Huma Bhabha, Valérie Blass, Sascha Braunig, Antoine Catala, Ian Cheng, Simon Dybbroe Møller, Cécile B. Evans, Andro Wekua, and Lynette Yiadom-Boakye

The figure is a persistent and compelling subject for artists. Representations of the body channel our desires, vulnerabilities, and anxieties—to confront the figure is also to confront one’s own sense of personhood. In this contemporary moment, when notions of individuality seem to be increasingly unsettled, the body has re-emerged as a site of urgent inquiry.

“Stranger” examines recent developments in figuration that speak to the continually evolving (and dissolving) notion of being. Many of the artists in the exhibition use traditional forms of painting and sculpture to create works with personality, power, and unnerving self-possession. Others employ the distancing effects of the camera to contemplate how people are projected, connected to, and consumed. Moving into the digital realm, several works on view explore online personas, disembodied being, and artificial intelligence.

Across this range of genres and forms, the artists in “Stranger” consider how we perceive, construct, and understand individual experience through the concepts of “body” and “presence.” They demonstrate the figure’s continued relevance, exploring it as a forceful, unsettled, and inescapable vessel for consciousness.

Ian Cheng, Something Thinking of You (still), 2015