In Celebration of Shadows

curated by Ian Hartshorne

January 23 – March 7, 2026
54 White Street, New York, NY (US)

In Celebration of Shadows celebrates the intergenerational impact of teaching painting and reveals engaging and dynamic relationships between those participating. The title of the show honors a group of contemporary artists whilst acknowledging their mentors, and the artists they have in turn had an affect upon. We can think of these often overlooked, yet crucial contributors to the lifeblood of art as ‘shadows’. The curator takes an unusual approach to not invite all the artists who are included in the show personally. Instead, nine artists were initially invited to submit one work each with the proviso that they in turn each invite two accompanying guests to exhibit alongside them; one of whom a former teacher, accompanied by a chosen student. The request to those invited was to reflect on the interests and relationships formed during their teaching and learning periods and extend invitations to others.

 The exhibition presents a selection of artworks by 27 artists:

Anthony Cudahy, EJ Hauser, Jennifer Leigh Blaine, Julie Curtiss, Pat Andrea, Larysa Myers, Louise Giovanelli, Ian Hartshorne, Isobel Shore, Jo McGonigal, Ian Kiaer, Jack Ginno, Christopher Orr, Derrick Guild, Ross Chisholm, Daniel Richter, Werner Büttner, Alexander Basil, Matthias Weischer, Wolfram Ebersbach, Kristina Schuldt, Chloe Wise, Stephen Appleby-Barr, Aude Verbrugge, Sophie von Hellermann, Dieter Krieg, Jule Bode

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Anthony Cudahy weaves imagery culled from photo archives, art history, film stills, hagiographic icons and personal photographs to explore themes of queer identity and tenderness. His evocative figurative paintings and drawings are informed by extensive historical research. Moving through a variety of iterations from these vignettes, he generates compositions through acute attention to color and brush strokes, sustaining a commitment to the mediums he uses as they guide the final works. They negotiate feelings of loneliness, isolation, desire, and safety through the lens of the artist’s own autobiographical narratives and crafted mythologies. In 2020, Cudahy completed an MFA at Hunter College, New York, NY (US). His solo exhibition metronome yawned is on view at the Esker Foundation in Calgary (CA) from January 23 to April 26, 2026.

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EJ Hauser’s paintings are both graphic and open to interpretation, teetering between iconography and something familiar but abstract. This imagery shifts between omnivorous references both ancient and current — the paintings are mysterious talismans, employing buzzing pallets and marks that dance. Hauser received their MFA from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill (US) in 1998, and their BFA from the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia (US) in 1991. 

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Jennifer Leigh Blaine is an interdisciplinary artist who received her MFA from Hunter College in New York, NY (US) and has also studied extensively in the UK, completing the Drawing Intensive at the Royal Drawing School in London and attending the Glasgow School of Art in Glasgow. Her most recent solo exhibition was at the New Glasgow Society Gallery in Scotland and she has exhibited widely throughout the US and Europe. 

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Drawing on art historical sources from 18th and 19th-century French painting to the Chicago Imagists, as well as comics, manga, and illustration, Julie Curtiss employs a highly stylised visual language centred on the female body, often fragmented or reduced to charged symbols of femininity. Psychologically driven and informed by Surrealist strategies, her paintings use close-cropping, shallow depth of field, and unexpected juxtapositions to create erotically charged, cinematic, and unsettling scenes that implicate the viewer as voyeur. Curtiss studied at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris (FR) from 2001 to 2006 before living in Japan and settling in New York. 

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Dutch master painter Pat Andrea is one of the most prominent figures in European magical realism and new figurative iconography. His paintings combine classical quality with stark neo-expressionism, seamlessly interlacing sexuality, fear and desire to produce images that are playful yet disturbingly intense. Andrea studied at the Royal Academy of Art, The Hague (NL) under Co Westerik. He was a teacher at the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris (FR) from 1998 to 2007.

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Larysa Myers’ paintings and drawings explore personal history through the universal and the cyclical, the mythological and the contemporary. Her work often reflects on the ideas of motherhood or femininity and its dualities. The body is reduced to a female archetype as the form is silhouetted and manipulated. Settings are domestic, wild, mundane, and fantastical, each opening into different parts of the psyche and identity. Myers studied at the Grand Central Academy in New York, NY (US) as well as the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York, NY (US).

