Interviews by Brainard Carey

Jesse Egner is a queer artist and educator based in Brooklyn, New York. Often taking the form of playful and absurd photographic portraiture of himself and other individuals, his work explores themes such as queerness, body image, relationships, collaboration, and humor. He received his BA from Millersville University of Pennsylvania in 2016 and his MFA from Parsons School of Design in 2020. His work is included in the permanent collection at the Kiyosato Museum of Photographic Arts, and has been exhibited and published globally. He is a NYSCA/NYFA Artist Fellowship recipient and has participated in residencies at the Santa Fe Art Institute in Santa Fe, New Mexico; Bunnell Street Arts Center in Homer, Alaska; Studio Vortex in Arles, France; Yaddo in Saratoga Springs, New York; the Vermont Studio Center in Johnson, Vermont; TILT Institute in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; and the Saltonstall Foundation in Ithaca, New York. His solo exhibition, “I Want to See How Things Play Out,” which was previously exhibited at Blue Sky Gallery in Portland, Oregon in June 2025, will be opening at Flow Space Gallery in New York City on June 11th. Mirrored Hold, 2020, 24 x 30 inches, archival pigment print Lite Brite, 2021, 37.5 x 30 inches, archival pigment print OK Hooker (Hooker, Oklahoma), 2022, 30 x 24 inches, archival pigment print

Nicola Tyson was born in 1960 in London, England. She attended Chelsea School of Art, St. Martins School of Art and Central/St. Martins School of Art in London, and currently lives and works in New York. Primarily known as a painter, Tyson has also worked with photography, film, performance and the written word, in addition to running Trial BALLOON, an NYC project space in the early 90s. In 2023, Nicola Tyson: Selected Paintings 1993-2022, the most comprehensive overview of the artist’s work to date, was published. In 2011, Tyson released the limited-edition book Dead Letter Men, which is a collection of satirical letters addressing famous male artists. Her unique archive of color photos documenting the London club scene of the late 1970’s — Bowie Nights at Billy’s Club — was the subject of shows, both in New York and London, in 2012 and 2013. In 2025, Tyson was commissioned for Hayward Gallery’s public project banner. Tyson has mounted solo exhibitions at Petzel Gallery, New York (2026, 2025, 2024, 2020, 2016); Nino Mier Gallery, Los Angeles (2024); Nino Mier Gallery, Brussels (2022); Sadie Coles HQ, London (2021, 2017, 2013); The Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis, St. Louis (2017); The Drawing Room, London (2017); Nathalia Obadia, Paris (2015); Susanne Vielmetter Gallery, Los Angeles (2014); White Columns, New York (2012), among others. She has participated in group exhibitions at the Design Museum, London (2025); The Modern Art Museum of Forth Worth, Fort Worth (2022); Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago (2021); Drawing Room, London (2021, 2018); Drawing Center, New York (2020); Whitechapel Gallery, London (2018); Cleveland Institute of Art, Cleveland (2016); Wexner Center for the Arts (2013); and Museum of Modern Art, New York (2012); among others. Tyson’s work is included in major collections such as Museum of Modern Art, New York; Whitney Museum of Art, New York; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia; Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; UCLA Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.; and Tate Modern, London. Nicola Tyson, Random Attachments, 2026 Charcoal, conte, pastel on sanded paper 50 x 38 in 127 x 96.5 cm. Photo: Meg Symanow Courtesy of the artist and Petzel, New York. Nicola Tyson Nature Nurture, 2026 Charcoal, conte, pastel on sanded paper 50 x 38 in 127 x 96.5 cm. Photo: Meg Symanow Courtesy of the artist and Petzel, New York. Nicola Tyson Motherload, 2026 Charcoal, conte, pastel on sanded paper 50 x 38 in 127 x 96.5 cm. Photo: Meg Symanow Courtesy of the artist and Petzel, New York.

Christina Kruse, the New York-based artist whose practice navigates the shifting terrain of value, perception, and collective meaning, opens her latest solo exhibition Field Agents this April 2nd, 2026 at New Discretions. Curated by Tamar Dresdner, the exhibition unfolds as a study in instability – where systems of belief are unsettled and reassembled in response to a world in flux. Working across sculpture, wall relief, and collage, Kruse positions negotiation not as resolution, but as a condition of existence – an ongoing recalibration between competing truths. Bruchlinien (Fault Lines), 2026 Bedingter Anspruch (Contingent Claim), 2026 Der Erbe (The Heir), 2026 Der Porter (The Porter), 2024

In this new body of work, Giordanne Salley constructs shifting tableaus that attempt to visualize not time itself, but the feeling of the passage of time. Our experiences of life can often feel like we are riding along on time’s arrow. Days repeat and build like the rhythm of waves lapping at the shore. Each tide brings forth trash and treasures, bits of flora and fauna, before the lunar cycle pulls them back out to sea. So too does one’s conscious experience of life move through time, accumulating, folding in on itself, and gradually building into the future. Ripples and corrugations form over Salley’s images, diffracting their shapes into myriad frames. Like peering at the bottom of the sea through the waves, we see the subjects dance in the minute turbulence. In pieces like Endlings, these scenes verge on abstraction. Though semi-psychedelic in their optical qualities, Salley’s paintings are rooted in the natural world. Animals and human forms bathe in the undulations, adding a moment of specificity while also acting as a tether to reality and a reminder that these patterns depict the fluctuating surface of water. Coursing through glowing layers of energy, works like Infinity Loon pair discernible imagery with vibrating geometry. The waterfowl, leaving a wake in the paint behind it, upsets the lines and creates a cascading pattern that echoes toward the edges of the frame. Though often based around real-world subjects, in these new works, Salley does away with the horizon line in an effort to flatten the surface and invoke a feeling of the infinite. Repetitive and continuous, her lines and patterns are full of potential as they press onward and outward. Finding her color by applying paint in numerous thin layers, Salley works around predetermined lines, building up meditative markings of the hours spent. With every new application, the image grows richer. The use of collage and underdrawing affords each canvas a nuanced texture, both physical and visual. In Time Flows, Salley combines these elements as “a sort of scaffolding to hang the painting on or around.” Intense investigation rewards the viewer with subtle glimpses into the artist’s process. Each piece becomes a palimpsest, offering ghostly reminders of the past that push through to the final image. At the heart of all of this is a potent rumination on universal themes through the lens of Salley’s own subjectivity. Like time, so too do ideas of love, loss, and memory ebb and flow infinitely like the tides. Slipping through fingers like the ocean in our hand, the present is instantaneous and always on the way out. Salley slows down these moments, capturing them in paint and offering a moment of contemplation and reverie, reminding us that everything is always changing and evolving. Reflecting the world around it, offering vital nourishment to life, and functioning as a symbol of the incomprehensible vastness of time and consciousness, water is transformative. Subtle Bodies, 2025, 12 x 14 in, oil and paper on canvas Quasi-Material Woman, 2026, 40 x 48 in, oil and paper on canvas Time Flows, 2026, 60 x 78 in, oil and paper on canvas