Asher Liftin: Recent Work
Asher Liftin: Recent Work 395 Broadway, New York, NY 10013 September 18 –October 31, 2026 Photography courtesy Elisabeth Bernstein
New York – 125 Newbury presents Asher Liftin: Recent Work, an exhibition of new paintings and drawings by the Brooklyn-based artist on view from September 18 through October 31 at 395 Broadway in Tribeca. Following Liftin’s Summer 2026 Artist Residency at The Watermill Center in Watermill, New York, the exhibition is curated by Arne Glimcher and accompanied by a written introduction by Glimcher in the gallery’s 125 Free Press publication.
Asher Liftin: Recent Work 395 Broadway, New York, NY 10013 September 18 –October 31, 2026 Photography courtesy Elisabeth Bernstein
Asher Liftin’s work investigates fundamental conditions of vision and visibility. Using his own photography as source material, he translates mechanical images refracted in a glass eye into meticulously hand-crafted renderings on canvas and paper. The resulting images both evoke and extend histories of pointillism and divisionism, summoning the tradition of painters from Paul Signac to Chuck Close. As in the art of Close, Liftin decomposes photographs into their constituent colors, dividing them into four hues—cyan, yellow, magenta, and black—in much the same way a modern color printer produces the full spectrum of visible chroma.
Asher Liftin: Recent Work 395 Broadway, New York, NY 10013 September 18 –October 31, 2026 Photography courtesy Elisabeth Bernstein
Yet Liftin’s paintings are anything but printed. Instead, they are emphatically handmade. Often, the mysterious matrix of lines and dots from which his images emerge appear almost woven. Liftin begins such paintings by putting down a medium-gray ground, onto which he carefully deposits layers of acrylic ink. He overlays successive lines of ink into grids, before breaking them down into multicolored dots, producing shifts in value across the canvas. The resulting paintings sit on the border between the human and the mechanical—the dots and lines dripping and trembling, revealing the organic hand that made them. This effect can be varied depending on the particular inks and viscosities that Liftin uses in a given composition. In Glass Pane, watered-down India ink softly dissolves in layers resembling watercolor. In Brooklyn Bridge, Liftin uses vibrant, viscous acrylics to produce stark contrasts in tone and hue.
Holding bachelor’s degrees in both Art and Cognitive Science from Yale (2021), Liftin’s practice is deeply rooted in the intersection between image-making and image-processing. At a distance, his paintings lock into place with near photographic clarity. At close range, they unravel, becoming luminous networks of colored markings that attest to the process of their own creation. This push-and-pull between the completeness and finality of the image, on the one hand, and the fragmentation of its making, on the other, is a constant. Liftin’s paintings produce this in a continuous cycle of resolve and dissolve, which changes according to the viewer’s physical relationship to the picture plane. In this way, Liftin’s works are simultaneously realist depictions and maps of our own cognition.
Asher Liftin: Recent Work 395 Broadway, New York, NY 10013 September 18 –October 31, 2026 Photography courtesy Elisabeth Bernstein
As the art historian Carol Armstrong has noted, Liftin’s work functions “in much the same way that our eyes, in concert with our brains, construct a recognizable image, from the ground-up, out of bits of raw perceptual data: something that is going on all the time without our being in the least aware of it.” Through this alchemical yet deeply methodical approach to image-making, Liftin harnesses this perceptual process toward his own painterly ends. The very facture of the resulting paintings and drawings encapsulates the essence of the process of seeing. Liftin’s paintings and works on paper therefore do not so much make the world visible, as they reveal the hidden processes that underlie the very possibility of seeing. Asher Liftin (b. 1998, New York) lives and works in Brooklyn, NY. Liftin received a BA in Visual Art and a BS in Cognitive Science from Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut in 2021, and was the Summer 2026 Artist-in-Residence at the Watermill Center in Watermill, New York. His first solo exhibition, Blow Up, was held in 2022 at Alessandro Albanese, Milan. Recent solo exhibitions have taken place at Nino Mier Gallery in New York (2023 and 2026) and Brussels (2024). His work has been included in several group exhibitions, including at Chili Art Projects, London (2025), Venus Over Manhattan, New York (2024), Rachel Uffner Gallery, New York (2024), Winter Street Gallery, Edgartown, Massachusetts (2023, 2024), and M+B, Los Angeles (2023). Works by Liftin are held in the permanent collections of the Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid, and Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, Connecticut.
125 Newbury is a project space in New York City founded in 2022 and helmed by Arne Glimcher, Founder and Chairman of Pace Gallery. Named for the gallery’s original location, which Glimcher opened at 125 Newbury Street in Boston in 1960, the venture is located at 395 Broadway in Manhattan’s Tribeca neighborhood, at the corner of Walker Street. Occupying a 3,900-square-foot ground-floor space in a landmark building with 17-foot ceilings, the interior of 125 Newbury has been fully renovated by Enrico Bonetti and Dominic Kozerski of Bonetti/Kozerski Architecture.
Guided by Glimcher’s six decades of pioneering exhibition-making and steadfast commitment to close collaboration with artists, 125 Newbury presents up to five exhibitions per year. Directing and shaping 125 Newbury’s program, Glimcher organizes exhibitions of work by artists—both within and beyond Pace’s roster—who inspire him, often highlighting a specific aspect or focused period of their practice.
Pace is a leading international art gallery representing some of the most influential contemporary artists and estates from the past century, holding decades-long relationships with Alexander Calder, Jean Dubuffet, Barbara Hepworth, Agnes Martin, Louise Nevelson, and Mark Rothko. Pace enjoys a unique U.S. heritage spanning East and West coasts through its early support of artists central to the Abstract Expressionist and Light and Space movements.
Since its founding by Arne Glimcher in 1960, Pace has developed a distinguished legacy as an artist-first gallery that mounts seminal historical and contemporary exhibitions. Under the current leadership of CEO Marc Glimcher, Pace continues to support its artists and share their visionary work with audiences worldwide by remaining at the forefront of innovation. Now in its seventh decade, the gallery advances its mission through a robust global program— comprising exhibitions, artist projects, public installations, institutional collaborations, performances, and interdisciplinary projects. Pace has a legacy in art bookmaking and has published over five hundred titles in close collaboration with artists, with a focus on original scholarship and on introducing new voices to the art historical canon.
Today, Pace has seven locations worldwide, including European footholds in London and Geneva as well as Berlin, where the gallery established an office in 2023. Pace maintains two galleries in New York—its headquarters at 540 West 25th Street, which welcomed almost 120,000 visitors and programmed 20 shows in its first six months, and an adjacent 8,000 sq. ft. exhibition space at 510 West 25th Street. Pace’s long and pioneering history in California includes a gallery in Palo Alto, which was open from 2016 to 2022. Pace’s engagement with Silicon Valley’s technology industry has had a lasting impact on the gallery at a global level, accelerating its initiatives connecting art and technology as well as its work with experiential artists. Pace consolidated its West Coast activity through its flagship in Los Angeles, which opened in 2022. Pace was one of the first international galleries to establish outposts in Asia, where it operates permanent gallery spaces in Hong Kong and Seoul, along with an office and viewing room in Beijing. In 2024, Pace will open its first gallery space in Japan in Tokyo’s new Azabudai Hills development.
The exhibition opened on May 28–August 1, 2026, at 125 Newbury. For more information about this exhibition and others, please visit the Pace Gallery’s website here. Pace Gallery can be found on Instagram and Artsy, too.
