Aspen Art Museum
Current Exhibitions
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Meet the Artists
Works by these artists and more will be auctioned in support of the Aspen Art Museum during ArtCrush 2024. Each work has been generously donated by artists and their galleries. To celebrate our milestone anniversaries, the museum has offered to share proceeds with donating artists, a practice which will remain a cornerstone of ArtCrush for years to come.
Discover some of the participating artists here and view the complete selection of works in person at the AAM from July 17 to August 3 or online at christies.com/aspenartmuseum.
Compiled with the support of the AAM’s Collector Committee, co-chaired by Abigail Ross Goodman and Molly Epstein, the exhibition brings together over 50 artists across a wide range of disciplines.
Discover some of the participating artists here and view the complete selection of works in person at the AAM from July 17 to August 3 or online at christies.com/aspenartmuseum.
Compiled with the support of the AAM’s Collector Committee, co-chaired by Abigail Ross Goodman and Molly Epstein, the exhibition brings together over 50 artists across a wide range of disciplines.
For their 2023 exhibition at Artists Space in New York, Jonathan Lyndon Chase took on the barbershop—reclaiming the setting and the service it provides as a Black, queer space.
As often in their work, Chase created an entire environment, populated with bold, figurative paintings of people being coiffed (some canvases embedded with actual hair products) and soft sculptures, reminiscent of those of Claes Oldenburg, including a giant brush, clippers and a tub of pomade.
Awarded a fellowship in 2022 by the Joan Mitchell Foundation, Chase explains in an interview on the foundation’s website: “My work is primarily about everyday experiences: what it’s like being a city person, a Black person, a queer person, and also being nonbinary. The body and space relationships between the private and the public are really important to me. […] But I’m really interested in beauty, the body at rest, showing love and tenderness in my work, and also eroticism.”
A Baptist upbringing has informed Chase’s work, which has since absorbed influences from music, film and visual art, including the work of Romare Bearden, Kerry James Marshall and Henry Taylor. Inspiration comes, too, from the city, poetry, dreams and photography, and, in 2020, they published their first book, wild wild Wild West / Haunting of the Seahorse, which experiments with the genres of science fiction and horror.
Chase lives and works in their hometown of Philadelphia. Their work is held in numerous important collections, including the Institute of Contemporary Arts, Miami; Los Angeles County Museum of Art; Philadelphia Museum of Art; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; and Whitney Museum of American Art, New York.
As often in their work, Chase created an entire environment, populated with bold, figurative paintings of people being coiffed (some canvases embedded with actual hair products) and soft sculptures, reminiscent of those of Claes Oldenburg, including a giant brush, clippers and a tub of pomade.
Awarded a fellowship in 2022 by the Joan Mitchell Foundation, Chase explains in an interview on the foundation’s website: “My work is primarily about everyday experiences: what it’s like being a city person, a Black person, a queer person, and also being nonbinary. The body and space relationships between the private and the public are really important to me. […] But I’m really interested in beauty, the body at rest, showing love and tenderness in my work, and also eroticism.”
A Baptist upbringing has informed Chase’s work, which has since absorbed influences from music, film and visual art, including the work of Romare Bearden, Kerry James Marshall and Henry Taylor. Inspiration comes, too, from the city, poetry, dreams and photography, and, in 2020, they published their first book, wild wild Wild West / Haunting of the Seahorse, which experiments with the genres of science fiction and horror.
Chase lives and works in their hometown of Philadelphia. Their work is held in numerous important collections, including the Institute of Contemporary Arts, Miami; Los Angeles County Museum of Art; Philadelphia Museum of Art; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; and Whitney Museum of American Art, New York.
Derek Fordjour is best known for his large-scale paintings which combine acrylic with charcoal, pastel, foil and other materials on newspaper—the salmon pink pages of the Financial Times, to be precise—all mounted on canvas. Figures—often engaged in sports or some kind of performance—repeat to create a pulsating rhythm. In Aquatic Composition (2019), held in the collection of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, swimmers plough up and down the pool, their uniform white swim caps bobbing above the surface, rotating arms throwing up spray. Painted in Fordjour’s signature vibrant tones, the cheerful bunting and lane-dividers here bring the intense details and patterning typical of his work. In Chorus of Maternal Grief (2020), held in the Guggenheim Museum, New York, the robes of female singers merge into a sea of sumptuous purple, echoing the harmonies of the music we cannot hear. Full of energy, the paintings are also imbued with a sense of nostalgia, their dapper figures exuding an old world glamor.
