Mira Dancy - Dalton Gata - Paul Heyer - Cheyenne Julien - Erin Jane Nelson
Through portraits of themselves and others, both real and imagined, these artists all use the genre of portraiture to different ends. Mira Dancy’s two paintings of heroic female figures each embody strength amid their chaotic architectural settings and melancholic palettes. Dalton Gata’s ink drawings, made over the past couple months, epitomize his characteristic style of portraiture, merging elements of high fashion with accentuated physical features to question cultural standards of beauty and celebrate the diversity of self-expression during a time of cultural isolation. Paul Heyer’s painted skeleton subject admires a fluttering butterfly, finding the humor and beauty in ephemeral life. Cheyenne Julien’s portrait of a startled figure sprayed with tubes of brightly colored paint confronts its viewer with an unsettling metaphor for the art world’s fetishization of bodies and artists of color. In Erin Jane Nelson’s recent stoneware pieces, she combines disparate images—including photographic portraits of her adolescent self, a recent ultrasound scan of her own empty womb, and a printed image of organic matter suspended in melting ice, among others—to reflect upon the precarity of a world that is unable to adequately prepare for present and future catastrophes.
Mira Dancy’s practice engages and recalibrates the historical trope of woman-as-subject. Across multiple mediums—painting, mural, drawing, and sculpture—Dancy maintains her bold, linear approach to create intricately layered compositions. Her figures, fragmented towards abstraction, merge with their jagged and imposing architectural settings, blurring boundaries between the internal self and the built environments they inhabit. Dancy’s subjects emerge as powerful beings that reclaim performed and projected ideas of womanhood.
Mira Dancy (b. 1979 lives and works in New York. She received her MFA in painting from Columbia University. She has had recent solo exhibitions at Galería Agustina Ferreyra, Mexico City; JOAN, Los Angeles; Lumber Room, Portland, OR; Yuz Foundation, Shanghai; Chapter NY, New York; Night Gallery, Los Angeles; and Galerie Hussenot, Paris. She has also been included in group exhibitions at The Fed Galleries, Kendall College of Art and Design, Ferris State University, Grand Rapids, MI; Galleria Monica De Cardenes, Zouz; König Gallerie, Berlin; Simone Subal Gallery, New York; MoMA PS1, New York; and the Rubell Family Collection, Miami; among others.
Dalton Gata’s practice draws from Surrealism, Afro-Caribbean culture, and his background as a fashion designer. His work references popular culture and his personal relationships to reflect upon the psychological and social effects related to physical appearance. His glorified subjects appear empowered and elevated, insisting on the beauty of diversity and the importance of acceptance. Through these portraits, Gata’s work provides an unparalleled vision of our society brimming with confident self-expression, concealed insecurities, and undeniable eccentricities.
Dalton Gata (b. 1977) lives and works in Coamo, Puerto Rico and graduated in 2005 from the Escuela de Diseño Altos del Chavón in Santo Domingo, DR with a BFA in Fashion Design. In 2019 he had solo exhibitions at Galería Agustina Ferreyra, Mexico City and Chapter NY, New York. He has exhibited widely in the Dominican Republic and the Caribbean including the 27th National Biennial of Visual Arts, Santo Domingo (2013), Ramos Mederos Gallery, Santo Domingo (2014), Lucy Garcia Gallery, Santo Domingo (2015, 2016, 2017), and the Spanish Cultural Center of Santo Domingo (2016), as well as Embajada Gallery, San Juan (2018).
Paul Heyer is a queer artist exploring the limits of our bodies and consciousness. His paintings conjure a futuristic goth fantasy wherein skeletons beckon and trees grow luminous blue apples, a world where the rules are open to renegotiation. Heyer’s work playfully questions our divorce from each other and from the natural world in this increasingly fraught and algorithm-driven time. His recent paintings and installations acknowledge the transience of being and consciously demand an imaginative path forward.
