Interviews by Brainard Carey

Katja Farin works in figurative painting depicting the interactions between the subconscious and reality. The relationship between figures is uncertain; the everyday life of sitting at coffee shops, wandering in backyard gardens, answering boring phone calls becomes the backdrop for the internal dialogue with the self that contemplates traumas, coping mechanisms, dreams and distortions. The works are dream spaces that allow the viewer to peek into the interior worlds of the figures, their relationships with the self and others. Bright colors, glowing hands and distorted bodies create the dreamlike dysphoric space that these androgynous figures embody.

Farin received a BA in Fine Art from the University of California, Los Angeles in 2018 and is a candidate for an MFA degree from the Slade School of Fine Art in London. Selected solo exhibitions include Friends Indeed (San Francisco), Era Gallery (Milan), Lubov (New York) and in lieu (Los Angeles). Their art has been included in group exhibitions at Pace Gallery (Hong Kong), Alexander Berggruen (New York), Shulmit Nazarian (Los Angeles), Wilding Cran (Los Angeles) and Nicodim (Los Angeles). Their work has been shown in several art fairs including NADA Miami, Miart Milan, KAIF Seoul and Art Taipei Taipei. They live and work in Los Angeles, CA and London, UK.

Backstage Pages, 2025 Oil on canvas,  47 1/4 x 33 1/2 in | 120 x 85 cm

Daytime Time Travel, 2025 Oil on canvas 82 3/4 x 59 in | 210 x 150 cm

Blind Spot Mirror #1, 2025 Stoneware, rearview vehicle mirrors, glaze 23 x 22 x 4 in | 58.5 x 56 x 10 cm

Jovencio de la Paz (b. 1986) was born in Singapore, and currently lives and works in Eugene, OR. They received their BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, IL, in 2008, followed by an MFA from Cranbrook Academy of Art, Bloomfield Hills, MI, in 2012. De la Paz has been included in group shows at Museum of Contemporary Art Denver, CO; EFA Project Space, New York, NY; Museum of Craft and Folk Art, Los Angeles, CA; Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art, Eugene, OR; Cranbrook Art Museum, Bloomfield Hills, MI; The Franklin, Chicago, IL; Uri Gallery, Seoul, Korea; among others.

In 2022, Jovencio de la Paz was named a United States Artist Fellow for their significant contribution to the field of craft.

The title of the exhibition, el lugar de los milagros / the place of miracles is a quotation from didactic signage at the necropolis of Mitla. Located in San Pablo Villa de Mitla, Oaxaca, Mexico, this archaeological site is ritually significant to the history of textiles. The walls of the pre-Colombian settlement depict traditional weave structures from the region, considered to be sacred pathways for the souls of the dead to traverse between the seen and unseen worlds. De la Paz likens the site to a massive computational device transmitting sacred data via circuitry of carved stone, aiding the spirit in its negotiation between worlds. Re-coding the mathematical pattern language of Mitla into digital weave structures, de la Paz confronts their own colonial displacement as an immigrant and cultural descendent of Spanish colonialism.

Jovencio de la Paz, Some Circles (NY) Red 1, 2025 handwoven jacquard textiles and cotton 20 1/8 x 20 1/8 x 1 3/4 ins. 51.1 x 51.1 x 4.4 cm Courtesy of Jovencio de la Paz; Chris Sharp Gallery and P·P·O·W, New York © Jovencio de la Paz

Jovencio de la Paz, Warped Grid 6.3, 2025 handwoven jacquard textiles, cotton, and wool 60 x 48 x 2 ins. 152.4 x 121.9 x 5.1 cm Courtesy of Jovencio de la Paz; Chris Sharp Gallery and P·P·O·W, New York © Jovencio de la Paz

Jovencio de la Paz, Warped Grid 6.3, 2025 (detail) handwoven jacquard textiles, cotton, and wool 60 x 48 x 2 ins. 152.4 x 121.9 x 5.1 cm Courtesy of Jovencio de la Paz; Chris Sharp Gallery and P·P·O·W, New York © Jovencio de la Paz Photo: Ian Edquist

Hoda Kashiha (b. 1986, Tehran, Iran) is a painter whose work fuses humor, fragmented figuration, and political resonance. Trained at the University of Tehran (BFA, 2009) and Boston University (MFA, 2014), she spent several years in the U.S. before returning to Tehran in 2016. Her artistic language combines Persian miniature and pop influences—with digital collage, airbrushed flat shapes, and emotive cartoon references—to probe identity, gender fluidity, and everyday acts of resistance.

