Spectral Evidence
Curated by Rachael Wren and Sarah Shirley May
Curatorial Assistant: Willoughby Thom
Artists: Joell Baxter, Theresa Daddezio, Minako Iwamura, Marina Kappos, Jenny Kemp, Amy Lincoln, Audrey Stone, Rachael Wren
Exhibition Dates: October 24 - December 7, 2026
Location: The Shirley Project Space, 609 Washington Avenue, Brooklyn NY 11238
Opening Reception: Friday, October 24th 6-9pm
Artist Talk and Reception: Saturday: November 8th 4-6pm
Show Hours: Thursday and Friday 4-7pm, Saturday and Sunday 1-5pm and by appointment.
For press inquiries, images, or additional information, please contact:
Sarah May, 917-691-6910, sarah@theshirleyprojectspace.com
The Shirley Project Space presents Spectral Evidence, a group exhibition that asserts the gradient as a language of transition, an investigation of light, and a reflection of how perception slips between the known and the indeterminate. The 8 artists whose work composes Spectral Evidence are engaged in practices that converge on the gradient as both subject and method. Color and light become tools not to define form, but to dissolve it—transforming mass into vapor, edge into atmosphere, and image into a trace of perception. Historically, shifts in value have been used to create volume and shadow; here, they eliminate weight and soften the natural world into spectral evidence of its presence. The result is artwork that hovers between abstraction and recognition. The gradient expresses order in nature, optical vibration, and the fleeting conditions of seeing. The artworks are meditative, optically charged, and buoyant, where color is both the subject revealed and the revealing agent itself. Though their approaches differ, the artists in Spectral Evidence all share a disciplined precision of craft paired with an openness to intuition. Each work requires patience and sensitivity, yet none feels labored; instead, they unfold with a calm inevitability, like time marked in color.
Joell Baxter is a Brooklyn-based artist and teaching-artist. She has been awarded residencies at the Sharpe-Walentas Studio Program; the Lower East Side Printshop; and the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council. Solo Exhibitions include Kentler International Drawing Center, Brooklyn, NY; the Marsh Gallery at Indiana University, Indianapolis, IN; and the Pacific Design Center in Los Angeles, CA. In 2024 she completed a permanent commission as part of NYC Department of Cultural Affairs’ Public Art for Public Schools. Baxter is also a visual arts teaching artist in the New York City public schools through Partnership with Children and Marquis Studios. She holds an MFA from the University of Illinois at Chicago.
Theresa Daddezio is an artist based in Brooklyn, NY. She received an MFA from Hunter College in Visual Art. Her selected exhibitions include: “Bloom” at DC Moore Gallery, “Holding” at Van Doren Waxter and Kristen Lorello, New York, NY, “Painting As Is II” at Nathalie Karg, New York, NY, “Augurthyms” at Hesse Flatow, New York, NY, “Altum Corpus” at DC Moore Gallery (NY,NY); “Carbona Sunrise,” Transmitter (Brooklyn, NY); “A Mind of Their Own,” Pentimenti (Philadelphia, PA); “Known: Unknown,” New York Studio School (NYC), “Abstraction in the 21st Century,” the University of Hawai’i at Manoa: “Rhythms, Rhymes, Repetitions,” Studio Kura (Itoshima, Japan). Her work has been featured in Two Coats of Paint, New American Paintings, New York Times, Art Maze, Hyperallergic, The Queens Ledger, White Hot Magazine, Bushwick Daily, and The L Magazine, MAAKE Mag, and Coastal Post. She participated in the Sharpe-Walentas Residency in Brooklyn, NY and the Wassaic Residency Project in upstate NY. She currently teaches at Pratt Institute.lives and works in Brooklyn, NY. She received her MFA in Visual Art from Hunter College (2018). She participated in Brooklyn’s Sharpe Walentas Studio Program (2021-22) as well as the Wassaic Residency Project in upstate New York (2018). Daddezio has exhibited work at Nathalie Karg Gallery, Hesse Flatow, DC Moore Gallery, and New York Studio School (New York City); Transmitter Gallery (Brooklyn); Pentimenti Gallery (Philadelphia); the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa; and Studio Kura (Itoshima, Japan). Daddezio’s work was also featured in New American Paintings (2021).
