Summer Shows Opening Reception

Join us to celebrate the opening of two new exhibitions: Grant Whipple's 'Redwood Ripples' and the group show 'Under Negotiation.'

Celebrate the opening of two new summer exhibitions at Amos Eno Gallery. Redwood Ripples features new paintings by Grant Whipple that explore climate change, ecological transformation, and the ways environmental forces shape the creative process. In the Project Space, curator Zoë Elena Moldenhauer presents Under Negotiation, a group exhibition featuring Lynn Basa, Susan Poirier, Margarita Fainshtein, Sam Shaffer, Zoë Elena Moldenhauer, and Patricia Tewes Richards. Working across ceramics, painting, collage, fiber, drawing, and sculpture, the artists examine themes of adaptation, memory, identity, and transformation. Join us on Friday, July 24, from 6–8 p.m. to meet the artists, explore both exhibitions, and celebrate the opening of our summer season. Light refreshments will be served, and admission is free.

Grant Whipple Redwood Ripples

On view July 23 to August 23

Amos Eno Gallery is pleased to present Redwood Ripples, a solo exhibition of new paintings by Grant Whipple. The exhibition explores not only how climate change can be represented, but how it directly reshapes the act of making itself. Created in the aftermath of intense winter storms, these works emerged from a studio transformed by rising floodwaters, shifting debris, and persistent uncertainty, prompting the artist to adapt his process in response to rapidly changing conditions.

Across the exhibition, torrents of watery pigment pool, disperse, and stain the canvas, allowing each surface to twist, warp, and respond to its own evolving conditions. Rust, sediment, and accumulated residue evoke the movement of mud and detritus across the forest floor, collapsing the boundary between image and material. Freed from traditional stretcher frames, the paintings hang directly from strips of local redwood, remaining physically responsive as they flex, curl, and breathe within the gallery space.

The exhibition is also rooted in Whipple's longstanding practice of growing plants hydroponically in glass jars, carefully tending them by adding water each day and observing the intricate growth of their exposed roots. That sustained act of care gradually seeped into his painting practice. Rather than simply applying pigment, Whipple began "watering" his paintings — repeatedly reintroducing moisture as a gesture of preservation, resilience, and endurance.

The paintings themselves echo this cycle of continual adaptation. Raised from the ground and suspended from redwood supports, they evoke the physical sensation of rising, awakening, and struggling to remain upright. They become metaphors for persistence through environmental instability — for holding on through atmospheric rivers, tornado sirens, growth, and decay. As surfaces erode and pigments shift, deeper layers of carbon black and iron red emerge, revealing material histories that were present all along.

Embracing ephemerality, instability, and transformation, Whipple invites environmental forces to become active collaborators in the work. Here, surrender is not an act of defeat, but a willingness to accept the evolving aesthetics of a planet in transition.

The gallery will celebrate the exhibition with an opening reception on Friday, July 24, from 6 to 8 p.m. Works and installation images will also be available on Artsy.

The gallery will be open for its usual hours (Thursdays through Sundays, noon to 6 p.m.) through July 26. In August, the gallery will be open on Saturdays and Sundays only from noon to 6 p.m. through August 23.

About the Artist

Grant Whipple is an artist and educator whose studio practice focuses on twenty-first century ecological emergencies, technological innovations, and porous borders through drawing, painting, and process-based experimentation. Born in Chicago, Whipple received his BA from DePauw University and an MFA from Michigan State University. He is currently an Assistant Professor of Teaching in the Art Department at the University of California, Santa Cruz.

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THE PROJECT SPACE

Group Show: Under Negotiation
On view: July 23 – August 23

Curated by Zoë Elena Moldenhauer, Under Negotiation brings together six artists working across drawing, ceramics, painting, fiber, collage, and sculpture to examine the ongoing processes of adaptation, transformation, and exchange. Rather than presenting negotiation as a singular act, the exhibition reveals it as a continual condition — between material and maker, memory and erasure, visibility and concealment, gravity and balance, growth and decay, identity and belonging.

Through works that range from intimate, process-driven objects to poetic explorations of landscape, language, and myth, the exhibition invites viewers to consider negotiation not as compromise, but as an essential force shaping both artistic practice and everyday life.

Under Negotiation is on view at The Project Space from July 23 through August 23, and the opening reception will be held in conjunction with Whipple’s celebration on Friday, July 24, from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m.

The gallery will be open for its usual hours (Thursdays through Sundays, noon to 6 p.m.) through July 26. In August, the gallery will be open on Saturdays and Sundays only from noon to 6 p.m. through August 23.

Please note there is a steep staircase to access this area.

About the Artists

Lynn Basa’s ceramic sculptures are feral, yet soft vessels. Her Slip pieces evoke volcanic magma that fold into palm-sized stones. A closer look reveals the delicate and careful imprint of the artist's hand to create objects that appear to be an archaeological discovery.

Susan Poirier manipulates paper, clawing and sanding the surface to create works that do not immediately read as paper. Her practice is a process of healing, layering paint to cleanse and transform material, offering viewers a moment to reflect.

Margarita Fainshtein is an archivist. Using family documents, photographs, and oral history, Fainshtein creates installations that question notions of place, identity, and erasure. Her work is an act of preservation that holds memories of her past and present.

Sam Shaffer creates stories about color. Through quick brushstrokes and slow pours of watercolor, Shaffer captures a fleeting moment of a memory or dream. Like looking at clouds that hold their shape for a moment, Shaffer’s work becomes a living, fantastical world.

Using a fictional alphabet she created, Zoë Elena Moldenhauer works between collage, printmaking, and found objects. Her alphabet is a tool for creating identity and tracing her ancestry. Her works are playful, using materials like plastic bread tags or zippers that add another absurd layer to her alphabet.

Patricia Tewes Richards blends magical realism and mythical archetypes. Through painting, Richards employs humor, tilting the familiar into the strange. Her paintings build spaces of visual wit and disarming beauty, where spirit and matter, play and danger, the past and future converge in strange harmony.

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ABOUT AMOS ENO GALLERY

Founded in 1974 in SoHo, Amos Eno Gallery has been a fixture of New York City's nonprofit arts community for more than fifty years. Now located on the Lower East Side, the gallery is operated by a community of professional artists from New York City and across the country, together with a part-time director.

The gallery is located at 191 Henry Street between Jefferson and Clinton Streets on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. It’s a 5 minute walk from the F Train’s East Broadway Station and a 10 minute walk from the J Train’s Delancey Street - Essex Street Station.

Amos Eno Gallery's programs are made possible by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature.

Our nonprofit, artist-run space is also supported through the generosity of the Joseph Roberts Foundation.