Kashiha’s recent solo exhibitions reflect her international trajectory and evolving visual strategy. In 2021, In Appreciation of Blinking at Parallel Circuit in Tehran, followed in 2022 by I’m Here, I’m Not Here at Passerelle Centre d’Art Contemporain in Brest. She was presented in Brussels in 2023 with Another World Is Waiting for Us at Galerie Nathalie Obadia. Most recently, she held her first New York solo exhibition, The Doubt Between Us Sways Like Hung Mirrored Eyes at episode, on view from April 12 to June 27, 2025. The show featured new paintings exploring surveillance, intimacy, and the shifting power dynamics between visibility and erasure.

Her work has been shown in notable venues like Palais de Tokyo, Gagosian & Jeffrey Deitch (Miami Art Week), and Helena Anrather in New York, and has been featured in Artforum, Frieze, and Art in America. She is a recipient of the Joan Mitchell Foundation Grant, MacDowell Colony Fellowship, and Esther B. & Albert S. Kahn Career Entry Award, and her works are held by the Howard Gotlieb Archival Research Center and Commonwealth Hotel collections.

Hoda Kashiha, Folding gaze, 2025 Acrylic on canvas 48 x 37.8 inches (122 x 96 cm) Image courtesy of the artist and episode, NY. Photography by Archtechtonic.

Hoda Kashiha, The hole, 2024 Acrylic on canvas 14 x 18 inches (35.5 x 45.7 cm) 24 x 18 incehs (60.9 x 45.7 cm) Image courtesy of the artist and episode, NY. Photography by Archtechtonic.

Hoda Kashiha, The nightmare, 2024 Acrylic on canvas 40 x 30 inches (101.6 x 76.2 cm) Image courtesy of the artist and episode, NY. Photography by Archtechtonic.

A photo of the artist: Judith Simonian with Charles Yuen

Many of Simonian's works in the exhibition at JJ MURPHY Gallery are still lifes, such as “Marysia’s Salon” (2024), which was inspired by a visit to a Polish beauty parlor in her East Village neighborhood. “Bottle Symphony in Red” (2023) recalls Giorgio Morandi. Whereas Morandi’s still lifes are a delicate arrangement of vases, jugs, bowls, urns, and bottles, painted in muted colors—whites, browns, and tans—set against a neutral background, Simonian bombards our senses through her use of high-intensity reds, pinks, blue-greens, grays, blacks, and yellow ochre.

In “Inside Outside” (2023), the artist similarly portrays a room as an expressionistic whirlwind of vivid colors. Simonian’s paintings deal with intervals, or the spaces between points. Simonian’s still lifes often open up an interior space to an exterior one. In “Marysia’s Salon,” a photograph tacked on the wall suggests the world outside. “Bobby Pins of Manhattan” (2023-24) provides a glimpse of the city skyline through the window, including the landmark Empire State Building. “Cat in the Lamp” (2024) depicts a black cat inside an illuminated yellow lampshade in front of a large window that overlooks water.

Simonian employs careful framing to create meaning. It is possible to view several of her landscape paintings as political allegories. In "Greener Pastures" (2025), the shimmering image of the Statue of Liberty appears to be a mirage, while green brushstrokes seem to hint at water on deck or maybe even a school of fish. "Resting on Her Side" (2024) depicts rocky terrain and the bleak spectacle of a capsized ship.

Judith Simonian has had solo exhibitions of her work at 1GAP, Brooklyn; Edward Thorp Gallery, New York City; and John Davis Gallery in Hudson, NY. Her work has been shown in numerous museums, including The New Museum, NYC; MoMA/PS1, NYC; Islip Museum, NY; Montclair Art Museum, NJ; Weatherspoon Art Museum, NC; San Francisco Museum of Art, CA; Santa Barbara Museum of Art, CA; Newport Harbor Art Museum, CA; and the Madison Museum of Contemporary Art, WI. Simonian has been awarded many prestigious honors, including a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship, an Adolph and Esther Gottlieb Foundation Individual Support Grant, and a National Endowment for the Arts Grant. She received her BA and MA degrees from California State University, Northridge. The artist lives and works in New York City.

