Isherwood Fine Art

James Isherwood is a New York-based painter whose work examines architecture and landscape within the surreal context of alternate realities, time, memory, and place.

His paintings have been shown in New York, Toronto, Miami, Atlanta, Dallas, and Valencia, Spain. He received his Bachelor of Fine Arts in Painting from Parsons School of Design in New York. Isherwood has been awarded residencies from The Constance Saltonstall Foundation For The Arts, (2022) Fellowship, Ithaca, New York; Willapa Bay AiR (2022), Oysterville, Washington; The Mabel Residency at The Norman Bird Sanctuary (2019), Middletown, RI and Virginia Center For Creative Arts, (2018) Robert Johnson Fellowship, Amherst, Virginia. Multiple works are represented in the US Department Of State Art Bank Collection, Washington D.C., and numerous private collections.

A solo exhibition opening in November 2022 is the inaugural show of Susan Eley Fine Art’s new location in the Lower East Side of Manhattan. In January 2023, a two-person exhibition of new paintings paired with painter Mike Childs will open at Susan Eley Fine Art, Hudson, NY. Recent solo exhibitions include Future Memory at Galeria Ana Serratosa; Valencia, Spain (2021-22). Two-person exhibitions include Space Deconstructed at Susan Eley Fine Art, Hudson, NY (2021); A Sense Of Place at Susan Eley Fine Art, New York, NY (2019). Recent group exhibitions include Homegrown at Hauser & Wirth, New York, NY (2020); Friends From Social Media at Thomas Deans Fine Art, Atlanta, Georgia (2019).

James Isherwood was born in 1971 in Fall River, Massachusetts. Currently, Isherwood lives and works in Brooklyn, New York.

Used to refer to a time rather than an aesthetic, Contemporary art generally describes pieces created after 1970 or being made by living artists anywhere in the world. This immediacy means it encompasses art responding to the present moment through diverse subjects, media and themes. Contemporary painting, sculpture, photography, performance, digital art, video and more frequently includes work that is attempting to reshape current ideas about what art can be, from Felix Gonzalez-Torres’s use of candy to memorialize a lover he lost to AIDS-related complications to Jenny Holzer’s ongoing “Truisms,” a Conceptual series that sees provocative messages printed on billboards, T-shirts, benches and other public places that exist outside of formal exhibitions and the conventional “white cube” of galleries.

Contemporary art has been pushing the boundaries of creative expression for years. Its disruption of the traditional concepts of art are often aiming to engage viewers in complex questions about identity, society and culture. In the latter part of the 20th century, contemporary movements included Land art, in which artists like Robert Smithson and Michael Heizer create large-scale, site-specific sculptures, installations and other works in soil and bodies of water; Sound art, with artists such as Christian Marclay and Susan Philipsz centering art on sonic experiences; and New Media art, in which mass media and digital culture inform the work of artists such as Nam June Paik and Rafaël Rozendaal.

The first decades of the 21st century have seen the growth of Contemporary African art, the revival of figurative painting, the emergence of street art and the rise of NFTs, unique digital artworks that are powered by blockchain technology.

Major Contemporary artists practicing now include Ai Weiwei, Cecily Brown, David Hockney, Yayoi Kusama, Jeff Koons, Takashi Murakami and Kara Walker.

Find a collection of Contemporary prints, photography, paintings, sculptures and other art on 1stDibs.