Steven Zevitas Gallery is pleased to present NIGHT SWIMMING: New American Paintings 2024 Summer Review. The exhibition will run from June 12 – August 31, 2024 with a public reception on Friday, August 2 from 5:30 – 8:00 pm.
NIGHT SWIMMING: New American Paintings 2024 Summer Review brings together eleven artists who have been featured in the publication New American Paintings over the past twelve months. Hailing from throughout the United States, each of the included artists brings an individual aesthetic viewpoint and offers a unique lens towards what it means to be a painter today.
While all of the featured works are representational in form, there is an extraordinary range of techniques and subject matter on view. This group of emerging artists is fluent in art history and chooses to recognize and enliven it with new ways of making. In the exhibition, we see artists addressing the intersection of spiritual folklore and gender dynamics, the quiet comedy and absurdity of human experience, states of intimacy, ideas of representation and identity, historical power dynamics, and the weight of repurposing familial objects and images.
The exhibited works display a full range of human emotion — and how these emotions can collide and briefly overlap: gazes meet, fingers run through hair, light-weight wings carry a burden, and a dungeon-dweller plays with Polly Pockets.
CINDY BERNHARD (b. 1989, Chicago, IL) is the New American Paintings Midwest Issue #167 cover artist. She lives and works in Chicago, IL. Upcoming solo exhibitions will be hosted by Short Story (New York, NY) and Andrew Rafacz Gallery (Chicago, IL). She recently had a solo exhibition with Richard Heller Gallery. Bernhard has been featured in group exhibitions with Santa Ana (Panama City, ), PLATO (Brooklyn, NY), The Bunker Art Space (Palm Beach, FL), Everyday Mooonday (Seoul, Korea), and Galerie Droste (Berlin, Germany). Her paintings tell a loose narrative about ritual and possible transcendence. Bernhard is represented by Richard Heller Gallery in Santa Monica, CA. Through illusion and tension, the works explore scenes with a heightened awareness packed with psychological energy. Beneath the surface humor, the work subversively addresses philosophical subjects such as one's own mortality and human existence.
GRACE BROMLEY (b. 1994, Chicago, IL) will be featured in New American Paintings MFA Issue #171 and was the 2024 New American Paintings Emerging Artist Grant Recipient. She lives and works in Richmond, VA. Bromley graduated from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2018 and earned an MFA from Virginia Commonwealth University in 2024. She is currently in the United Kingdom as an Artist in Residence with Moosey (Norwich, United Kingdom). Her work has been exhibited at Jack Barrett Gallery (New York, NY), Marian Cramer (Amsterdam, Netherlands), LBF Contemporary (London, UK), and Thierry Goldberg Gallery (New York, NY). Bromley challenges archetypes of femininity, and questions expectations surrounding care, strength, and martyrdom. She reimagines familial stories, biblical folklore, and classic tropes of the hero/villain/damsel, through technicolor avatars and multilayered fields of light.
TEMI EDUN (b. 1964, Benin City, Nigeria) is featured in New American Paintings South Issue #166. He lives and works in Columbia, MD. In 1984, Wynston earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the University of Benin in Benin City, Nigeria, where he graduated with honors. One of his large-scale metal sculptures is still exhibited in a garden at the university. After graduation, Edun had exhibitions of his work in both Benin City and in Lagos, Nigeria. In 1990, after migrating to the U.S., he received a commission to design a work of art for the Howard University Gospel Choir. From 1990 to 1993, Wynston worked and studied under internationally acclaimed Baltimore-based artist Larry “Poncho”Brown. Edun’s work has been exhibited in galleries throughout his home state of Maryland and internationally such as Paris in 2022 and London in 2021.
SHYAMA GOLDEN (b. College Station, TX) is featured in New American Paintings Pacific Coast Issue #169. She lives and works in Los Angeles, CA. Golden graduated with a BFA from Texas Tech University in 2004. Jasmin Hernandez profiled Golden in her 2020 Book, We Are Here, Visionaries of Color Transforming the Art World. Recent group exhibitions have been hosted by The Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art Sri Lanka (Colombo, Sri Lanka), Jeffrey Deitch Gallery (New York, NY and Los Angeles, CA) Micki Meng Gallery (San Francisco, CA), Swivel Gallery (Brooklyn, NY), and Trotter & Sholer (New York, NY). Golden’s work populates a parallel dimension with a cast of characters, including vine-covered trees suggestive of human archetypes, Sri Lankan Yakkas from exorcism rituals, and self-portraiture.
NATHAN HOSMER NEVAREZ (b. 2001, Washington, DC) is featured in New American Paintings South Issue #166. He lives and works in Richmond, VA. Hosmer Nevarez earned a BFA from Virginia Commonwealth University in 2023 and was awarded a Fullbright ETA to Ecuador through 2025. His work has been exhibited with the Virginia Museum of Contemporary Art (Virginia Beach, VA), the Greenville Museum of Art (Greenville, NC), Material Room (Richmond, VA), and Cody Gallery at Marymount University (Arlington, VA). The artist aims to honor queer narratives by appropriating and reclaiming traditional Catholic images, narratives, and icons, many of which were used in his upbringing as groundwork for gender roles and heteronormativity that manifested in homophobia. He is drawn to investigating the energetic yet dimly lit safe spaces queer community occupies.