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Louise Giovanelli’s delicate, luminous works inject vitality into historical subjects from the canon of Western art. Through interconnected series, she weaves together visual clues surrounding a specific moment or event. Her subject matter is primarily chosen for its formal qualities and includes, staged photographs, film stills, classical sculpture, and architectural elements. Giovanelli graduated from the Städelschule in Frankfurt am Main (DE) where she studied with Professor Amy Sillman. She received her Bachelor‘s Degree in Fine Art from the Manchester School of Art (UK) in 2015. Her travelling exhibition A Song of Ascents was on view for the first time at The Hepworth Wakefield, followed by HALLE FÜR KUNST Steiermark, Graz (AT), and is now on view at Museum Villa Stuck in Munich (DE) until March 15, 2026.

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Ian Hartshorne, curator of this exhibition, is an artist and teacher. He trained for his MA at Chelsea College of Art and was a Stanley Picker fellow at Kingston University and a subsequent Boise Scholar at The Slade School, London (UK), where he completed his PhD. Hartshorne is a founding member of the Apollo Painting School in Manchester (UK); the Teaching Painting organization, a coalition of educators; and co-editor of the book Teaching Painting: How can painting be taught in British art schools?. He has taught painting at all levels for over 25 years, most notably as the Head of Painting at Manchester School of Art.

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Isobel Shore’s practice is within oil paints, with a particular focus on figurative painting. Significance resides in the liminal spaces, where subtle variations in color, light, and brushstrokes unveil poetic truths. Through continuous exploration, she seeks to translate the complexities of emotion and connection into tangible form. Shore studied at Apollo Painting School in Manchester (UK) in 2024.

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Sophie von Hellermann’s paintings recall the look of fables, legends, and traditional stories that are imbued with the workings of her subconscious rather than the content of existing images. Her romantic, pastel-washed canvases are often installed to suggest complex narrative threads. Von Hellermann applies pure pigment directly onto unprimed canvas, and her use of broad-brushed washes imbues a sense of weightlessness to her pictures. 

Von Hellermann studied at the Kunstakademie in Düsseldorf (DE) and the Royal College of Art in London (UK). A solo exhibition of her work, titled Get Your Head Around It, is on view at Kunsthalle Wien, Vienna (AT) through March 29, 2026 and a solo exhibition titled I Did Not Tell Half of What I Saw is on view at Sixi, Nanjing (CN) through March 1, 2026.

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Dieter Krieg is known as an important representative of New Figuration and was influential for subsequent generations of painters, not at last as professor at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf (DE). Starting in the 1970s, Krieg painted everyday objects – always in reference to humankind, its daily life, its body, its death. The often oversized scale and the sculptural appearing pastosity gives his images an overwhelming physical presence. In 1978, he designed the German pavilion at the Venice Biennale (IT) with Ulrich Rückriem. 

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Jule Bode’s artworks combine spontaneous thoughts with quick strokes. Her motifs are bold, sketch-like, and direct, capturing thoughts as quickly as they arise, noted in passing and immediately released. Fleeting insights are fixed on the canvas before attention shifts onward to new horizons. Bode studied at the Akademie der Bildenden Künste in Karlsruhe (DE).

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Jo McGonigal’s practice begins with a visual analysis of historical Baroque painting as a basis for understanding the medium as a complex spatial construction. These observations materialize into ‘spatial paintings’ constructed out of physical things in real space, where architectural concerns become complicit with the work. McGonigal received her PhD in Fine Art from the University of Leeds (UK) in 2019 and her MFA in Fine Art from the Manchester School of Art (UK) in 2015.

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Ian Kiaer’s practice draws on histories of art, architecture, literature and theory, centring on reuse and repurposing as ways to explore memory, loss and the fragmentary nature of meaning. Using found and discarded materials, he investigates how objects carry latent histories and how artworks hold together—or fall apart—conceptually and materially. At the Royal College of Art in London (UK), Kiaer received his PhD in Painting Research in 2008 and MA in Painting in 2000.

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Incorporating found stimuli, chance and by-product into a delicate visual language, Ginno’s practice examines the roles and relationships assumed by the artist, artwork and viewer within the creative act. Ginno graduated from Leeds School of Arts (UK) in 2013 and subsequently co-established Depot Art Studios in Manchester (UK), maintaining an active practice there for six years prior to his move to Sheffield in 2020 where he continues to live and work.