There is a great deal of joy in Fordjour’s work, but also darkness. Pall Bearers (2020), in the collection of the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, shows six figures in top hats and tails, heads bowed, carrying a gold casket—a work inspired by images of George Floyd’s funeral. In a conversation with Trevor Noah for Interview magazine in 2023, the comedian and presenter shrewdly observed his friend’s work to be “both a celebration of the Black experience and its excellence and power, and at the same time, it’s an examination of everything that Black people have had to experience.”
Fordjour was born in Memphis, TN, and lives and works in New York. He was the Alex Katz Chair at Cooper Union and served as a Core Critic at the Yale School of Art.
There is a great deal of joy in Fordjour’s work, but also darkness. Pall Bearers (2020), in the collection of the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, shows six figures in top hats and tails, heads bowed, carrying a gold casket—a work inspired by images of George Floyd’s funeral. In a conversation with Trevor Noah for Interview magazine in 2023, the comedian and presenter shrewdly observed his friend’s work to be “both a celebration of the Black experience and its excellence and power, and at the same time, it’s an examination of everything that Black people have had to experience.”
Fordjour was born in Memphis, TN, and lives and works in New York. He was the Alex Katz Chair at Cooper Union and served as a Core Critic at the Yale School of Art.
There is a dynamism to Emma McIntyre’s paintings. It is as if the process of becoming is not yet resolved—their energy has been captured, their organic forms arrested in flight. Either large or small—nothing in between—McIntyre favors a strong palette, often using a restricted selection of colors within each work, with one tone in particular dominating the whole. She combines oil, acrylic, oil stick and other materials, adding in a chemical solution which reacts with iron-based pigment; its rusting effect is almost instantaneous, but the colors mutate further over time.
McIntyre begins by pouring her paint onto a flat support, allowing chance to play a protagonist’s role. Once she has reoriented the work, she adds further marks, using brushes, rags and her fingers. In recent paintings, recognizable details have emerged amid the abstractions—plants and signs of animal life. In an article from 2022 for Cultured, Dean Kissick quotes McIntyre as explaining, “Sometimes it feels like I can almost see the finished work, and the painting process is about finding it.”
McIntyre acknowledges the influence of a number of greats, including Sigmar Polke, Helen Frankenthaler, Joan Mitchell and Cy Twombly. Her enigmatic titles, such as Laws of night and honey, The gospel of translucence, Queen of the air, Doth mutation love (all 2023), add an extra layer of poetry to these beautiful and intriguing works. Born in Auckland, New Zealand, McIntyre completed her undergraduate studies and first Master’s degree there and, in 2021, she completed a second MFA at the ArtCenter College of Design in Pasadena. She continues to live and work in Los Angeles.
McIntyre begins by pouring her paint onto a flat support, allowing chance to play a protagonist’s role. Once she has reoriented the work, she adds further marks, using brushes, rags and her fingers. In recent paintings, recognizable details have emerged amid the abstractions—plants and signs of animal life. In an article from 2022 for Cultured, Dean Kissick quotes McIntyre as explaining, “Sometimes it feels like I can almost see the finished work, and the painting process is about finding it.”
McIntyre acknowledges the influence of a number of greats, including Sigmar Polke, Helen Frankenthaler, Joan Mitchell and Cy Twombly. Her enigmatic titles, such as Laws of night and honey, The gospel of translucence, Queen of the air, Doth mutation love (all 2023), add an extra layer of poetry to these beautiful and intriguing works. Born in Auckland, New Zealand, McIntyre completed her undergraduate studies and first Master’s degree there and, in 2021, she completed a second MFA at the ArtCenter College of Design in Pasadena. She continues to live and work in Los Angeles.
