Small Domains

Hollis Taggart is pleased to present Small Domains, a group show of small-scale paintings by three contemporary New York-based artists: Jaqueline Cedar, Samuel Guy, and Calvin Kim. All three artists loosely work in the representational vein of painting: Guy’s paintings engage with traditional portraiture through built-up surfaces of oil paint, Cedar’s paintings traffic in stylized figuration with clean edges and thin acrylic washes, and Kim’s works imbue everyday subject matter with wonder and a poetic, oneiric sensibility. The exhibition will be on view in the first-floor annex of Hollis Taggart in Chelsea from January 15 to February 21, 2026, with an opening reception on Friday, January 16 from 6 to 8 pm.

Inspired by a note in the journal pages of Abstract Expressionist artist Michael (Corinne) West, in which she describes her small paintings as “immensity within a small space,” this group show aims to bring together small-scaled paintings that contain immensity and infinitude within their limited parameters. Small paintings oblige closer looking and often cultivate in us – the viewers – a faith in the detail.  

With their neat restraint and bright palettes of watery blues and lemon yellows, Jaqueline Cedar’s paintings hover somewhere between uncanny dream space and real life. She has been working at a smaller scale (mostly 5 x 7 to 8 x 10 inches) for the last five years, as she enjoys holding the panel in her hand and the idea of looking into a small world or moment. These recent paintings are made on panel using an absorbent ground as surface, which allows the acrylic paint to cohere into a matte and velvety finish. Painting slowly through many thin layers as she finds the image, Cedar populates her compositions with long, elongated limbs and dreamy, stretched out perspectives of the highways of Los Angeles.

Through prolonged observational self-portraits, Samuel Guy explores the multifaceted nature of the self: its murkiness, its performative nature, and its socially buttressed construction. Through costuming and a deep relationship to the history of portrait painting, Guy re-presents himself in various forms in these new works, drawing inspiration from sources as various as the Dutch Golden Age painter Frans Hals to General MacArthur with his handmade corncob pipes. The chameleon nature of these self-portraits positions the artist as both real and potential, blurring such distinctions and positioning the image of the individual within a larger cultural context. Often reflections on masculinity, these paintings interrogate how such tropes of manhood are performed, engaging with the imagery in complicated ways – ranging from the satirical and ironic, to the honorific, and even funerary. The small scale of these portraits literally shrinks and defangs these masculine archetypes by rendering them doll-size and therefore, in Guy’s words, “potently impotent.”

Calvin Kim makes paintings and sculptures that engage questions of time, memory, and transformation as they persist within the layers of natural and manmade materials. His paintings often use humor, softness, and stupidity as an emotive stance for the rupturing condition of everyday living with hope and wonder. Inspired by Emily Dickinson’s envelope poems, Kim’s recent works probe the idea of paintings as poems and notes, and how small symbols might act as vessels for vast domains. These new paintings engage with the question of waiting – whether for fragile envelopes carrying letters or for the stoplight to change or for something more beyond – and waiting as an abstract emotion that always has to do with belief or hope.

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Jaqueline Cedar (b. 1985, Los Angeles, CA) lives and works in Brooklyn, NY. She received her MFA in 2009 from Columbia University and her BA in 2007 from the University of California, Los Angeles. Solo exhibitions include Andrew Rafacz, Chicago IL (2025), Shelter Gallery, NY (2023, 2021) and Platform x David Zwirner (2022). Group exhibitions include Blah Blah Gallery, Philadelphia PA (2025), Serious Topics, Los Angeles CA (2024), TV Projects, Brooklyn NY (2023), Long Story Short, NY (2023), Shin Haus, NY (2022), Ladies' Room, Los Angeles CA (2021), Peripheral Space, Los Angeles CA (2021), Hesse Flatow, NY (2020), Underdonk, Brooklyn NY (2018). Cedar has exhibited at NADA New York and Miami and her work is included in numerous private collections. Press includes Artnet, Hyperallergic, Huffington Post, Two Coats of Paint, ArtSpiel, New American Paintings, Painters' Table, and The Boston Globe.

Samuel Guy (b. 1991, Binghamton, NY) is an artist and educator based in Brooklyn, NY. He has presented his work nationally, including recent solo and two-person exhibitions Stages of Presence at Vardan Gallery in Los Angeles with Jenny Brillhart (2025), Hitchhike From Saginaw at Auxier Kline, NY (2025), Bildungsroman at Vardan Gallery, Los Angeles (2023) and A Distant Mirror at Auxier Kline, NY (2022). Guy has received numerous awards and fellowships including from the Constance Saltonstall Foundation, Elizabeth Greenshields Foundation, and Colman Foundation. Guy is featured in New American Paintings Issue No. 165, and his most recent solo show at Auxier Kline was reviewed in Impulse.

Calvin Kim (b. 1992, Los Angeles, CA) holds a joint BFA and BA in Psychology from Cornell University and an MFA from Columbia University. Kim has been the subject of solo exhibitions at Harper’s, NY (2025), Situations, NY (2024), Proxy Place Gallery, Chatsworth, CA, and Olive Tjaden Gallery, Ithaca, NY. He has exhibited in two-person and group shows at Gallery OM, Shanghai (2025), Hudson River Museum, Yonkers, NY (2025), LeRoy Neiman Gallery, NY (2025). AHL Foundation, NY (2025), NADA Miami (2024), NADA New York (2024), Charles Moffett, NY (2023), The Room, London (2022), Subtitled NYC, Brooklyn NY (2022), Half Gallery, NY (2022), Chashama, NY (2022), and SHRINE, NY (2021). In 2022-2023, he was the recipient of two concurrent fellowships: The Andrew Fisher Fellowship and The Chow Family Fellowship. Kim currently lives and works in New York.

For more information about Small Domains, please contact us at info@hollistaggart.com or +1 212.628.4000.

For press inquiries, please contact please contact us at press@hollistaggart.com or +1 212.628.4000.