Patricia Piccinini: The Struggle that Sustains Us | May 16 - July 2, 2026

Since she burst into international prominence at the 2003 Venice Biennale, Patricia Piccinini has become famous for creating some of the most troubling — yet lyrical — artworks of our time. Using silicone, human hair, and animal fur, she imagines creatures that are hyper-realistic and disquietingly surreal, to ask us to think about what it means to be human; how that is rapidly changing through advances in medicine, science, and technology; and how we might go about understanding those changes.

Empathy is at the heart of Piccinini's practice. When she envisions a co-mingling of animal, plant, machine, and human, she asks us to question the "otherness" of creatures — cyber-forms, or humans who don't resemble the "norm." Viewers often react to her work by recoiling... a reaction triggered by the difficulty we have of feeling a connection to those we consider "different." One of the strengths of Piccinini's work is the way it forces us to confront and assess those feelings.

Her fourth solo exhibition at Hosfelt Gallery is a rollercoaster-ride of fleshy, chimeric creatures, glassy sprites, animate machines, art history and pop culture.

Patricia Piccinini was born in Sierra Leone in 1965 and resides in Melbourne. She was chosen to represent Australia in the 2003 Venice Biennale and her work has since been the subject of dozens of major solo museum exhibitions worldwide.

Isabella Kirkland: Nature of Painting | May 16 - July 2, 2026

Isabella Kirkland uses the techniques developed by 17th century Dutch still life artists to make paintings that explore the environmental train wreck that is the Anthropocene. Extinct, endangered, recovering or invasive, her meticulous renderings of species are an effort to document and preserve organisms in a moment of rapid climatic and ecological change.

“My practice is about the kinship between science and art. Both disciplines are born from common impulses: to observe with devotion, to compare, to learn through intimacy. At times, such sustained attention leads to a leap of understanding — a new way of seeing that can reshape both the work and the worker.”

– Isabella Kirkland

Paintings whose subject matter ranges from succulents in their habitats to trays of preserved butterflies, chrysalises, and collections of seashells, allude to scientific study, the human propensity to collect, the desire to preserve, and the unwitting menace we pose to nature in spite of our best intent. Three monumental paintings celebrate the historical connection between science and art as well as the artist's personal experience of teaching herself to paint.

Isabella Kirkland was born in Connecticut and studied at the San Francisco Art Institute in the late 1970s. Her work is in major museum collections throughout the United States, including the Berkeley Art Museum (CA), San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (CA), Hammer Museum (Los Angeles, CA), St. Louis Museum of Art (MO), The Hood Museum of Art (Hanover, NH), Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts (Philadelphia), Yale University Art Gallery (New Haven, CT), Queens Museum (NY), Tang Museum (Saratoga Springs, NY), Toledo Art Museum (OH), Zimmerli Art Museum (New Brunswick, NJ), and the Whitney Museum of American Art (New York). She lives on a houseboat on the San Francisco Bay.

Images:

Patricia Piccinini, The Protégé, 2023, silicone, resin, hair, 9 7/8 x 18 1/8 x 10 1/4

Patricia Piccinini, The Struggle, 2017, fiberglass, auto, paint, leather, steel, scooter parts, 78 3/4 x 94 1/2 x 47 1/4

Isabella Kirkland, Crassula Sericea, 2026, oil and alkyd on panel, 8 x 8

Isabella Kirkland, At My Desk, 2025, oil and alkyd on polyester over panel, 36 x 48