Greener Pastures, 2025, acrylic on canvas, 24 x 32 inches

Marysia's Salon, 2024, acrylic on canvas, 30 x 20 inches

Enter the Mountain Yellow, 2023, acrylic on canvas, 50 x 66 inches

phot of the artist by Ralph Gabriner

Dena Schutzer in her fifth solo show at Bowery Gallery in New York City titled “Agitation and Retreat”, describes the work saying, “Together, these oil paintings are a chronicle of observed moments in public and private spaces.” Schutzer’s imagery reflects this wide-open approach—what has caught her eye ranges from a view of a New York street in the giant shadows of looming new skyscrapers, to an intimate scene of the artist’s elderly mother taking a bath. Intuiting a kind of drama in these elements of direct perception provides what Schutzer calls the “initial jolt” that impels her to respond in paint.

For Schutzer this mysterious process—the joy and struggle of proceeding from that first sensation to a new, composed reality on the canvas--has everything to do with her pleasure in the possibilities of paint itself.  Her loose but decisive brushwork and bold color tensions and harmonies—acid greens, clashing blues, pervasive violets—don’t let go of the viewer until one has taken in all the oppositions, juxtapositions, parallels from which her brushstroke emerges, still present as a brushstroke, but also, finally, as an essential part of a new and highly personal image.

Dena Schutzer has had 5 solo shows with the Bowery Gallery in NYC, and has been in group shows at The Painting Center-NYC, Westbeth-NYC, Washington Art Association-CT, Kingsborough College-Brooklyn, Brooklyn Waterfront Artists Coalition-BWAC, Hudson Park Library-NYC, Romano Gallery-NJ, Irvington Library, Yonkers Riverfront Library, TC Columbia U- Macy Gallery. She taught painting and was head of the art department at the Abraham Joshua Heschel High School in NYC for 21 years, has been a visiting teaching artist at schools throughout Westchester County and NYC.  She illustrated six children’s books for Simon and Schuster, Knopf, and Scholastic among others, and her editorial illustrations have been published in newspapers and magazines including The NY Times, The New Yorker and NY Newsday.

Schutzer attended Skowhegan, NY Studio School, BFA from Suny at Purchase, MFA (in Film) from Yale University, MFA in Art Ed at Columbia University.

“Buildings, Yellow Cloud”, oil on canvas, 16”x12”, 2025

“Arm Outstretched”, oil on canvas, 12”x16”, 2023

“Four Men Working”, oil on canvas, 18”x20”, 2024

Julianne Nash

Julianne Nash (b. 1991, Massachusetts) is an artist whose work exists at the intersection between photographic collage and digital painting; she utilizes algorithms inherent to Photoshop in conjunction with traditional compositing techniques to create densely layered landscape images that contend with both personal and climate-driven grief. Color is an integral aspect of Julianne’s work; ranging from dark, depleted and disappearing images to artificially saturated color palettes driven by neural imaging algorithms. All of Julianne’s landscapes are of no specific place – rather are meticulously created collages of numerous photographs. Often inspired by places within the environment that evoke an unknown sadness, fear or discomfort, Julianne’s work explores the complex relationship between personal, cultural and natural histories visible within our ever-changing landscape.

This interview was done on the occasion of her exhibition, Flora non Grata at Amos Eno gallery.

Julianne Nash,, Juniper and Sagebrush (22 Images), 2024. Dye-sublimation print on celtic cloth. 100 x 142".

Julianne Nash, Former Glacier (39 Images), 2022. Archival pigment print, mounted to sintra. 40 x 63"

Julianne Nash, Artemisia Tridentata No. 3, 2024. Archival pigment print, mounted to sintra. 50 x 40".

Elizabeth Ravn (b.1994, Brooklyn, NY) received a Bachelors in Fine Arts from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, IL in 2016.

She lives and works in Berlin.

