Kelsey Isaacs

b. 1994 Los Angeles, CA

Lives and works in New York, NY

News

The lord will spit out the lukewarm
Group exhibition at Bortolami, New York
Opening January 10, 2025

‘In Conversation with Kelsey Isaacs’
Interview with Robert Frost in émergent magazine

Kelsey Isaacs paints from photographs of scenes she has staged and spotlit. Rhinestones, ribbons, and a cast of plastic miscellany are assembled into compositions that are cropped and skewed into a painted language that alternates between trompe l’oeil and abstraction. Each step of her process is orchestrated, from the refractions of a camera flash to a seemingly candid drip of paint. Isaacs plays off conventions of abstract painting, where historic fetishizations of process and spontaneity are seen as truth. These paintings revolve around objects that call attention to their own surfaces. Whether by highlighting the photographic process or caricaturing the painter's hand, Isaacs works meticulously to build up an artificial reality, only to reveal the apparatus through which it was created.

Kelsey Isaacs (b. 1994, Los Angeles) lives and works in New York City. Solo and two-person exhibitions include: Clima, Milan, IT (2024); Theta, New York (2023); Paris Internationale, presentation with Theta, Paris, FR (2022); and Chapter NY, New York (2022). Recent group exhibitions include: Bortolami, New York (forthcoming, 2025); Zodiac Pictures, Los Angeles (2024); Tara Downs, New York (2023); Soft Opening, London (2023); Venus Over Manhattan, New York (2022); Harkawik, New York (2022); and King’s Leap, New York (2021).