to hold so much power over public taste? Kagan’s carefully rendered portraits—stylized with geometric brushstrokes and a mechanically cool palette—capture seven of the all-time greatest drivers: Lewis Hamilton (UK), Max Verstappen (NL), Fernando Alonso (ES), Sergio Pérez (MX), Charles Leclerc (MC), Kimi Räikkönen (FI), and Sebastian Vettel (DE); each work titled after the drivers’ respective nickname (Mad Max for Verstappen, Billion Dollar Man for Hamilton). Kagan immortalizes these men at the peak of their celebrity, aligning himself with artists such as LeRoy Neiman, Paul Pfeiffer, Jonas Wood, Peter Doig, and Andy Warhol. Pfeiffer’s recent MOCA retrospective centers on huge photographs of courts and stadiums; Wood’s early career found obsession with basketball players and basketballs; Doig paints vast atmospheric tennis courts; and Warhol produced the famed series “The Athletes.” To enter Kagan’s exhibition is to be suddenly ensconced in the complex, and sometimes fiery, dynamics of F1 racing and rivalry. Hamilton’s portrait sits mere feet from that of Alonso, his first racing partner and tense rival. Not far from that is the painting of Verstappen, whose title-breaking win in 2021 shattered Hamilton’s previously held record. As an exceptionally specialized sport with only 20 drivers competing in 2023, Kagan is able to capture the scope of key players. The paintings dialogue across the space, reminding viewers of the charged and close-knit relationships between the drivers. In all seven of Kagan’s portraits, not one driver has their face showing; their visors are uniformly lowered. Instead, Kagan captures their identities through the branding, colors, and logos of their helmets. In the portrait of Hamilton, the distinctive “PETRONAS” logo stretches across the top of his visor—cut by shards of painted color. In the painting of Räikkönen, bright flashes of red, yellow, and blue triangulate to form the iconic patterns of his gear. In another, the abstracted growling tiger and Red Bull logo are clear insignias of Max Verstappen. Kagan’s emphasis on the helmet is a reminder of the intense physical conditions that drivers endure, much like an astronauts need for his suit. F1 engineers borrow technology from aviation, producing vehicles which—if they only had wings—accelerate fast enough to fly. Not only are Kagan’s paintings a reminder of the technological brilliance behind racing but they are reminders of the immediate obsolescence that follows such rapid advancement. The second that a racecar crosses a finish line, its technology becomes obsolete. Kagan’s subjects—space travel, racecars, aviation—are all fields which are constantly outdating themselves. In terms of both technology and celebrity, Kagan depicts a moment of glory before an eternity of nostalgia. Kagan’s technical prowess as a painter serves to augment the dynamism and high-octane nature of his subjects. He captures his images with rich, decisive, brushstrokes, maintaining an awareness of the paint while simultaneously creating the illusion of life. His paintings buzz with electric energy, evoking the adrenaline and emotion of a race. Pole Position speaks to a shift in cultural attention which is today enraptured by F1 racing, as it has previously been enthralled by the Space Race, the climb to the seven summits, and other valorous feats of mankind. Art has a legacy of reference to sport and spectacle that goes back as far as 450 BC, when Myron sculpted “Discobolus,” an embodiment of the Greek veneration of the heroic human form. Kagan’s portraits recall the sculptures of Ancient Greek Olympians, with discs and javelins swapped out for expertly crafted machines. Michael Kagan captures a seductive and adrenaline-fueled elixir of hypermasculinity, speed, and danger. His paintings are as dangerously captivating as the sport they immortalize. ABOUT MICHAEL KAGAN Michael Kagan (b. 1980, Virginia Beach) lives and works in Brooklyn, NY. He holds a BA from George Washington University and an MFA from the New York Academy of Art, where he completed an additional postgraduate fellowship in 2006. Kagan’s work has been the subject of a great number of solo shows, including Moonwalkers at Almine Rech in Paris, France, and I Was There When It Happened at the Virginia Museum of Contemporary Art in Virginia Beach, VA. His work is held in many public collections, including Maki Collection in Tokyo, Japan; Hall Collection in Reading, VT, USA; Gemini Trust Company in New York, NY, USA; Founders Fund in San Francisco, CA, USA; and the Maezawa Collection, Chiba, Japan, among others. He has worked on a number of successful commercial projects, including a collaboration with Pharrell Williams, and an award-winning album cover for White Lies’ album Big TV.

