CFHILL presents a new exhibition centered around contemporary portraiture curated by Sophie Mörner with artists Jonathan Lyndon Chase, Tosh Basco, Colette Lumiere and Cajsa von Zeipel

CFHILL is delighted to once again collaborate with curator Sophie Mörner and present the exhibition New York is for Lovers. Following 2019’s love story about New York, Thank You, Thank You, Thank You, Come Again, we revisit the city’s vibrant art scene in our Main Gallery. The exhibition New York is for Lovers takes a closer look at a group of artists whose practices evolve around portraiture and autobiography: Colette Lumiere, Troy Montes Michie, Jeanette Mundt, Tosh Basco, TM Davy, Cajsa von Zeipel, and Aurel Haize Odogbo.

The exhibition starts with the pioneer Colette Lumiere who began her career in the 1970s, including her series Records from the Story of My Life and a video work of her first living persona Justine. Troy Montes Michie employs collage to explore the histories of powerful groups targeted for oppression, with reinterpretations of zoot suits and montages of archival images. Combining personal and art historical imagery, Jeanette Mundt’s repetitive portraiture sees the artist in a pose with the hands pressed against her abdomen, looking inwards. Tosh Basco here presents works that translate her energetic performance art onto canvas. Jonathan Lyndon Chase creates intimate portraits of Black queer love, while TM Davy portrays the joy of the communities on Fire Island. Aurel Haize Odogbo presents kaleidoscopic collages that are spiritual portraits of futuristic angels. At the centre of the exhibition stand Cajsa von Zeipel’s hyper-realistic silicone figures, intertwined in sexual play.

New York is for Lovers is on view until June 10 at CFHILL.

Jonathan Lyndon Chase (b. 1989, Philadelphia, PA) is an interdisciplinary artist who works in painting, video, sound, and sculpture to depict queer Black love and community. They received their MFA from the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts. Chase’s work is in numerous private and public collections such as the Whitney Museum of American Art, Brooklyn Museum, Walker Art Center, ICA Miami, High Art Museum, LACMA, Bronx Museum, Rubell Museum, Buxton Contemporary Art Museum, Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Art, and Woodmere Museum of Art. Their work has recently been presented in solo exhibitions at the Fabric Workshop Museum and the Pond Society in Shanghai, as well as group exhibitions at the Rudolph Tegner Museum in Dronningmølle, Columbus Museum of Art,
the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and the California African American Museum.

Colette Lumiere (b. Tunis, lives and works in New York) is a trailblazer whose vast and enduring body of work has both innovated and defied the categories of street art, installation, performance, mixed media works, staged photography, and painting from the early 1970s through the present. Declaring herself dead in her performance The Last Stitch, she was reborn as her first living persona Justine and the executor of the late artist’s estate. Colette’s works are in several prestigious collections, including the Guggenheim in New York, MOCA in Los Angeles, the Brooklyn Museum, the Aldrich Museum, the Museum Ludwig in Cologne, the Berlinische Galerie. She has presented her work at the MoMA and MoMA PS1, New Museum, the Musée d’art Moderne in Lausanne, the Berlin Kunstverein, the Museum of Modern Art in Finland, and the Musée National De Montreal. Colette has been the recipient of grants from the Joan Mitchell Foundation, Warhol Foundation, the Pollock-Krasner Foundation, and the National Endowment for the Arts.

Jeanette Mundt completed her graduate degree at Rutgers University and her undergraduate degree at the Pratt Institute in New York. Mundt has had solo exhibitions at Overduin & Co. in LA, Red Tracy in Copenhagen, Société in Berlin, Gavin Brown’s Enterprise, and Green Gallery in Milwaukee. Mundt’s work has also been included in group exhibitions organized by David Zwirner, Kaufmann Repetto, G2 Kunsthalle in Leipzig, Greene Naftali, Galerie Neu in Berlin, and Peter Freeman, Inc. in New York. Her work is included in public collections including the Whitney Museum, the Aïshti Foundation in Lebanon, Kistefos Museum in Norway, and the Museum Ludwig in Germany.

TM Davy (b. 1980, New York, NY, lives and works in Brooklyn) is an artist known for his luminous figurative paintings and pastels. His intimate portraits, often in an natural setting, draw on classic techniques to represent light. He received his BFA from The School of Visual Arts where he also teaches. Davy has had solo exhibitions at Galerie Thomas Fuchs in Stuttgart, Germany and 11R in New York, NY. Davy’s work has been included in numerous group exhibitions, including No Soul for Sale curated by Maurizio Cattelan and Cecilia Alemani at Tate Modern, and shown at Aarhus Kunstmuseum, MASS MoCA, Galerie Suzanne Tarasieve, and Galeria Fortes Vilaça, São Paulo.

Troy Montes Michie (b. 1985, El Paso, TX, lives and works in Brooklyn, NY) is an interdisciplinary artist and educator, using collage as his methodology to trouble the representation of powerful groups targeted for oppression. He has had solo exhibitions at the Contemporary Arts Museum in Houston, the California African American Museum, and Company Gallery. His work has been exhibited at the ICA Los Angeles, the Worcester Art Museum, the Philbrook Museum of Art, Kunsthal KAdE in the Netherlands, the MAC Belfast, The Shed, New Museum, Studio Museum in Harlem, and Leslie-Lohman Museum of Gay and Lesbian Art. His work is included in public collections including the Philbrook Museum, the Whitney Museum, and the Zabludowicz Collection, London. Montes Michie is a Lecturer at Princeton University and received his MFA from the Yale School of Art.

Tosh Basco (b. 1988, USA, lives and works in Zürich) is a movement-based artist whose practice encompasses performance, photography, and drawing. The abstract works presented in this exhibition are the traces of erratic hand gestures, translating her performance onto canvas. Basco received her MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2018. Her performances have been presented in a variety of venues including museums, theaters, and nightclubs, including the Venice Biennale, the Sydney Biennial, the Whitney Museum of American Art, MoMA PS1, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, MOCA Los Angeles, the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, ICA London, Gropius Bau, and Berghain. Basco is co-founder of the collaborative entity Moved by the Motion with Wu Tsang.

Aurel Haize Odogbo is a Nigerian-American artist. Her work has been exhibited at Company Gallery and Karma International in Zürich.

Cajsa von Zeipel studied at the Städelschule in Frankfurt and the Royal Institute of Art in Stockholm in 2010. In 2021–2022, she was artist in residence at the Rubell Museum, culminating in a solo exhibition. Her work has been shown at Moderna Museet in Stockholm, the Nordic Heritage Museum in Seattle, the Museum of Sex in New York, Kunsthalle Düsseldorf, Artipelag, Millesgården, and Sven Harrys Konstmuseum. Von Zeipel’s work is part of several public and private collections, including the Onassis Foundation, Rubell Foundation, Museum of Modern Art Warsaw, Faurschou Collection, 21C Museum, Modern Museet, Borås Museum of Arts, Tank Shanghai, Foundation Mallorca, and the Eskilstuna Museum of Art.