Writing in 2019 for Tate Etc. about the French painter Pierre Bonnard (1867–1947), the critic Barry Schwabsky observes, “Bonnard’s was an art of flux. He eschewed the clear, well-defined forms of classical art to orchestrate a symphony of coloured blurs and smudges that only gradually add up to scenes of everyday life. Each patch of colour is, in itself, a distinct vibration, a different frequency, and, at the same time, each one communicates something of its own inner motion to all the others, little by little, as the eye moves back and forth among them.”
The interpretation feels pertinent to the work of Shota Nakamura; the resonances between his work and that of Bonnard and his fellow Nabis painters are strong. The stylization and use of color—at once bold and muted; the simplified forms and flatness that also recall the work of another earlier French painter, Pierre Puvis de Chavannes (1824–1898). But in the subject matter, too: landscapes and gardens, domestic interiors and the two combined.
Nakamura grew up in the mountainous prefecture of Yamanishi, Japan, near Mount Fuji, a long way from rural France, but his dreamlike landscapes could be anywhere. Painting with oil on linen, there is a lightness to his touch, an ethereal quality that recalls the oneiric aspect of some of Peter Doig’s work. The figures themselves are like apparitions. Often sleeping, sometimes reading, they are only partially present—their minds elsewhere, their bodies assuming a ghostly presence.
Nakamura moved from Yamanashi to Tokyo to study art, before moving on to Berlin, where he continues to live and work.
The interpretation feels pertinent to the work of Shota Nakamura; the resonances between his work and that of Bonnard and his fellow Nabis painters are strong. The stylization and use of color—at once bold and muted; the simplified forms and flatness that also recall the work of another earlier French painter, Pierre Puvis de Chavannes (1824–1898). But in the subject matter, too: landscapes and gardens, domestic interiors and the two combined.
Nakamura grew up in the mountainous prefecture of Yamanishi, Japan, near Mount Fuji, a long way from rural France, but his dreamlike landscapes could be anywhere. Painting with oil on linen, there is a lightness to his touch, an ethereal quality that recalls the oneiric aspect of some of Peter Doig’s work. The figures themselves are like apparitions. Often sleeping, sometimes reading, they are only partially present—their minds elsewhere, their bodies assuming a ghostly presence.
Nakamura moved from Yamanashi to Tokyo to study art, before moving on to Berlin, where he continues to live and work.
Angels, dragons and other fantastic beasts dominate the paintings of Robert Nava. The roughly rendered creatures are inspired by a diverse range of sources, from prehistoric cave art to cartoons, from philosophy and religion to video games. Combining acrylic with grease pencil and spray paint, Nava’s naive, playful images exude a raw energy. What the absurdity and cartoon-like violence lack in horror, they make up for with comedy. There is a firm nod toward Jean-Michel Basquiat, and maybe even Jean Dubuffet, and without doubt the work evokes the “‘Bad’ Painting” named by critic and curator Marcia Tucker back in the late 1970s. In an interview in 2019, cited by Owen Duffy writing in 2022 for Art Review, the artist Katherine Bradford makes the bold suggestion that Nava “paints figures almost the way Cy Twombly would have, had he painted figures.”
Discussing Nava’s determination to “deskill,” Duffy himself writes, “He renders three-dimensional objects with a distorted sense of flatness and messy linework.” But, of course, as with all those that went before him, the naivety is knowing, for as Nava himself explained in an interview with émergent magazine, “there’s just a lot more room in what people would call the ‘incorrect’ ways of painting.”
Born in East Chicago, Nava lives in Brooklyn. In 2011, he graduated from Yale School of Art, New Haven, with an MFA in painting. His work is held in the collections of a significant number of museums around the world, including the Art Institute of Chicago; Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, D.C.; Los Angeles County Museum of Art; and Museum of Fine Arts, Houston.
Discussing Nava’s determination to “deskill,” Duffy himself writes, “He renders three-dimensional objects with a distorted sense of flatness and messy linework.” But, of course, as with all those that went before him, the naivety is knowing, for as Nava himself explained in an interview with émergent magazine, “there’s just a lot more room in what people would call the ‘incorrect’ ways of painting.”