(New York, NY) – Venus Over Manhattan is pleased to present A Boy’s Head, an exhibition of new paintings by Seth Becker. The presentation marks the artist’s debut solo exhibition in New York City, and the gallery’s inaugural solo presentation of his work. Borrowing its title from a poem by Miroslav Holub, A Boy's Head follows Becker’s participation in the gallery’s 2022 exhibition Small Paintings. Venus Over Manhattan will publish a small catalogue in conjunction with the exhibition, which will be on view from February 1st through March 9th at 39 Great Jones Street. Miroslav Holub’s poem catalogues a rich collection of images in a young mind and extols the sense of wonder that their diversity evokes. Echoing this feeling, Seth Becker’s exhibition assembles some twenty-five paintings that feature a similarly broad range of subjects, with figures, animals, and landscapes depicted in both real and imagined contexts. The variety of his subjects reflects the diversity of his creative approaches, which include transforming existing imagery, engaging in traditional observation, and conjuring wholly imagined situations. In their willingness to pursue an unrestrained imagination, Becker’s works mount a quiet argument on behalf of wonder. This point is quietly echoed in The Horse that Spells, which depicts a horse named “Lady Wonder,” famous for her purported psychic abilities and capacity to communicate. Becker’s paintings work to recapture the sense of mystery and joy found in the exploration of the strange and inexplicable, embodying the delight of encountering the strange, the old, and the unknown. The exhibition also includes several works that address the same subject in different scenarios. For instance, Antoine’s Tiger is one of two works that depict a tiger, and two paintings feature images of Batman. Other works are linked by recurring motifs, as seen in a set of three paintings that initially appear unconnected. In Acrobat, a figure clad in a Tiffany blue dress contorts herself into an enchanting pose, spot lit as if for a performance. This figure reappears in The Acrobat Reveals Her Birthmark in the Shape of a Rabbit, where a view of her back reveals a unique birthmark in the shape of a leaping hare. Becker reintroduces this image in Weathervane, a stormy landscape featuring a barn topped by a weathervane in the shape of the same leaping hare. These repeated images foster a sense of connection between otherwise unrelated images, transforming seemingly autonomous works into key elements of a cohesive and richly imagined world. Becker’s paintings engage with various forms of image making. An avid collector of “real photo postcards”—a type of vintage postcard that reproduces vernacular and often unexpected snapshot photography on postcard stock—Becker’s collecting habits often bleed into his painting practice, and these images occasionally provide the architecture for his compositions. In some instances, Becker directly references works by other artists, as in Watteau’s Skull, where the main figure echoes the odalisque from Jean-Antoine Watteau’s Reclining Figure (c. 1713-1717), a small painting held by the Norton Simon Museum in Pasadena. More frequently, Becker explores the theme of artistic production by depicting artists at work. Painting by Moonlight portrays an artist painting a model under the eerie light of the moon, while Poet at Work shows a poet at his typewriter, apparently unaware of the fox standing nearby, jaws agape. Both works reinterpret the genre of the “studio painting,” transforming the site of creative production into a realm where the boundary between reality and imagination no longer obtains. These otherworldly settings cast the artist as a creator of worlds, wherein a poet may conjure a fox into his study, or the moonlight might illuminate a painter’s subject. Taken together, Becker’s paintings fuse reality and fantasy to evoke a feeling of youthful enchantment, where the boundary between the real and the imagined is fluid and permeable. ABOUT THE ARTIST Seth Becker was born in 1987 in New York. He received his BFA from Marymount Manhattan College, his BFA from the New York Studio School, and his MLS from Queens College. His work has been the subject of solo exhibitions at numerous galleries, including recent presentations at Pamela Salisbury Gallery, Hudson, and Castle Gallery, Los Angeles. Becker’s work frequently features in group exhibitions both stateside and abroad, including recent presentations at Lévy, Gorvy, Dayan, Rohatyn; Helena Anrather, New York; Cob Gallery, London, Sibyl Gallery, New Orleans; Pamela Salisbury Gallery, Hudson; Venus Over Manhattan, New York; Sykes Gallery, Millersville University; and the Susquehanna Art Museum, Harrisburg. Becker lives and works in Wappingers Falls, New York.

