And The Land Stands Still: Will Maxen

April 4 - 25

UTA Artist Space presents - And The Land Stands Still

UTA Artist Space is thrilled to announce the upcoming opening of And the Land Stands Still, a new exhibition from Houston-based artist Will Maxen. The display marks Maxen’s inaugural showcase with the UTA Artist Space and his first-ever showing in New York. The show will delve into the complexities of the mixed-race experience by drawing from the artist’s personal experience and historical sources to explore connections between one’s environment and sense of belonging. 

The exhibition is anchored by a selection of paintings entitled Davis Orange Trees, which depict the omnipresent orange trees that the artist encountered upon moving to Davis, California from Connecticut. The trees, treated in the manner of Cy Twombly and Robert Ryman, with bold white impasto strokes and calligraphic line work, seem to hover between legibility and abstraction, moving from the figurative to the symbolic. The symbol of the family tree holds specific weight to Maxen, who explores the complexities of his experience growing up mixed-race in America. Holding multiple identities and moving to many cities over the years, the artist grapples with the tension between rootedness and uprootedness, how one cultivates a life in flux. 

In Their Memory Makes Return Possible 1 & 2, the artist collages portions of a nineteenth century Albumen print of Black cotton pickers in post-Civil War Georgia in a similar compositional structure as the oranges on the trees in Davis Orange Trees, referencing lineage with an homage to the family tree as well as ideas of displacement and the feeling of being alienated from the land on which one lives and works. The artist, who attended Hebrew school as a child, recalled learning about the Tree of Life, a symbol of abundance and joy in that faith. Maxen’s exploration of the contradictory connotations of a symbol capture the intricacies of contemporary life, where our lineages, our experiences and our quotidian moments are all steeped in deep, complex histories. 

While Davis Orange Trees reference presence, his accompanying set of painted foliage and text pieces address the conspicuous absence of other Black people in Davis. Maxen transfers text taken from his own conversations as well as what he overheard onto paintings depicting local plants.

The exhibition includes a series of inkjet transfer works that showcase images of fenced yards from Davis. The white picket fence has its own connotation in American Culture as both the symbol of the American Dream as well as the privatization of land and the creation of boundaries across class and racial lines. Maxen’s paintings focus on the societal boundaries within American culture as well as the relationship between the accessibility to land and its influence on the surrounding community. The artist questions how the land is shaped by what is left behind and the lasting imprint that people have on their environments – socially, politically and physically. 

“We are thrilled to introduce Will’s work to the New York art community,” says UTA Fine Arts senior director Harrison Tenzer. “The works are a rare combination of painterly beauty and sharp historiographical inquiry, asking the uncomfortable yet necessary questions about American culture.” 

About UTA Artist Space

Since the establishment of its flagship Beverly Hills location in 2018, UTA Artist Space – the gallery extension of UTA – has been committed to showcasing art by globally recognized talent. With the opening of a new Atlanta office and gallery in spring 2023, UTA Artist Space has expanded its impressive vision and reach across the United States. Over the past few years, the gallery’s original location has presented notable exhibitions with interdisciplinary artists and creatives, including The Estate of Ernie Barnes, Enrique Martínez Celaya, Mandy El-Sayegh, Nicholas Kontaxis, Arcmanoro Niles, Ferrari Sheppard, and more. UTA presented a series of pop-up exhibitions at Atlanta’s historic Pullman Yards before inaugurating its permanent gallery space in March 2023 with a solo exhibition by Lonnie Holley.

About Will Maxen

Will Maxen’s art draws from both personal and historical references, to bring to light his connections with memory, environment, and belonging. Based in Houston, Texas, Maxen’s craft uses memory to create pieces that straddle temporalities and paint as a medium whose dexterity helps the subject matter confront racial realities that he otherwise refused to acknowledge: his legibility and blackness, contentious relationship to a sense of inheritance, the past, and interactions within particular spaces. Recent exhibitions include Residency Art Gallery; Jan Shrem and Maria Manetti Shrem Museum of Art; Open Source Artspace New Haven; and the Museum of Northern California Art. Maxen holds a B.A. in Illustration from Central Connecticut State University and M.F.A. in Art Studio from the University of California, Davis.