Robert Kushner: I Still  ♥ Matisse at DC Moore

This exhibition  expands upon Kushner’s series of paintings inspired by Matisse still lifes, first shown in 2021. In the winter of 2024, Robert Kushner began his study of Henri Matisse’s major 1915 painting, “Still Life after Jan Davidsz de Heem's La Desserte.” He became fascinated by the history of this Matisse painting, which is itself a variation of a 1640 still life by the Dutch painter Jan Davidsz de Heem (1606-1684). He learned that this 1915 painting was the second time Matisse had painted a copy of the de Heem, and that it was in fact a variation of a copy done by Matisse as a student in 1893. Kushner was captivated by imagining why Matisse chose to revisit his student copy, and in 2024, decided to create his own full-scale version of Matisse’s 1915 painting. Above: La Desserte after Matisse after de Heem, 2024; below: La Desserte II after RK after Matisse after de Heem, 2024

Reworking the composition with beloved objects from his own collection, Kushner embarked on a new collaboration with Matisse and de Heem. Soon after completing his first variation of La Desserte, Kushner then expanded the composition onto two canvases, freeing himself from the proportion of the original painting. Now looking more at his first copy than the Matisse painting, Kushner continued to improvise, substituting more of the color palette and objects in the composition. A year later, in 2025, Kushner returned to La Desserte a third time, introducing vibrant color and pattern, as well as more fruits, flora, and objects of his own.

As Robert Kushner and art historian Charles Stuckey put forth in the catalogue essay, Kushner and Matisse were pursuing the same question in their endeavors: In this painting, how can I incorporate everything that I’ve seen up until now? The three “Desserte” paintings and the companion series of flower paintings reflect Kushner’s deep engagement with visual history and art historical inheritance over the course of his career.

Save the date, Thursday, February 26, 6pm: Artist Talk: Robert Kushner in conversation with poet Ed Friedman

Through March 14 at DC Moore Gallery, 535 West 22^nd Street, New York, NY Info

Friday, February 20, 6-8pm: Melinda Brown | Window Shopping at Derek Eller

Utilizing a combination of screen-printed photographs hybridized with passages painted in impasto or airbrush, Brown mines the rich topography of New York City store windows in her upcoming solo exhibition. With historical precedents like Rauschenberg, Johns, and Warhol who famously engaged with Bonwit Teller’s windows, Brown explores the quirky displays and otherworldly reflections contained within these sites of commerce and longing. She explains:

Window shopping in New York City is like passing crystal balls on a conveyor belt. A pane of glass that reflects the engulfing city is also a portal to a vision of ownership. Artful, shiny retail arrangements suggest how your life might improve if you owned a particular post-apocalyptic loungewear set. A window-dresser’s vision is transmitted to pedestrian imagination via alluring still-lives inside dioramas. This fleeting form of visual marketing rooted in synchronous encounters is already a thing of the past. Desire for purchase is now ignited through ads that track behavior unavoidably inserted before your eyes. Retail is no longer a chance meeting. In this exhibition, I’m depicting that auspicious moment of persuasion when the art of display strikes a core human desire that can only be satisfied by the material world.

Derek Eller Gallery, 38 Walker Street, New York, NY Info
NOTE: Derek Eller Gallery is one of 51+ galleries participating in Winter Downtown Art Night 2026

Friday, February 13, 6-9pm: Grand Opening at Scroll

Grand Opening brings together thirty artists that Scroll has been privileged to work with since its first exhibition in September 2022. The inaugural show elebrates the tremendous talents of these artists from across the US and around the globe. On view are works by Adèle Aproh, Alejandro Sintura, Andrew Gordon, Calli Ryan, Christian Santiago, Claudia Keep, Cody Heichel, Daniel Um, Dylan Williams, Emily Davis Adams, Emily Pettigrew, Hidetaka Suzuki, Jackson Joyce, Jess Allen, Johanna Bath, Kanae Takeuchi, Ko Jiyoung, Lindsay Merrill, Louise Janet, Miho Ichise, Mikey Yates, Nastaran Shahbazi, Niccolò Debole, Nick Hobbs, Rosie Harbottle, Ryan Dobrowski, Sammi Lynch, Sung Hwa Kim, Tony Huynh, Xiangjie Rebecca Wu. Click to see all of the work on view.

Scroll, 291 Grand Street, FL 4, New York, NY Info

Billy Childish | keep mojave weird at Lehmann Maupin

In his newest series, which encompasses both landscape and portrait paintings, acclaimed British artist/musician/poet Billy Childish depicts the western United States in scenes from California—from the Mojave Desert and Joshua Tree to lush Lake Tahoe. Featuring a new series of paintings inspired by a road trip the artist took with his family during the summer of 2025, this body of work focuses on imagery from California, particularly the landscapes of the Mojave Desert, Joshua Tree, and Lake Tahoe. 

Throughout the exhibition, he compresses large swaths of the Sierra Nevada mountain range onto a single canvas, while images from Joshua Tree of massive rock formations and bare expanses of desert are contained in one or two panels. Rendered on an even smaller scale, mono lake (version) (2025) portrays the titular lake in Mono County, CA. The lake is a saline soda lake with exceptionally alkaline water—formed at least 760,000 years ago, its high pH, hypersalinity, and mineral content creates a unique ecosystem and large, otherworldly rock formations. Childish’s depiction distills this unusual environment, evoking an ancient landscape nestled beneath a ring of mountains.

Through February 28 at Lehmann Maupin, 501 W 24th Street, New York, NY Info

Last Chance, Saturday, February 21: Dan Flavin | Grids at David Zwirner

From 1963, when he conceived the diagonal of May 25, 1963 (to Constantin Brancusi), a single gold fluorescent lamp installed diagonally on a wall, until his death in 1996, Flavin produced a singularly consistent and prodigious body of work that utilized commercially available fluorescent lamps to create installations (or “situations,” as he preferred to call them) of light and color. Through these light constructions, Flavin was able to literally establish and redefine space.

More than almost any other format Flavin worked with, the grids simultaneously engage both the phenomenological and the rational concerns that were central to the artist’s practice. As curator Michael Govan observes, the grids count “among the most intense and concentrated of Flavin’s lights.” Constituting one of the artist’s most complex and nuanced chromatic investigations, these constructions are composed of an equal number of vertical fixtures facing backwards and horizontal fixtures facing forwards in varying color combinations. Situated in the corner of a room, they simultaneously project a blend of colors outward towards the viewer and inward into the corner, highlighting the architectural conditions of the space.” 

Façade Foundation Creates New Public Art Opportunities

At any given time, NYC has 8,000+ active scaffold sheds that stay up for an average of 500 days, creating over 1,900,000+ linear feet of scaffolding (source). So how do you turn a construction site into a cultural destination? By turning these ubiquitous negative spaces throughout the city into canvases, the Foundation presents a unique opportunity for artists to share their work with broad audiences and for building owners to leverage their space in collaboration with the city’s vibrant arts community. 

Facade Foundation,  a new public arts non-profit with the mission of transforming NYC’s scaffold netting into a citywide platform for ambitious contemporary art, is now making works accessible, impactful, and woven into the fabric of everyday life. Working closely with artists, estates, and institutions, we facilitate the curation and installation of custom printed scaffold netting onto building facades, in collaboration with construction companies and building owners. Find out more here

Facade Foundation’s latest installation, “Rapunzel” (2025), is the first public presentation of work by Anthony Olubunmi Akinbola (@heyitsbunmi), located at Washington Avenue and Willoughby Avenue, Brooklyn, NY