Over the course of the past decade, the American artist Avery Singer has prolifically cited icons of modernism—including but not limited to Naum Gabo, Kazimir Malevich, and Henry Moore—in ways that suggest historical homage, and a singular pursuit of the explosive potential of the avant-garde in a crowded, self-reflective contemporary culture. Singer’s work involves suspending the role of the hand in painting in order to question ideas of gesture, authenticity, and lived experience. Since she began making her earliest paintings, Singer has expanded upon the creative capacities of technology to render the lived and sensationalized experience of a young artist—studio visits, bohemian scenes, nightclubs—in a retro-futurist grayscale. More recently, her practice has evolved to incorporate hyperrealistic imagery facilitated by new technologies and various modes of animation, further redefining the discipline of painting.

Here, Singer constructs a world that recalls the late 1990s and early 2000s, in which two fictitious characters embody the cross-cultural networks that define the city the artist calls home. Unity Bachelor—a downtown New York club kid—and Priya Prasad—a young finance professional—meet and fall in love in a nightclub. Their spontaneous encounter is represented by the dynamism and energy captured in paintings such as Limelight.