Paul Heyer (b.1982) was born and currently lives and works in Chicago, IL. In 2009 he received his MFA in painting from Columbia University. He has had solo exhibitions at Night Gallery (2019, 2016, 2013); Mickey, Chicago (2019); the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago (2018), and Chapter NY, New York (2016, 2014). His work has also been included in group exhibitions at Perrotin (2019), Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago (2017), Park View/Paul Soto, Los Angeles (2017), Andrea Rosen Gallery (2016), Shane Campbell Gallery, Chicago (2016), Rodeo Gallery London (2015), Young Art, Los Angeles (2013), 356 Mission Angeles (2015) and Rachel Uffner Gallery, NY (2012).
Cheyenne Julien’s practice explores the boundary between personal experiences and collective histories as she navigates the racialized spaces of New York City. Her boldly colored portraits depict satirical figures that, although at times humorous, map subtle manifestations of trauma. Often portraying herself or her family, Julien captures her own experience of environmental racism that, from an early age, ingrained in the artist an understanding of the difference between belonging and not belonging. Derived from memory, Julien’s paintings blend reality with imagined narratives that trace the physical forms of racism often hidden in plain sight.
Cheyenne Julien (b. 1994) was born and currently lives and works in the Bronx, New York. She received her BFA in Painting at the Rhode Island School of Design in 2016. Recent solo and two-person exhibitions include, Cheyenne Julien & Tau Lewis at Chapter NY, New York (2018), and Homegrown at Smart Objects, Los Angeles (2017). Julien’s work has also been included in group exhibitions at the American Academy of Arts and Letters, New York (2020); BronxArtSpace, Bronx, New York (2020); The Harvey Gantt Center, Charlotte, NC (2019); Mitchell- Innes and Nash, New York (2019); Museum of Modern Art, Warsaw, PL (2019); Gavin Brown’s Enterprise/Unclebrother, Hancock, New York (2018); Almine Rech Gallery, New York (2018); Karma, New York (2018); Loyal Gallery, Stockholm (2017); and White Cube Bermondsey, London (2017). Julien has also participated in artist residencies at the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, RI (2018- 2019); the OxBow School of Art in Saugatuck, MI (2016); and the Vermont Studio Center, Johnson, VT (2016). She was awarded the Bronx Recognizes Its Own (BRIO) grant from the Bronx Council on the Arts in 2017 and the Florence Leif Award from RISD in 2016.
Erin Jane Nelson’s practice is grounded in photography sourced from her personal archive of found and original images. She works serially, with each project delving into new conceptual frameworks as far ranging as the cultural anxiety around climate change, the sentience of octopuses, and the science fiction of our present moment. Raised in the American South and based in Atlanta, Nelson travels throughout the region to photograph her surroundings and lived experiences. Her photographic elements merge onto unexpected support structures—including fabric, hand- crafted quilts, panels, and ceramic inspired from distinctly Southern craft objects—their multiple references engaging the nuanced anxiety, conflict, and humor of the present and immediate future.
Erin Jane Nelson (b. 1989) lives and works in Atlanta, GA. In 2011 she received her BFA from The Cooper Union. Recent solo exhibitions include: כינהש (Shekinah), Chapter NY, New York (2019), Her Deepness, Atlanta Contemporary Art Center, Atlanta, GA (2019); Psychopompopolis, Document Gallery, Chicago (2017); and Dylan, Hester, New York (2015). Her work has been featured in group exhibitions at La Galerie, centre d’art contemporain, Noisy-le-Sec, France (2019); Deli Gallery, Brooklyn (2019); Van Doren Waxter, New York (2019); Capital Gallery, San Francisco (2019); Pinakothek der Moderne, Munich (2018); and the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York (2018). Her work is currently included in Making Knowing: Craft in Art, 1950-2019 at the Whitney, which has recently acquired the artist’s work, and is currently featured in an exhibition at the Fries Museum in Leeuwarden, the Netherlands.