New York, NY) – Beginning Friday, November 17th, Venus Over Manhattan will present the first solo exhibition in the United States of work by Japanese artist Yuichiro Ukai, organized in collaboration with the Kyoto gallerist Yukiko Koide of Yukiko Koide Presents. This presentation of 14 new works by the artist marks Ukai’s first solo exhibition with the gallery, and follows a recent acquisition of his work by the American Folk Art Museum in New York. A catalogue, featuring a new text by Kenjiro Hosaka, Director of the Shiga Museum of Art, will accompany the exhibition. The presentation will be on view at the gallery’s 39 Great Jones Street location through January 13, 2024. Yuichiro Ukai is a celebrated self-taught artist, who lives and works in the Shiga prefecture of Japan. Following his graduation from high school in 2014, Ukai became a member of the distinguished Atelier Yamanami. Yamanami functions as a live-work facility that offers employment, training, and arts enrichment programs for individuals with neurodiversity or disabilities. Yamanami has provided the ideal environment and support required for Ukai’s art practice to flourish. Ukai’s compositions teem with activity. His unique visual language evokes both traditions of rather contemporary subculture such as manga and anime, and of the Japanese epic. Drawn on sequential sheets of brown paper, the incredibly dense images are built from memory to create a visual assemblage of seemingly eclectic characters. The artist incorporates a broad array of forms and figures from popular Japanese culture (samurai, yokai-monsters, Pokémon, and skeletons), but also includes his encyclopedic explorations of insects, dinosaurs, and popular icons into each frame. These phantasmagoric drawings are done in a sequential series, but executed with what seems to be complete improvisation. The result is an impossibly rich and almost cartographic landscape of a world that pulled from Ukai’s imaginative references. Melding traditional allusions—to the idiom of Ukiyo-e prints, Japanese mythology, and folklore—with more modern emblems allows these works to poetically engage Japanese Art historical and cultural references while simultaneously situating themselves in the present. Japanese subculture and epics, two influences heavily present in Ukai’s work, are both integral parts of Japan’s literary and visual arts heritage. The heightened sense of drama, expansiveness of scope and rich complexity present in Ukai’s drawings are very evocative of Japanese epics, which often take the form of long narrative poems or prose works that depict heroic tales, historical events, or legendary figures. Correspondingly, manga, which can trace its roots to traditional Japanese art forms like ukiyo-e woodblock prints, is a sequential art, characterized by its distinctive visual style and narrative structure – something echoed in the continuity preternaturally conjured by Ukai across his drawings.

(New York, NY) – Beginning November 16, 2023, Venus Over Manhattan will present "Retinal Hysteria," an expansive two-venue exhibition curated by Robert Storr, who was previously Senior Curator in the Department of Painting and Sculpture at the Museum of Modern Art, and Dean of the Yale University School of Art. Featuring works by more than forty artists, "Retinal Hysteria" draws its inspiration from "Eye Infection," the landmark 2001–2002 exhibition presented to critical acclaim by the Stedelijk Museum. Curated by Jan Christiaan Braun, "Eye Infection" achieved enduring international impact—and influence that continues today—via Storr’s accompanying catalogue essay, a tour de force that captured and advanced the maverick sensibility shared by the exhibition’s five artists: a small cadre of Americans united by their interest in the unsightly aspects of contemporary life, a challenge to establishment and avant-garde standards, a flair for blending meticulous facture with audacious vulgarity, and a distinct linguistic style frequently misread as mere jest or anti-intellectualism. Now, almost a quarter century later, Storr revisits these central concerns and expands upon them in the present tense by organizing a cross-generational array of works that irritate, provoke, and unsettle, all against the backdrop of a world he perceives as “coming apart at its seams.” At the heart of Retinal Hysteria are key works by artists from "Eye Infection"—R. Crumb, Jim Nutt, and Peter Saul—who are here joined by a host of others, including historical figures and contemporary artists ranging in age from 32 to 89, who share a vigorous dedication to what Storr terms “disorienting intensity.” Most works on view have never been presented publicly, with the majority created expressly for this exhibition. Robert Storr on "Retinal Hysteria" “Hysteria,” as Wikipedia would have it, is “ungovernable emotional excess.” To his lasting shame the good doctor Sigmund Freud deemed it a predominantly feminine complaint in line with the theories of his mentor, Jean-Martin Charcot who documented—and staged—the paroxysms of passion that plagued his oversexed, underserviced female patients. Their spasms are illustrated by numerous, photos, drawings and prints that Charcot published, images that later inspired Louise Bourgeois, who was fascinated by the iconography of women in distress, to make still more hysterical renditions of their agony. But as even the Parisian madhouse clinician and the Viennese mental conjuror knew hysteria could afflict men as well as women, and the whole body as well as the womb whence it was originally thought to emanate. This show is devoted to how it affects vision. Indeed, to how the eye engenders it in traumatic conditions such as those we have been going through. Disorienting intensity has been the main criteria for selection instead of medium or manner. Stylistic affiliation has been of no concern to me whatsoever: Funk, Imagism, Underground Comix, you name it, are all just temporary labels for the expressive imperatives characteristic of "Retinal Hysteria." I have also played fast and loose with chronology since it is a recurring phenomena. We saw it aplenty in the 1960s and 1970s when the world appeared to be coming apart at the seams. The world is indubitably doing so again now. Whether crisis and chaos prompt hysteria in artists, or whether it is more a matter of how they trigger audience reception within the general public is a question for professors. I am interested in experience – at its height. So welcome to rooms full-to-overflowing with images that vibrate with panic, uncontrollable anger, out-of-control laughter, orgasmic release and the sheer vertigo of living in a state of hypersensitivity to the disparate stimuli of, quoting one of "Retinal Hysteria’s" modern masters, H.C. Westermann, “a world gone nuts!” – Robert Storr, Brooklyn, June 2023