Recent solo and group exhibitions include David Peter Francis, New York (2025); die raum, Berlin (2024); Deborah Schamoni, Munich (2023); SOX, Berlin (2023); KINDL Centre for Contemporary Art, Berlin (2022); ChertLüdde Bungalow, Berlin (2022); Kinderhook & Caracas, Berlin (2021); Kjøpmannsgata Ung Kunst, Trondheim, (2021); and Pina, Vienna (2019).

Elizabeth Ravn, Bild, 2024, oil on canvas, 39 3/8 x 31 1/2 inches (100 x 80 cm). Courtesy of the artist and David Peter Francis, NY.

Elizabeth Ravn, Cubbyhole, 2025, oil on canvas, 43 1/4 x 35 3/8 inches (110 x 90 cm). Courtesy of the artist and David Peter Francis, NY.

Elizabeth Ravn, November, 2024, oil on canvas, 43 1/4 x 35 3/8 inches (110 x 90 cm). Courtesy of the artist and David Peter Francis, NY

Elizabeth Ravn, Telephone, 2024, oil on canvas, 27 1/2 x 19 3/4 inches (70 x 50 cm). Courtesy of the artist and David Peter Francis, NY.

Carolina Fusilier (b.1985, Buenos Aires) is a multidisciplinary artist who explores the physicality of technology, notions of non-linear time, and post-human imaginaries at the intersections between organic and mechanical bodies, industrial and domestic settings. Her work takes various forms through moving image, painting, sound, and site-specific projects.

Carolina Fusilier lives and works in Oaxaca, Mexico. She studied at the Universidad del Cine in Buenos Aires and completed postgraduate programs at Universidad Torcuato Di Tella (2011), SOMA in Mexico City (2016), and was a guest student at the Düsseldorf Academy under Rita McBride in 2018.

Recent solo and duo exhibitions include Imago, Margot Samel, New York, NY (2025); ¿Cómo se escribe muerte al sur?, Museo Anahuacalli, Mexico City, Mexico (2025); Isla Eléctrica, PEANA, Mexico City, Mexico (2024); Nuit Blanche, Toronto, Canada (2024); Espejo-Espectro, MALBA, Buenos Aires, Argentina (2024); Corrientes Mercuriales, Museo Jumex, Mexico City, Mexico (2023); Clepsidra, Daniela Elbahara Gallery, Mexico City, Mexico (2021); Kitchen with a View, Locust Projects, Miami, FL (2019); and Angel Engines, Natalia Hug, Cologne, Germany (2018).

Selected group exhibitions include Otr’s Mund’s, curated by Aram Moshayedi and Lena Solá Nogué, Museo Tamayo, Mexico City, Mexico (2025);Yendo de la cama al living, curated by Enrique Giner, Salón ACME, Mexico City, Mexico (2025); Breaking up of ice on a river, curated by Lilian Hiob, Margot Samel, New York, NY (2024); Casa Ideal, Proyectos Multipropósito, Mexico City, Mexico (2024); Linhas Tortas, Mendes Wood, São Paulo, Brazil (2023); Hic Sunt Dracones, Deli Gallery, Mexico City, Mexico (2023).

Carolina Fusilier, Súbitamente (IMAGO station), 2025, Oil on hexagonal canvas, stainless steel and speaker. Audio by Miko Revereza., 90 1/2 x 157 1/2 x 2 in | 230 x 400 x 5 cm. photo by Matthew Sherman

Carolina Fusilier, Altar II (Imago Lab), 2025 Oil on hexagonal canvas, stainless steel frame 35 3/8 x 25 5/8 in | 90 x 65 cm. photo by Matthew Sherman

Carolina Fusilier, War song II, 2025, Oil on hexagonal canvas, 31 1/2 x 19 3/4 in | 80 x 50 cm. photo by Matthew Sherman

Cianne Fragione (b. 1952) is a multidisciplinary artist. With roots in the San Francisco Bay Area Beat and Funk art milieus, she has developed her own process-oriented artistic vocabulary over the past four decades that crosses boundaries between abstract painting and sculpture, and between object and image. A striking combination of oil paint, mixed-media materials, found objects, and textiles characterizes her signature style. Each piece, whether two- or three-dimensional, is built slowly over lengthy periods, becoming a dense synthesis of influences and personal perspectives, including mid-century gestural abstraction and the physical fluency of her early training as a professional dancer. While a sense of space and movement dominates her two-dimensional works, her assemblage pieces tend to be denser and more corporeal. Her most recent works respond to two collections of poems by Italian poet and writer Eugenio Montale: Mediterraneo and Ossi di Seppia.  

