Untitled Art

Hollis Taggart Downtown is pleased to present a solo booth of new paintings by second-generation New York artist Dana James (b. 1986) for Untitled Art, Miami Beach 2026. The presentation introduces a cohesive, new body of work that marks a significant turning point in the artist’s practice, defined by expanded scale, shaped formats, and a heightened material and conceptual intensity.

James has established a distinctive visual language grounded in the interplay of surface, gesture, and material. Working across oil, acrylic, raw pigment, wax, pastel, and collage elements, she constructs layered compositions that are at once luminous and structurally complex. Soft, atmospheric color fields are interrupted by moments of density and resistance, while her gestures oscillate between diffuse and assertive. These works do not resolve into fixed compositions; rather, they remain active, contingent, and in a state of continual transformation.

This presentation is a turning point. While James’s work has long engaged dualities, including transience and permanence, concealment and revelation, stillness and movement, her newest paintings intensify these concerns. Influenced by the artist’s recent experience of pregnancy and giving birth, she embraces uncertainty, allowing forms to emerge, dissolve, and recombine across increasingly complex surfaces. The resulting compositions are more spatially ambitious, materially layered, and psychologically charged. Notably, this evolution has already begun to take effect. Recent coverage by Artnet of her 2025 exhibition, “Ink Moon” at Hollis Taggart, noted a heightened confidence and formal intensity in her work. The article also positioned James within a broader conversation around the renewed urgency of material abstraction.

While non-objective, the paintings retain a sensibility of “scape”, suggesting atmospheric or elemental environments without resolving into representation. These are immersive fields, structured through repetition, shifting saturation, and the integration of disparate materials. Spatial depth remains unstable and continuously unfolding, drawing the viewer into a perpetual experience that is both immediate and lasting. Time is a central conceptual force within James’s practice. Her paintings accumulate and obscure their own histories, registering duration through layering, erasure, and revision. Each surface functions as both a record of its making and an open system resisting closure, while sustaining a continuous state of becoming.

James will debut a series of large-scale paintings alongside shaped and multi-panel works that abandon the traditional rectangular support. These formats expand her investigation into painting as object, activating the wall as a dynamic field and reinforcing a shift toward a more immersive and spatially engaged practice. This presentation marks a critical moment of expansion in her practice and introduces an ambitious direction that has not yet been exhibited. 

Momentum around James’s work has accelerated significantly, with increasing institutional dialogue, expanded international exposure, and strong engagement from a cross-generational collector base. This presentation captures the artist at a moment of rapid development and situates her within a broader shift toward material- driven and spatially engaged abstraction in the contemporary art world.

Born and based in New York City, James graduated from the School of Visual Arts in 2008 and has built a strong international exhibition history. Recent important solo exhibitions include “Ink Moon" (Hollis Taggart, 2025), “The Enchantment Room” (König Galerie, Berlin, 2025), and “Hushed Neon” (Bode Projects, Berlin, 2024). Her work has received attention in The Brooklyn Rail and Artnet, to name a few, and is in major collections, including UBS and Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher.

For more information on the gallery's booth presentation, please contact us at +1 212.628.4000 or info@hollistaggart.com