(New York, NY) – Venus Over Manhattan is pleased to present Cloisters and Oysters, an exhibition of new paintings and works on paper by Sophie Larrimore. The presentation will be on view at 55 Great Jones Street, from October 18th to November 11th, 2023. This is Larrimore’s first solo presentation with the gallery. Sophie Larrimore’s meticulously crafted paintings consistently feature statuesque human and canine figures, set against intricately patterned landscapes. Her compositions evoke the richness of mosaics and tapestries, and frequently incorporate motifs that engage a diverse range of visual references, including medieval illuminated manuscripts and 18th-century American needlework. A remarkable attention to detail is central to her practice, evident in the textured elements of her compositions, from pebbled pathways to delicately cross-hatched trees and plants. Her distinctive approach to materials—Larrimore works directly with acrylic directly on raw linen—results in forms that possess a fossilized quality, seemingly embedded in the very fibers of the canvas. Larrimore’s work is characterized by a profound emphasis on the rhythm and repetition of forms. Her paintings frequently feature recurring motifs, including human and poodle-like elements, alongside bushes, trees, and waterways. These characters, whether arranged in groups or isolated as singular elements, are typified by a deliberate economy of design. For instance, a singular curve elegantly links her figures’ semicircular eyebrows to their noses, recalling the visual simplicity of hieroglyphics or bas-reliefs. Similarly, Larrimore’s renderings of dogs, marked by a uniformity of texture, attain the elegant simplicity of symbols. In Damp Fold, the repetition of a bright pink circle denoting the end of a felled tree suggests a compelling pattern weaving throughout the composition. Each of these motifs serves as a vehicle for exploring pattern, form, scale, and color. The works on view adhere to rigid compositional structures, some prominently centered around geometric shapes such as semicircles, crosses, or quadrants reminiscent of a flag. Eschewing linear perspective, these paintings embrace a vertical perspective reminiscent of ancient frescoes, wall paintings, miniature painting, and pre-Renaissance iconography. Depth within her works is conveyed through the clever overlap of forms, a technique that recalls axonometric rendering, where one can see both above and below a surface simultaneously. In a manner reminiscent of the pre-Renaissance painters, who meticulously adorned their devotional works with elaborate frames to enhance their sense of sanctity, Larrimore sets her paintings within substantial, handcrafted frames. In this exhibition, each painting is housed in a custom wood frame that evokes the distinctive style of Tramp Art. Larrimore’s frames serve a dual purpose, lending the works a reverential quality, while also complicating a secular relationship to the veneration of objects. Certain works in the exhibition engage references to specific historical paintings: 20 Hours recasts Henri Matisse’s The Rose Marble Table (1917)—which itself recalls The Little Garden of Paradise, a medieval work by an Upper Rhenish Master—held in the collection of The Museum of Modern Art. Matisse’s painting features an eight-sided rose marble gueridon table from his garden in Issy-les-Moulineaux, characterized by its soft pink hue and a mottled surface. Larrimore’s painting reduces the table’s shape to six sides and reimagines its mottled design with a terrazzo texture, peppered with stone and oyster shell elements. The tabletop reappears in another painting in the exhibition, 287 Bushes, 9 Trees, where the familiar pink form emerges in miniature among the foliage. In this referentiality, Larrimore hints at a cohesive universe, suggesting that each painting participates in a singular, expansive world of her own construction. Larrimore’s scenes telegraph a warm and inviting environment, characterized by their vibrant, brightly colored figures, playful dogs, and lush flora. However, a subtle disquiet emerges upon closer inspection. Many of the trees are leafless or felled, and what may initially seem like a relaxed female figure reveals an eerie state of petrification. The works resist placement within a specific time or place: the enviroments evoke an almost prelapsarian landscape, while the lurid palette and ambiguous forms suggest a post-atomic terrain. Taken together, these elements hint at a looming apocalyptic backdrop, suggesting a world grappling with the unsettling specter of profound change. The exhibition will also feature a series of line drawings on tinted paper. These drawings relate in structure and motif to her paintings but the delicate nature of the line work allows for additional exploration of complex compositions. ABOUT SOPHIE LARRIMORE Sophie Larrimore was born in 1980 in Annapolis, Maryland. She holds a BFA in painting and printmaking from the Cooper Union, New York. Larrimore’s work has been the subject of several solo and two-person presentations, including exhibitions at Kate Werble Gallery, New York; Situations, New York; The Pit, Los Angeles. Her work has also featured frequently in group exhibitions, including recent presentations at Venus Over Manhattan, New York; Harper’s, East Hampton and Jack Hanley Gallery, New York. Larrimore lives and works in Brooklyn, New York.

