being human

Exhibition Dates: july 16 - august 10, 2024

Reception: thursday, july 18, 5PM - 8pm

closing Reception: saturday, August 10, 4PM - 6pm

The Painting Center is pleased to present Being Human curated by Alix Bailey, Kathleen Beausoleil and Perri Neri. The exhibition celebrates the complexities of the human experience – an experience that ignites the artist to explore and reflect on the many layers of humanness such as identity, memory, and connection. The exhibition will be on view from July 16 - August 10, 2024, and will be featured on Artsy with a catalogue of the artists’ works. 

What does an artist experience that distinguishes one moment from the others that brings into focus a special “moment of being’ that must be remembered and turned into art? This exhibition invites a multiplicity of artistic styles, from the controlled classical figure to the visceral fevered brushwork of abstraction, to the whittling of something down to its very essence, asking – what it means to be human.

Artists have been asked, do you lean into the contours and repetitive rhythms of daily life as a catalyst for new forms? Do you explore your subject matter through a documentary style or a narrative lens? Does your visual vocabulary throw viewers into spaces roiling with the complications of “being” as shapes and colors that struggle to co-exist? This exhibition’s title turns on its verb and considers how the collective voices of artists’ histories, experiences, traumas, and triumphs present the layered and complex act of Being Human. 

The exhibition aims to showcase a diversity of artistic styles as rich as the human experience. The curators have asked artists to call to mind a collection where a Kandinsky piece might sit alongside a work by Jenny Saville, or Alice Neel in conversation with Cy Twombly. The goal is to embrace a wide spectrum of artistic expression, rather than favoring any particular style. 

Artists Include: Fern Apfel, Esther Bigfoot, Katherine Blackburne, Holly Boruck, Susan Carr, Victoria Carter, Patricia Dahlman, Maggie Evans, Laurie Fader, Camilla Fallon, Rick Fox, Stephanie Franks, David Fratkin, Barbara Friedman, Aaron Hauck, Eva Jimenez-Cerdanya, Nancy Johnson, Sam Kelly, Eileen Kennedy, Brian Kreydatus, Florence Laprat, Sam Levy, Vivian Liddell, Jackie Lima, Ellen Lyon, Margaret McCann, Robert McCann, Timothy Mettler, Joe Morzuch, Patrick Neal, James Perrin, Mark Rosenthal, Lucy Schwartzreich, Sharon Shapiro, Julia Shirar, Narelle Sissons, Gerri Spilka, Katherine Sullivan, Morgan Suter, Grier Torrence, Christina Vogel, Caitlin Winner, Corrine Yonce, Avital Zemel, Ningxia Zhang and Jane Zweibel.