Amongst Other Things

Amongst Other Things: Paintings and Drawings Made from Direct Observation in New York City

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The history of art in New York City has never moved in a straight line. For a long period, institutional attention and creative energy belonged almost exclusively to abstraction, leaving figurative and representational painting operating largely outside the dominant framework. That chapter has since closed. Figurative painting now occupies a central, vital place in contemporary discourse. Yet every generation produces its own blind spots. Painting made from direct observation outdoors existed, until recently, in a position much like the one figurative work held decades ago, respected for its craft but rarely taken seriously as a conceptual practice.

A compelling corrective to that blind spot arrived at A Space Gallery with the exhibition "Amongst Other Things: Paintings and Drawings Made from Direct Observation in New York City." Curated by Insiya Pardiwala, the exhibition ran from June 5 to June 6, 2026, bringing together an extraordinary group of contemporary artists who rejected the fleeting, hyper-saturated speed of modern image consumption in favor of the radical act of sustained looking.