HANNAH MURRAY (b. 1994, London, England) will be featured in New American Paintings Northeast Issue #170. She lives and works in Brooklyn, NY. Murray earned an MFA from New York Academy of Art in 2021. Her work belongs to many prestigious collections, including the Institute of Contemporary Art, Miami (Miami, FL), and the Ruth Borchard Public Collection (London, United Kingdom). Murray’s work has been exhibited by Marinaro Gallery (New York, NY), Green Family Foundation (Dallas, TX), 1969 Gallery (New York, NY), and Daniel Raphael Gallery (London, United Kingdom), among others. She is represented by Marinaro Gallery in New York. Painting friends and women she knows, her paintings explore the tension between being seen as both traditionally feminine and having modern aspirations, in a world that often associates power with more masculine traits.
ELBERT JOSEPH PEREZ (b. 1991, Brooklyn, NY) will be featured in New American Paintings Northeast Issue #170. He lives and works in Catskill, NY. Recent solo exhibitions have been hosted by Rachel Uffner Gallery (New York, NY), and Jupiter Contemporary (Miami, FL). Additionally, Perez has exhibited at venues including Taubman Museum of Art (Roanoke, VA), Eyes Never Sleep (New York, NY), Mrs. Gallery (New York, NY), Embajada (San Juan, PR), Venus Over Manhattan (New York, NY), Kimberly Klark (Queens, NY), and Babayaga Gallery (Hudson, NY). He is represented by Rachel Uffner Gallery in New York. To counterpoise the equivocal nature of images, Perez infuses the shared experience of apprehension, moments of humor and subtle optimism to extend an invitation to anyone who wants to participate in his quiet investigations.
DAVID SHROBE (b. 1974, New York, NY) will be featured in New American Paintings Northeast Issue #170. He lives and works in New York, NY. Shrobe has had recent solo exhibitions at Monique Meloche (Chicago, IL), Steve Turner Gallery (Los Angeles, CA), Thierry Goldberg Gallery (New York, NY), and Jenkins Johnson Gallery (San Francisco, CA). He has participated in group exhibitions at Jeffrey Deitch Gallery (Los Angeles, CA and New York, NY), the Bronx Museum (Bronx, NY), and the Studio Museum in Harlem (New York, NY), among other institutions. Shrobe is represented by Monique Meloche in Chicago. His work brings notions of identity, history, and memory into question while challenging conventions of classical portraiture. He disassembles furniture, especially from around his familial home in Harlem, separating wood from fabric and recombines them as supports for collage, painting, and drawing.
RAMÓN VARGAS (b. 1979, Los Angeles, CA) is featured in New American Paintings Pacific Coast Issue #169. He lives and works in Santa Ana, CA. Vargas earned both an MFA and BFA from Laguna College of Art and Design. Recent group exhibitions have been hosted by the Orange County Center for Contemporary Art (Santa Ana, CA), The Laguna Museum of Art (Laguna Beach, CA), Avenue 50 Studios (Highland Park, CA), the Consulate General of Mexico (Los Angeles, CA), Munzón Gallery (Long Beach, CA), and Self Help Graphics and Art (Los Angeles, CA). Vargas makes paintings that draw from his own life experiences to amplify and investigate the cultural realities of Brown communities. His figurative paintings blend realism with a surreal sense of color and place, often incorporating heavy symbolism, repeating patterns and flat geometrical elements.
STACY LYNN WADDELL (b. 1966, Washington, DC) is featured in New American Paintings South Issue #166. She lives and works in Chapel Hill, NC). Recent solo exhibitions have been hosted by Candice Madey (New York, NY), Sala 1 (Rome, Italy), and the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum (Boston, MA). She has participated in group exhibitions with the Pérez Art Museum (Miami, FL), KARMA (New York, NY), Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University (Durham, NC), Cummer Museum (Jacksonville, FL), and Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth (Hanover, NH). She is a recipient of a Joan Mitchell Foundation Painters and Sculptors Grant, an Artist-in-Residence at Joan Mitchell Center (New Orleans, LA), Queen Space (New York, NY) and Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum (Boston, MA). Waddell is represented by Candice Madey in New York.
JESSE ZUO (b. 2000 Beijing, China) will be featured in New American Paintings MFA Issue #171. She lives and works in New York, NY. Zuo earned an MFA from the School of Visual Artist (New York, NY) in 2022. Recent group exhibitions have been hosted by LATITUDE Gallery (New York, NY), La Luz de Jesus (Los Angeles, CA), Soft Time Gallery (San Francisco, CA), High Line Nine Galleries (New York, NY), Manifest Gallery (Cincinnati, OH), and Latela Curatorial (Washington, DC). Her work belongs to the collection of the Artemizia Foundation (Bisbee, AZ). Her premiere solo exhibition will take place in Spring 2025 with Gallery 818 (Bisbee, AZ). Through figurative images, she expresses her take on femininity, physicality,emotions, and precious moments.