Born in East Chicago, Nava lives in Brooklyn. In 2011, he graduated from Yale School of Art, New Haven, with an MFA in painting. His work is held in the collections of a significant number of museums around the world, including the Art Institute of Chicago; Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, D.C.; Los Angeles County Museum of Art; and Museum of Fine Arts, Houston.
Naudline Pierre’s cast of characters inhabit a parallel world. A peaceful one painted in rich earth tones. Its inhabitants float in a void or huddle together, their bodies entwined in acts of tenderness. Flames whip around them, engulfing them, but seemingly without danger. Many are winged, offering the potential for escape. The images are sensual, but also possessed of a certain innocence. And at their center is one particular female figure, who on occasion the artist has described as her alter ego.
Having found her way into painting through religious art, Pierre has gone on to create her own mythology. In a short film made in 2021 she declared, “I think imagination is so important to survival.” The swirling symbolism of her canvases recalls the work of the British poet and painter William Blake, and Pierre herself has cited the influence of other European masters: Goya, Caravaggio and El Greco. The title of her first solo museum show, “What Could Be Has Not Yet Appeared,” at the Dallas Museum of Art in 2021, conveys the exploration of spirituality that anchors her work. Cited in a 2021 article for W Magazine, the curator of the exhibition, Hilde Nelson, explained what she sees to be common to the work of historical European religious paintings and those of Pierre: “At their core, [they] are about faith and the unseen and what lies beyond us—how we can find connection in an uncertain world.”
Born in Leominster, Pierre lives and works in Brooklyn. She was a 2019–20 artist-in-residence at the Studio Museum in Harlem, New York, and her work can be found in numerous museum collections, including the Pérez Art Museum, Miami, and the Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art, Kansas City.
Having found her way into painting through religious art, Pierre has gone on to create her own mythology. In a short film made in 2021 she declared, “I think imagination is so important to survival.” The swirling symbolism of her canvases recalls the work of the British poet and painter William Blake, and Pierre herself has cited the influence of other European masters: Goya, Caravaggio and El Greco. The title of her first solo museum show, “What Could Be Has Not Yet Appeared,” at the Dallas Museum of Art in 2021, conveys the exploration of spirituality that anchors her work. Cited in a 2021 article for W Magazine, the curator of the exhibition, Hilde Nelson, explained what she sees to be common to the work of historical European religious paintings and those of Pierre: “At their core, [they] are about faith and the unseen and what lies beyond us—how we can find connection in an uncertain world.”
Born in Leominster, Pierre lives and works in Brooklyn. She was a 2019–20 artist-in-residence at the Studio Museum in Harlem, New York, and her work can be found in numerous museum collections, including the Pérez Art Museum, Miami, and the Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art, Kansas City.
Marina Rheingantz’s landscapes come from memories of real places. In the beginning, she drew upon the countryside of her childhood, around her family’s farm in Brazil, but her references have since expanded. Writing in the New York Times in 2018, Roberta Smith observes that the paintings of Rheingantz “recalibrate the work of Cy Twombly and Anselm Kiefer into large, semi-abstract landscapes full of ambiguous forms and details that are deeply dystopian in mood. They’re beautiful wastelands writ small, delicately dotted with suggestions of trash; ruined structures and abandoned encampments; occasional tiny flags or palm trees; and enticing little pile ups of paint.”
In recent times, Rheingantz has begun to make tapestries and embroideries in collaboration with her mother. In her work, sometimes the starting point is a specific reference, while at other times it is more abstract. Talking to Rory Mitchell in 2022 for Ocula, she says, “My painting process is instinctive in a way, it’s not controlled.” She goes on to explain that she is often energized by a sense of anger and frustration, fueled by the turmoil and corruption of Brazilian politics of the last few years.
Rheingantz was born in Araraquara, Brazil, and now lives in São Paulo. Her work is included in numerous prestigious public and private collections, including the Centre Pompidou and Pinault Collection, Paris; Institute of Contemporary Art and Rubell Museum, Miami; and Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.