(New York, NY) – Venus Over Manhattan is pleased to present The Motherland, an exhibition of new paintings by New-York-based Japanese artist Susumu Kamijo. This exhibition marks Kamijo’s first solo exhibition with the gallery since announcing representation of the artist earlier this year, and will be on view at 39 Great Jones Street from October 18th to November 11th, 2023. Comprising a series of twelve brilliantly hued and deftly balanced paintings, this exhibition continues to expand upon Kamijo’s menagerie of animal figures—canines, birds, a lamb—as vehicles for his penetrating investigation of form, color, pattern, and texture. These highly considered compositions are rendered in oil paint, flashe vinyl paint, and pastel, lending the surfaces nuance and vividness in both finish and color. Kamijo’s exploration of patterning soars in the flora populating these works. The flowers and trees serve as armatures for his mark making, at turns redolent of dahlias, other times using a looser, more gestural hand that evokes languid palm fronds. All Kamijo’s scenes are set against strips of color indicating a legible horizon, each dotted with a hovering circular sun. Sometimes there is a gentle mountain range, body of water, spate of trees, or swath of land echoing the horizon line. The faces of his canine figures are tight composites of geometric fervor offset by the generous shapes of solid, saturated color that constitute their bodies. Each canvas decidedly situates its characters in relationship to one another, as well as to the elements of their environments, creating a sense of relationality and harmony throughout the series. The probing and utilization of geometry and proportion, through-lines in Kamijo’s practice, are realized here, brightly, and exuberantly, to the hilt. With these works, Kamijo’s poodle motifs meet environments constructed of similar graphic elements, functioning in concert with one another to conjure a fully realized world. ABOUT SUSUMU KAMIJO Susumu Kamijo (b. 1975, Nagano, Japan) He received a BFA from the University of Oregon in 2000, and an MFA from the University of Washington in 2002. Kamijo’s work has been the subject of numerous solo presentations both stateside and abroad, including recent exhibitions at Venus Over Manhattan, New York; Perrotin, Seoul; GNYP Gallery, Berlin; Harper’s, East Hampton; Marvins Gardens, Queens; and Stems Gallery, Brussels. His work frequently features in major group exhibitions, including recent presentations at Carl Kostyal, Stockholm; The Pit, Los Angeles; Alexander Berggruen Gallery, New York; Rod Barton, London; and Harper’s, East Hampton. Kamijo lives and works in Brooklyn, New York.