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There lies a marked contrast between the intimacy of Christopher Orr’s compact oil paintings and the vastness of the scenes they depict: deep oceans, expansive skies, and formidable forests. Executed in broad-yet-precise brushstrokes, Orr’s works evoke the sublime worlds of J.M.W. Turner and Caspar David Friedrich. Orr received his MA in Painting from the Royal College of Art in London (UK) in 2003.

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Derrick Guild says of his multi disciplined practice: “I’m attracted to artworks and approaches to making art from the past. Still-life, portraiture, botanical painting and natural history mix with influences from contemporary literature, contemporary art and film. I like to investigate and research works that stick with me (I ask myself, what is it that makes them personally memorable). To me approaches like botanical painting or still life have a validity and are not closed systems, I see them more as theatres where I can present my ideas.” Guild studied at the Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art & Design in Dundee (UK), where he taught from 1992 until 2011. Since 2019, he has been a lecturer on the painting program at Gray’s School of Art, Robert Gordons University in Aberdeen (UK).

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Ross Chisholm deconstructs notions of traditional portraiture by skillfully painting figures from found photographs and reproductions, and then interrupting them with visual breaks in the form of geometric abstractions, loose brushwork, and thick dabs of paint. His subjects are borrowed, singly or in combinations, from several distinct art historical and vernacular styles, in many cases 18th and 19th century grand portraiture, found holiday snapshots and slides from the 1970s and geometric abstraction. Chisholm distorts and isolates the figures in his paintings until a fixed sense of time and identity are rendered ambiguous.

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Matthias Weischer’s paintings depict domestic interior scenes and landscapes that challenge the viewer’s perception of space. One of the foremost painters of his generation, Weischer has refined his technique by repeatedly crafting and restaging compositions, often drawing from his own studio as a point of departure. His work is currently on view in the group exhibitions HOME at Vila Catena, Bucharest (RO) until March 15, and Hotspot Leipzig – Highlights from the collection at the Drents Museum, Assen (NL) until April 5. His solo exhibition Off Target was recently on view at GRIMM, London (UK).

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During the years of German reunification, Wolfram Ebersbach reduced his palette almost exclusively to black and white. An existentialist experience that manifests itself in his paintings: train stations, arcades, and courtyards. His depiction of Leipzig at that time. Later, details and architectural fragments are added. The city and his perspective on it change. His work is included in the group exhibition Wohnkomplex: Art and Life in Plattenbau at Das Minsk, Potsdam (DE) on view until February 8, 2026.

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Kristina Schuldt borrows from the early 20th century avant-garde in paintings that capture the complications of women’s lives. Working in oil and egg tempera, Schuldt combines abstraction and figuration in her depictions of female bodies. The artist develops a body-centered work, specifically the female body, which she then turns into stretched and curved figures that connect directly to the early avant-garde. She studied with artist Neo Rauch of the New School Leipzig for her Master’s Degree at the Academy of Fine Arts, Leipzig (DE).

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Chloe Wise’s practice spans diverse media, including painting, sculpture, video and installation. Foregrounding an interest in the history of portraiture, Wise examines the multiple channels that lead to the construction of a Self, paying particular attention to the interweaving of consumption and image making. With a wry sense of humor, she nods to canonical tableaux, like Manet’s Le Déjeuner sur l’herbe (1863), exploring the shared projected desires built around food and the female body. She received a Bachelor of Fine Arts in 2013 from Concordia University in Montréal (CA).

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Stephen Appleby-Barr’s paintings juxtapose fantastical and everyday objects, conjuring a dreamlike world which verges on the uncanny. His sensitive and masterly use of the traditional medium of oil paint, recalling the work of Old Masters, contrasts with his modern sensibility, that makes references to elements of contemporary life such as video games and popular literature. Appleby-Barr sees his art as storytelling, and tours museums and city streets in the search for characters and sets to introduce into his otherworldly universe. 

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Aude Verbrugge’s work explores emotional architecture through immersive visual environments that bridge painting and installation, treating space as a container of memory, emotion, and rupture. Drawing from interiors, ruins, and infrastructural systems, each body of work creates a distinct spatial atmosphere shaped by personal and collective anxieties. From the École supérieure des beaux-arts, Montpellier (FR), Verbrugge received a Master’s Degree in Fine Arts in 2011 and a Bachelor’s Degree in Fine Arts in 2009. She also received her Bachelor’s Degree in Modern Literature at University Paul Valery, Montpellier (FR).

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With special thanks to all participating artists and their representing galleries.

For enquiries regarding the featured works or for more information,
please email enquiry@grimmgallery.com