In recent times, Rheingantz has begun to make tapestries and embroideries in collaboration with her mother. In her work, sometimes the starting point is a specific reference, while at other times it is more abstract. Talking to Rory Mitchell in 2022 for Ocula, she says, “My painting process is instinctive in a way, it’s not controlled.” She goes on to explain that she is often energized by a sense of anger and frustration, fueled by the turmoil and corruption of Brazilian politics of the last few years.
Rheingantz was born in Araraquara, Brazil, and now lives in São Paulo. Her work is included in numerous prestigious public and private collections, including the Centre Pompidou and Pinault Collection, Paris; Institute of Contemporary Art and Rubell Museum, Miami; and Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.
Kathleen Ryan is best known for her large-scale sculptures of gem-encrusted decaying fruit.
The “Bad Fruit” series, begun in 2018, makes a tongue-in-cheek, pop-enhanced nod to 17th-century Dutch still lifes. As Ryan explained in an interview with Elephant in 2019, “All the works have something to do with mortality […]—fruit is dying, but mold is thriving.”
In a laborious and painstaking process, the entire surface of each giant polystyrene form is gradually covered with thousands upon thousands of beads and stones. The ripe, juicy flesh of watermelons, lemons and cherries is gradually built up from a dizzying array of glass beads and natural materials, such as quartz, marble, amethyst, amber, freshwater pearl, garnet, lapis lazuli, shells … to name just a few. And then there is the encroaching mold—swarming across the surface, burrowing its way down, rendered in natural gemstones selected for their white or green hue.
In the same interview, Alice Bucknell asked about a possible moralistic reading of the work, to which Ryan responded: “Not really—I’m interested in how people relate to value, and my sculptures are a way of teasing out that relationship and playing with our sense of judgment. In a sense, my work can be read as a critique of wild consumerism and displays of wealth, but it also totally, happily indulges in it. The works are skeptical of the ‘more is more’ attitude, and are also like, well fuck it, more is more.”
Born in Santa Monica, Ryan now lives in New York. Her work is included in numerous notable public collections, including the Nasher Sculpture Center, Dallas, and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Her first major museum survey, featuring around 30 works from 2014 to the present day, is on view at the Hamburger Kunsthalle in Germany through August 11.
The “Bad Fruit” series, begun in 2018, makes a tongue-in-cheek, pop-enhanced nod to 17th-century Dutch still lifes. As Ryan explained in an interview with Elephant in 2019, “All the works have something to do with mortality […]—fruit is dying, but mold is thriving.”
In a laborious and painstaking process, the entire surface of each giant polystyrene form is gradually covered with thousands upon thousands of beads and stones. The ripe, juicy flesh of watermelons, lemons and cherries is gradually built up from a dizzying array of glass beads and natural materials, such as quartz, marble, amethyst, amber, freshwater pearl, garnet, lapis lazuli, shells … to name just a few. And then there is the encroaching mold—swarming across the surface, burrowing its way down, rendered in natural gemstones selected for their white or green hue.
In the same interview, Alice Bucknell asked about a possible moralistic reading of the work, to which Ryan responded: “Not really—I’m interested in how people relate to value, and my sculptures are a way of teasing out that relationship and playing with our sense of judgment. In a sense, my work can be read as a critique of wild consumerism and displays of wealth, but it also totally, happily indulges in it. The works are skeptical of the ‘more is more’ attitude, and are also like, well fuck it, more is more.”
Born in Santa Monica, Ryan now lives in New York. Her work is included in numerous notable public collections, including the Nasher Sculpture Center, Dallas, and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Her first major museum survey, featuring around 30 works from 2014 to the present day, is on view at the Hamburger Kunsthalle in Germany through August 11.
For Marina Perez Simão, “painting happens where words fail.” The bold, decisive lines and vibrant expanses of color evoke the lush tropical landscapes of a childhood spent between Minas Gerais and Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Semi-abstract, the soft, organic curves pulse with warmth and energy; bursts of sharp orange and the burning yellow of the sun offset aqueous blues and verdant greens. Simão’s declaration above comes from a short film made by Pace Gallery earlier this year to accompany her exhibition in Los Angeles. In the film, she also explains that an exploration of light and movement lies at the heart of her work. The resonance felt between the lines in her paintings should, she says, feel like the ripples that spread through the water when a stone is cast into its depths.