(New York, NY) – Venus Over Manhattan is pleased to present an exhibition of ten new paintings made by acclaimed artist Peter Saul over the course of 2022 and 2023. This major exhibition marks the 89-year-old artist’s first solo presentation of new work in New York since 2021, and his fifth solo exhibition with the gallery. The presentation will be on view at the gallery’s 39 Great Jones Street location, from Thursday, September 7, through Saturday, October 14.

(New York, NY) – Opening this September, Venus Over Manhattan is pleased to announce concurrent presentations featuring historical Vanuatu figures from the Ambrym and Banks Islands and gouaches by Alexander Calder. These exhibitions will be on view at Independent 20th Century, hosted at the historic Battery Maritime Building at Cipriani South Street from September 7th through 10th, and at Venus Over Manhattan’s gallery space at 55 Great Jones Street, on view from September 5th through October 7th, 2023. Marking the gallery’s second participation at Independent 20th century, the presentations reprise the gallery’s 2019 exhibition that staged Vanuatu figures alongside Alexander Calder’s Crags.

(New York, NY) – Venus Over Manhattan is delighted to present This Too Shall Pass, a group exhibition curated by Racquel Chevremont. Taking its title from a time-honored adage, the presentation explores concepts of impermanence, transience, personal memory, and ongoing change. Assembling work in diverse media by both young and established artists, the exhibition gathers painting, drawing, and sculpture by eleven artists who incorporate figurative and abstract representations of flowers in their work. Carefully selected for their explorations of multi-layered themes surrounding floral imagery, the works on view feature flowers and botanical elements to convey the essence of impermanence and embody the strength that lies within their fragility. “This Too Shall Pass” will be on view at 55 Great Jones Street from July 11 through August 4, 2023.

(New York, NY) – Beginning Tuesday, June 27, Venus Over Manhattan is pleased to present Sally Saul: People and Vases, an exhibition of new work by the Hudson Valley based artist. Comprising a selection of exuberant ceramics imbued with the artist’s signature blend of whimsy and sensitivity, this show marks Saul’s first exhibition with the gallery since it announced representation of the artist in 2022. These ceramic sculptures—vessels, human figures, flora, and fauna—illustrate the continued development of Saul’s singular, decades-long ceramic practice. Presently Saul’s work can be seen on view in “Funk You Too! Humor and Irreverence in Ceramic Sculpture” at the Museum of Arts and Design in New York as well as highlighted in two recent books, Clay Pop, published by Rizzoli this March and Funk You Too! the catalog published by MAD in conjunction with the museum’s exhibition. Sally Saul: People and Vases will be on view at 39 Great Jones Street from June 17 through Friday, August 4, 2023.

(New York, NY) – Venus Over Manhattan is pleased to present In My Room, an exhibition showcasing works on paper and board by Ana Benaroya, Tom of Finland, and Karl Wirsum. This presentation comprises a series of seventeen new drawings by Ana Benaroya, alongside six pieces by Karl Wirsum from 1966-67, and three by Tom of Finland from the 1970s and 1980s. "In My Room," the first exhibition to focus exclusively on Benaroya’s works on paper and to consider them in conversation with those of her forebears, explores questions of personal identity, queerness, and alternative art histories. The exhibition, accompanied by a publication featuring a new text by Emile Mausner, will open on Thursday, June 8, and remain on view at 55 Great Jones Street through July 8, 2023.

Venus Over Manhattan is pleased to present Richard Mayhew: Natural Order, the inaugural presentation at its new gallery space at 39 Great Jones Street. This landmark exhibition, featuring some twenty paintings and works on paper, marks the gallery's debut exhibition with the artist, and features key loans from the collections of important supporters of Mayhew's practice. A catalogue will accompany the exhibition, and in September the Sonoma Valley Museum of Art will open a survey of Mayhew’s work, titled “Richard Mayhew: Inner Terrain.” Venus Over Manhattan’s exhibition, organized in collaboration with ACA Galleries, will be on view from May 6th through June 24th, 2023.

(New York, NY) – Venus Over Manhattan is pleased to present Dustin Yellin: Cave Painting, a solo exhibition of new work by the New York-based artist Dustin Yellin which explores the interconnectivity of the natural world, humans, and our advancing technological landscape. Comprising a series of new paintings, Cave Painting represents an important shift to painting for the artist whose practice in recent years has focused most notably on sculpture. An illustrated catalogue, published by the gallery, will be released in conjunction with the exhibition. The exhibition opens on April 30, 2023 at 55 Great Jones Street, and runs through May 31st.