Minako Iwamura (b. Sydney, Australia) is a Brooklyn-based visual artist. Her oil paintings explore the interplay of geometry, pattern, and color, balancing abstraction and organic form to reflect her interest in dualities and the precarious state of “in-betweenness”. She received her BFA from the Rhode Island School of Design, and her work is included in the TD Corporate Art Collection and the Rhode Island School of Design Museum, among others. She is represented by JDJ Gallery in NYC and is scheduled for a solo exhibition in Spring 2026.
Marina Kappos paints in a flat and graphic style, often applying transparent layers of paint that combine together to create optical effects. Her most recent exhibitions include "Ultraviolet Catastrophe" at The Pit Palm Springs (2024), "Spooky Action" at SHRINE in NYC (2024), and "Sun Up Sun Down" at Lighthouse Works in NY (2022). Group exhibitions include "Soft Focus" at The Hole in LA (2025), "Saints and Poets" at Megan Mulrooney, LA (2024), “Painting As Is II” at Nathalie Karg Gallery, NY (2022), and "Show Me The Signs" at Blum & Poe, LA (2020). Kappos received an MFA from the Yale University School of Art in 1997 and a BFA from the California Institute of the Arts in 1995.
Jenny Kemp received her BS in Art from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and her MFA in Painting from the University at Albany. Her work has been exhibited both nationally and internationally, most recently in solo exhibitions at Duane Thomas Gallery in NYC, KennaXu Gallery in Shenzhen, China (in collaboration with Chambers Fine Art), Gold/Montclair in Montclair, NJ, as well as a two-person exhibitions at Turley Gallery in Hudson and Transmitter in New York City. Recent group exhibitions include shows at JDJ, McKenzie Fine Art, 5-50 Gallery, and Kenise Barnes Gallery. Featured publications include 100 Painters of Tomorrow, published by Thames and Hudson, New American Paintings, The Huffington Post, Two Coats of Paint, and Chronogram. She is a 2015 NYFA Fellowship recipient in painting.
New York-based artist Amy Lincoln paints dream-like scenes of imagined landscapes, atmospheric activity and vibrant, fantastical foliage. Recalling her upbringing in Oregon, where beach visits under overcast skies were frequent, Lincoln’s paintings explore the phenomena of light reflection and refraction. She completed her MFA at Temple University’s Tyler School of Art in 2006 and her BA at University of California, Davis in 2003. Lincoln’s work has been the subject of solo exhibitions at Sperone Westwater (2024; 2023; 2021), Taymour Grahne Projects, London (2022), Morgan Lehman Gallery, New York (2018; 2016) and Monya Rowe Gallery, Saint Augustine, FL (2016), among others. Her work has also been featured in numerous group exhibitions including Johansson Projects, Oakland, CA (2024), Columbus Museum of Art, OH (2023), The Hole, New York (2022), Sargent’s Daughters, New York (2018), and Regina Rex, New York (2017), as well as internationally at Galerie Valerie Bach, Brussels, Belgium (2020) and Taymour Grahne Projects, London (2022; 2021). Lincoln has been awarded residencies at the Wave Hill Winter Workspace program, the Inside Out Art Museum Residency in Beijing, and a Swing Space residency from the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council. Her work is in the permanent collections of the Columbus Museum of Art and Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia.
Audrey Stone is an abstract painter whose work is informed by light and color. Her work has been exhibited widely in the US, as well as in Europe and Asia. She received her MFA from Hunter College and her BFA from Pratt Institute, both in painting. A native New Yorker, Stone lives and works in Brooklyn.
Rachael Wren is a Brooklyn-based painter whose atmospheric abstractions have their source in both landscape and memory. Her work explores the tension between structure and space, geometry and randomness, to create a sense of place where form and air mingle with each other. Rachael has had solo shows at Rick Wester Fine Art, The Shirley Project Space, Wave Hill, The String Room Gallery at Wells College, The Painting Center, and Schema Projects. Her work has been included in many group exhibitions nationally and internationally.