In an interview in 2022 with Elephant magazine, Simão explains that she never works when she is sad. To get her into the “state of courage” she needs to paint, music plays an important role. And, indeed, there is a lyricism to her work—an intensely personal form of expression, but one abundant in its generosity. As she explains in the same film from 2024, for Simão the more meanings the work can contain, the better: “I don’t want to be too descriptive, I don’t want to give too much detail. I want to leave room for the person who’s looking at it. They can be creative as well.”
Born in Vitória, Brazil, Simão studied in Paris, and now lives in São Paulo. Her work is held in a number of public collections, including the Musée d’Art moderne et contemporain de Saint-Étienne in France; Speed Art Museum, Louisville; and University of Chicago.
In an interview in 2022 with Elephant magazine, Simão explains that she never works when she is sad. To get her into the “state of courage” she needs to paint, music plays an important role. And, indeed, there is a lyricism to her work—an intensely personal form of expression, but one abundant in its generosity. As she explains in the same film from 2024, for Simão the more meanings the work can contain, the better: “I don’t want to be too descriptive, I don’t want to give too much detail. I want to leave room for the person who’s looking at it. They can be creative as well.”
Born in Vitória, Brazil, Simão studied in Paris, and now lives in São Paulo. Her work is held in a number of public collections, including the Musée d’Art moderne et contemporain de Saint-Étienne in France; Speed Art Museum, Louisville; and University of Chicago.
Beauty is important to Kennedy Yanko. Speaking with curator Kimberly Drew in a video interview for Cultured in 2020, Yanko explains, “[it] is a very powerful thing, and I think it’s something that moves us and drives us in ways that we don’t even necessarily understand.” For Yanko, “the idea of beauty is contrast”—and it is this belief that lies at the heart of her work. Anchored to the wall, sitting on the floor or suspended from the ceiling, the sculptures combine found metal sourced from East Coast scrap yards with “paint skins,” created by pouring customized latex paint into trays. The monochromatic sheets of paint drape around the battered and bruised metal forms; nudged into the crevices, their crumpled folds cascade down. Alive with a sense of movement, the two materials interact—hard with soft, rough with smooth.
In her 2022 catalogue essay for the exhibition at CFHILL in Stockholm, which paired Yanko’s sculptures with the paintings of the Swedish artist Hilma af Klint (1862–1944), Debra Singer writes, “For many, Yanko’s sculptures may at first appear to be a sort of love child between the work of the late John Chamberlain and that of Lynda Benglis.” Singer goes on to offer her own interpretation, remarking that Yanko’s “choice and handling of her recycled materials allude to the rugged splendor of the urban landscape and to the cyclical nature of life, as manifested in the continuous flow of one form of matter to another.”
Yanko was born in St Louis, studied at the San Francisco Art Institute and now lives in Brooklyn. Her work is included in the collection of the Albertina Museum in Vienna and Rubell Museum, Miami, where she was artist-in-residence in 2021. Her installation No More Drama was recently shown at the Brooklyn Museum through July 28 as part of “Brooklyn Abstraction: Four Artists, Four Walls.”
In her 2022 catalogue essay for the exhibition at CFHILL in Stockholm, which paired Yanko’s sculptures with the paintings of the Swedish artist Hilma af Klint (1862–1944), Debra Singer writes, “For many, Yanko’s sculptures may at first appear to be a sort of love child between the work of the late John Chamberlain and that of Lynda Benglis.” Singer goes on to offer her own interpretation, remarking that Yanko’s “choice and handling of her recycled materials allude to the rugged splendor of the urban landscape and to the cyclical nature of life, as manifested in the continuous flow of one form of matter to another.”
Yanko was born in St Louis, studied at the San Francisco Art Institute and now lives in Brooklyn. Her work is included in the collection of the Albertina Museum in Vienna and Rubell Museum, Miami, where she was artist-in-residence in 2021. Her installation No More Drama was recently shown at the Brooklyn Museum through July 28 as part of “Brooklyn Abstraction: Four Artists, Four Walls.”
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