Beginning March 16, Venus Over Manhattan will present Cornelius Annor: A Fabric of Time & Family, an exhibition of new paintings by the Accra-based artist whose vibrant canvases offer glimpses of Ghanaian life through figures in states of gathering, leisure, and repose. In the series of fifteen works on view, Annor depicts scenes culled from photo albums, archives, recollections, and imaginings—a group of paintings that radiate kinship and hearken to both classical art historical paradigms and the unique aesthetics of modern African portraiture.

Anastasia Bay (b. 1988, France) lives and works in Brussels, Belgium. She holds a BA from Ecole Nationale des Beaux-Arts de Paris which she earned in 2012 after studying under François Boisrond. Bay’s work has been featured in numerous presentations including shows at Galerie Derouillon, Paris; Anna Zorina Gallery, New York; Sorry We’re Closed, Brussels; White House Gallery, Lovenjoel; and Spurs Gallery, Beijing among others. Her work can be found in the permanent collections of many public institutions, including the Fondation Lafayette Anticipations, Paris; the Institute of Contemporary Art, Miami; X Museum, Beijing and the Zuzeum Museum, Riga.

(New York, NY) – Beginning October 13th, Venus Over Manhattan will present Emanuel Proweller: Surface Sensible the first US exhibition since 1963 to showcase the work of the Polish-French artist and his pioneering approach to figuration. This landmark presentation, organized in close collaboration with the artist’s daughter, Élisabeth Brami-Proweller, comprises more than twenty works spanning the artist’s nearly six-decade career. Emanuel Proweller: Surface Sensible will be on view at Venus Over Manhattan’s uptown location at 120 East 65th Street from October 13th through November 12th, 2022.

Keiichi Tanaami: Manhattan Universe September 8 – October 8, 2022 Opening: Thursday, September 8th, 6:00 - 8:00 pm Venus Over Manhattan 55 Great Jones Street New York, NY 10012 Revered in Japan as a leading figure of postwar art and progenitor of the Japanese Pop and Superflat movements, 86 year-old Keiichi Tanaami will unveil an optically dazzling suite of new large-scale paintings in his first exhibition with Venus Over Manhattan. Tanaami’s art is celebrated for its unbridled approach to form, intensity of color, and almost dizzying layers of canny cultural references ranging from ukiyo-e to Disney. This exhibition, the artist’s first in New York since 2016, will also present new animations alongside a dozen monumental canvases in a prelude to Tanaami’s forthcoming European museum survey in 2023/2024. For additional information about the exhibition, please contact the gallery at info@venusovermanhattan.com

Basil Kincaid: River, Frog, and Crescent Moon September 7 - October 8, 2022 Opening: Wednesday, September 7th, 6:00 - 8:00 pm Venus Over Manhattan

(New York, NY) – Venus Over Manhattan is pleased to present Swept Away, an exhibition of new works by Ana Benaroya. The presentation will inaugurate the gallery’s new downtown space, located at 55 Great Jones Street. The exhibition comprises seven paintings and seven works on paper that depict women’s bodies—the artist’s central theme—considered through their relationship to water. Swept Away is Ana Benaroya’s first solo exhibition with the gallery and will be on view from April 8th through May 21st. Image caption: Ana Benaroya, By the Ocean's Roar, 2022. Marker and India ink on archival Bristol board; 18 1/4 x 30 in (46.4 x 76.2 cm).

Venus Over Manhattan is pleased to present Foul Play, an exhibition of new paintings and works on paper by San Francisco-based artist Rachel Simon Marino. Comprising eight large-scale paintings and a smaller group of works on paper, the presentation grants entry to a set of imagined spaces, whose patterned walls and surreal scenarios suggest the interiors of an amusement park funhouse. The exhibition marks the artist’s debut solo presentation in New York and will be on view from March 10th through April 2nd.

Venus Over Manhattan and Michael Werner Gallery are pleased to announce a joint exhibition of new paintings and works on paper made by acclaimed artist by Peter Saul over the course of 2020 and 2021. Image: Peter Saul, "Bowl of Flowers with Insects," 2020