Fragione has exhibited extensively in solo and group exhibitions nationally and internationally, including at St. Mary’s College Museum of Art, Moraga, CA; Georgetown College, KY; Anya and Andrew Shiva Gallery, New York, NY; American University Museum, Washington, D.C.; John D. Calandra Italian American Institute of Queens College, CUNY, New York, NY; Associazione di Museo D’Arte Contemporaneo Italiano, Catanzaro, Italy; Harmony Hall Regional Center, Washington, MD; University of Scranton Art Museum, Scranton, PA; The Textile Museum, Washington, D.C.; Art in Embassies, Geneva, Sofia, Bulgaria, and Vilnius, Lithuania; Indianapolis Art Center, IN; and San Francisco Museum of Modern Art Gallery, CA.  

Her works are held in numerous public collections, including the Baltimore Museum of Art MD; DC Commission Art Bank Collection; Art in Embassies Permanent Collection, U.S. State Department, Guadalajara, Mexico; St. Mary’s College Museum of Art, CA; Italian American Museum, D.C; Department of Special Collections, Cecil H. Green Library, Stanford University, CA; Comune di Monasterace, Calabria, IT; among other museum and private collections.  

Motetti: Flowers Grow/ Salty Breath, 2024, oil-based paint, pigment, walnut and black ink, graphite, oil pencils,on paper, 42.5 x 35 in (107.95 x 88.9 cm), Image by Martin Seck

Bundles: Seacoasts / Among Fragrances / Winds / Decoy, 2024, oil-based paint, pigment, string, lace, fishing lures, and bone on canvas panel, 8 x 5 x 2 in (20.3 x 12.7 x 5.1 cm), Image by Martin Seck

The Clouds Travel like White Handkerchiefs of Goodbye, 2020 oil-based pigment, collage, graphite, on mylar 54 x 65 in (137.16 x 165.1 cm) Image by Martin Seck

New York-based artist Ethan Cook engages with materialism and minimalism through his two primary media, woven canvas and handmade paper. Cook’s paintings are composed of colored fabric panels that have been hand woven on a four-harness loom, stitched together, and stretched on bars. Foregoing the notion that in order to paint one must apply pigment to canvas in some way – be it by brush, by knife, or by hand – Cook instead uses a loom to weave large swaths of colored fabric that make up his surfaces. For Cook, the performance of artmaking is at once meditative and intensely rhythmic. The grandness of the loom, with its thousands of moving processes and parts, generates a symphony of action that is both quick and unpredictable, developing a variety of idiosyncrasies like a pulled thread or skipped knot, producing a variety of textures that reveal that the works are indeed, handmade.

Cook has had solo exhibitions at Nino Mier Gallery, Los Angeles, Brussels, Marfa and New York; Megan Mulrooney Gallery, Los Angeles; Half Gallery, New York; Andersen’s Contemporary, Copenhagen; Galerie Philipp Zollinger, Zurich; T293, Rome; Loyal Gallery, Stockholm; Anat Ebgi, Los Angeles; Noire Chapel, Torino; Bill Brady, Miami; Sunday-S Gallery, Copenhagen; American Contemporary, New York; Galerie Jeanroch Dard, Paris; Rod Barton, London; Patrick de Brock Gallery, Knokke; and Gana Art Hannam, Seoul.  Public collections include The Art Institute of Chicago, Museum Voorlinden, Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art, Fondation CAB, and Juan Carlos Maldonado Art Collection. His work has been covered in the Los Angeles Times, the New York Times, the Brooklyn Rail, Interview Magazine, Architectural Digest, among other publications.

Ethan Cook, Battement, 2025 Signed and dated on verso Hand-woven cotton 45 x 55 in (framed)

Ethan Cook, Sauter, 2025, Signed and dated on verso, Hand-woven cotton, 66 x 77 in (framed)

Ethan Cook, Beam Bathing Broken Circle, 2025 Steel 80 x 48 x 12 in 203.2 x 121.9 x 30.5 cm