Painting&

Grounded in a contemporary and regional context, the exhibition features newly commissioned artwork by Cicely Carew, Chanel Thervil, Kate Holcomb Hale, and Soyoung L. Kim. Painting& presents these artists together for the first time. Says the curator:

“This group exhibition examines the porosity and mutability of painting through a collaboration with four artists living and working in New England. With practices grounded in the process and materiality of painting, these artists engage in a hybrid, multiple-media approach to making, equally calling upon traditions of muralism, sculpture, installation, performance, new media, and more.

Artists include: Cicely Carew, utilizing lyrical, spontaneous expressionism to manufacture a total environment primed for healing; Kate Holcomb Hale, investigating the psychological potential of memory-laden architecture to encourage profound empathetic responses; Soyoung L. Kim, tapping into the narrative potential of the painted archive by juxtaposing ephemeral performance with static picture; Chanel Thervil, documenting individual members and moments of community building to amplify the work of the greater collective.

The artwork presented in this exhibition draws from artists’ established painting practices while offering space for newly commissioned work to unfold in a large-scale installation format. Distilled into four distinct expressions of painting in the expanded field, Painting& interrogates the definition and delineation of a medium through augmentation, amendment, and expansion. It’s both something and something more.”

About the artists

Cicely Carew (b. 1982, Los Angeles, CA) is a Boston-based artist, educator, and wellness coach whose multimedia works blur the boundaries between disciplines in an expression of sensory transfiguration and delight. Carew completed her MFA at Lesley Art + Design in Cambridge and her BFA at Massachusetts College of Art + Design in Boston. Recent solo exhibitions include Fitchburg Art Museum (Fitchburg, MA); The Commons Provincetown (Provincetown, MA); Simmons University (Boston, MA); and Northeastern University (Boston, MA). Carew’s recent honors include the ICA Boston’s James and Audrey Foster Prize (2023) and the Brother Thomas Fellowship (2023).

Chanel Thervil (b. 1991, Miami, FL) is a Haitian-American artist and educator who uses varying combinations of abstraction and portraiture to convene communal dialogue around culture, social issues, and existential questions. At the core of her practice lies a desire to empower and inspire tenderness and healing among communities of color through the arts. She holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Painting from Pace University and a master’s degree in art education from Massachusetts College of Art and Design. She’s been making a splash in New England via her educational collaborations, public art, and residencies with institutions like The Museum of Fine Arts (Boston, MA), The Boston Children’s Museum (Boston, MA), Mass MoCA (North Adams, MA), The DeCordova Museum (Lincoln, MA), and The Surf Point Foundation (York, ME).

Kate Holcomb Hale (b. 1976, Buffalo, NY) is an interdisciplinary artist who lives and works in greater Boston, MA. Kate’s installations, hand-sewn soft sculptures, and paper clay impressions act as vehicles to consider the burden and privilege of care, grief, the residue of families, and the invisible labor that occurs within the domestic sphere. Kate received her MFA in critical theory and studio art from Maine College of Art in Portland, Maine. She has exhibited throughout the United States and internationally including exhibitions at The Danforth Art Museum (Framingham, MA), Zabludowicz Collection (London UK), Praise Shadows Art Gallery (Boston MA), LaiSun Keane Gallery (Boston MA), Spilt Milk Gallery (Edinburgh Scotland), and the ICA (Portland ME).

Soyoung L. Kim (b. 1974, Seoul, South Korea) was born in Seoul, South Korea, grew up in Nairobi, Kenya, and lives and works in Boston, MA. Her background as 교포 Gyopo, as part of the Korean diaspora, allows her to move freely across artistic disciplines to create new works that blend those disciplines. She received her MFA from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago. In 2021, she received the Live Arts Boston Grant from The Boston Foundation. She has exhibited in both solo and group shows, including the Boston Center for the Arts (Boston, MA), Simmons University (Boston, MA), and Pao Arts Center (Boston, MA).