“The artist sees things that we don’t, or to which we pay little or no notice, hurried along as we tend to be. They imagine and re-imagine the here and now to amplify and extend its contours, strata, and topography. They take us to another plane, a higher altitude, offering a more expansive view, as well as ask us to consider what might lie below the surface of the everyday, and to explore the unconscious. (As the photographer William Eggleston memorably declared, “I am at war with the obvious.”) Artists also bring things into being that weren’t here before, or were, but which they transform in unexpected ways, animating perception. They bring the world into the world. The Sky Was the Ocean That Day. Why not every day?”

—excerpt from exhibition text.

pictured above: Colin Brant, Something I Saw, 2007, oil on canvas, 24” x 26” (work not included in the exhibition.)

Colin Brant (Arcata, CA, 1965) is a painter whose main interest is in “the energies of the earth, glowing things, things that are real, primordial and alive.” Based in Bennington, Vermont, his most recent exhibitions include Dutton Gallery, New York; Platform Project Space, Brooklyn; Galleria Richter, Rome, Italy; and he participated in Arcadia and Elsewhere at James Cohan Gallery, New York, all 2023.

Anna Conway (Durango, Co, 1973) is a New York-based painter of narratives both utterly real and utterly fantastic, imagined with great attention to detail. She was included in Planet B: Climate Change and the New Sublime, a collateral exhibition of the 2022 Venice Biennale. In June she will present a single painting, The Whale, as a project at the Maramotti Collection in Reggio Emilia, Italy, and in September she takes part in the 15th Gwangju Biennale in Korea.

Adam Helms  (Tucson, AZ, 1974) works in various media, particularly drawing, as well as printmaking, silkscreen, collage, and installation, to explore social and political conflict, reflecting on how the past haunts the present. His work was featured in a two-person exhibition, alongside Bruce Conner, at Halsey Mackay Gallery in East Hampton, NY in 2022.

Buzz Osborne (Morton, WA, 1964) is the founder of the highly influential band, The Melvins, who recently marked their 40th anniversary. An inveterate photographer, particularly when he’s on tour, he has a keen eye for the oddity to be found in everyday life. A book of his photos, Rats, was published in 2022. He lives and works between Los Angeles and Tucson. 

Jason Saager (Mesa, AZ, 1982) is a painter who finds inspiration in everything from Italian Renaissance art and Chinese landscape painting, to the terrain of the American Southwest and the avant iconoclasm of Don Van Vliet. He refers to his re-orientation and disorientation of conventional pictorial space as “broken space-time.” His recent exhibitions include Galerie Nathalie Obadia, Paris, 2023, and Rodolphe Janssen, Brussels, 2022.

Bob Nickas (Paterson, NJ, 1957) is a writer and curator based in New York. He has organized over 120 exhibitions since 1984. He served as a curatorial advisor at MoMA/PS1 between 2004 and 2007 and on the teams for the 2003 Biennale de Lyon and Greater New York 2005 at MoMA/PS1. He was founding editor of Index magazine. His books include Painting Abstraction: New Elements in Abstract Painting and four collections of writing and interviews.