Franklin Parrasch Gallery

Franklin Parrasch and Richard Saltoun are pleased to present "Take me to your Leader!", a group exhibition focused on the effects of authority and coercion and the correlating results of submission. This show concentrates on perceptions of power - real or imagined - from societal, governmental, sexual, religious, and/or extraterrestrial sources of command. The effects of authority and the inclination to follow, conform, and ally with authoritarian voices, connect each of the works in this exhibition. "Take me to your Leader!" draws its title from a now-iconic phrase whose origins trace back to a 1953 New Yorker cartoon by Alex Graham. Two aliens have just landed their UFO in a field on Earth and address a lone horse exclaiming, “Kindly take us to your President!” A simple one-word modification—swapping “President” for “Leader”—transformed the cartoon caption into a cultural touchstone. Since then, “Take me to your leader” has become near-ubiquitous shorthand for extraterrestrial contact, echoed in movies and media across the spectrum from the TV series Adventures of Superman and Doctor Who, to the movie Contact, to countless song titles and memes, conveying both humorous and ominous undertones. The artists in this exhibition observe the impact of authority from a variety of perspectives and the way in which that impact contributes to actions and reactions that develop both individually and collectively as a consequence. The diverse range of works included formally examine and thematically focus upon conformity and consensus to either accept or reject structures of imposed power, be they exalted or feared, finding moments within events of unfettered alliance and immunity to empathy for critical enquiry. From its founding in 1986, Franklin Parrasch Gallery has been guided by a conscious reflection on the process of creativity as related to human evolution. As we embark upon our fortieth anniversary in 2026, we will present a series of exhibitions throughout the year thematically addressing diverse evolutionary theories as they manifest in the contemporary art discourse.

Franklin Parrasch Gallery is pleased to present Ali Dipp: Unceasing Change and Everlasting Duration, the artist’s second exhibition with the gallery. In this new body of work, Dipp re-presents six works from the history of landscape painting leading up to the Civil War, incorporating thread on denim to create what the artist refers to as “thread paintings.”

These frozen minutes, as sunshine turns into darkness, already raise the perennial question about L.A.: utopia or dystopia? Sunshine or Noir? -Lars Nittve, "Sunshine & Noir: Art in Los Angeles 1960–1997"

Franklin Parrasch Gallery is pleased to present “Jack was my first art collector.” Forrest Bess - From the Estate of Dr. Jack Weinberg, the sixth exhibition the gallery has organized devoted to the works of Forrest Bess and his vast influence on contemporary art. The title of the show, taken from a letter Bess wrote to collector Earle Ludgin on February 19, 1969, presents for the first time, this seminal collection from the Estate of Bess’s first patron, Dr. Jack Weinberg. The collection is focused upon works spanning the late 1940s, including several key expressionist works, formational to the artist’s later vision paintings, many of which he referenced in extensive letters to friends and colleagues.

Franklin Parrasch Gallery is pleased to present One time, one time, one time..., the gallery’s first solo exhibition with Los Angeles-based painter Kristy Luck (b. 1985, Woodstock, IL). At once dynamic and organic, Kristy Luck’s paintings embody the rich, transcendent component of the artist’s practice: surrealism viewed through the lens of spiritual abstraction.

Franklin Parrasch Gallery is pleased to present "Ellen Siebers: Bouquet" - the gallery’s first solo exhibition with the artist (b. 1986, Madison, WI). Ellen Siebers’ highly atmospheric, evocative paintings revel in the possibility of beauty and visual poetry and the capacity to depict a fleeting experience or sensation in each lived moment, transforming the quotidian into something extraordinary. Siebers’ interest is in not just the fundamentals of painting but the beauty of her earthly surroundings. As she has noted, “Observation gives way to the importance of each brush stroke, in devotion to process.”

Franklin Parrasch Gallery and Richard Saltoun Gallery are pleased to present image-ridden impulse, a collaborative group exhibition of works by ten cross-generational artists working in the field of abstraction.

Franklin Parrasch is pleased to present "As Above, So Below," the gallery’s first exhibition of works by Kuwaiti artist Latifa Alajlan. In these paintings, Alajlan simultaneously explores Middle Eastern visual idioms while generating her own language and calling hierarchies into question.

Franklin Parrasch Gallery is pleased to present Mark Gonzales: Coltureal Affairs, curated by artist Rita Ackermann. This is Gonzales’ fourth solo exhibition with the gallery. Included are 24 works representing 25 years of Mark Gonzales’ painting and drawing practice. From representational imagery to text-based works, Rita Ackermann’s curation describes Gonzales’ commitment to themes relating to spirituality, love, and death – all expressed in the artist’s characteristically freewheeling, intuitive style.

Franklin Parrasch Gallery is pleased to present Sylvia Snowden: Shell, Glimpses, the gallery’s second solo exhibition in the New York space with the Washington, D.C.-based artist. The thirteen paintings on paper that comprise this show, all created in 2003, have been stored privately in the artist's studio and are now being exhibited publicly for the first time.

Franklin Parrasch Gallery is pleased to present Marcia Hafif: Select Work from “The Inventory,” 1967-1998. Illustrating the singular focus of experimentation into the process of painting and its meditative nature, this exhibition is itself an investigation into Marcia Hafif’s deliberate and meticulous practice driven by the insatiable curiosity at the center of the late artist’s more than fifty- year career. This presentation surveys Hafif’s core oeuvre, tracing the evolution of her practice from the 1960s through the end of the century.

Franklin Parrasch Gallery is pleased to present First Person, a group exhibition of paintings and drawings by nine cross-generational artists focused on observations and reflections from the perspective of a single narrator. Included are recent and historical works by Aiza Ahmed, Rita Ackermann, Radcliffe Bailey, Forrest Bess, Joan Brown, Mark Gonzales, Calvin Marcus, Ken Price, and Peter Saul.

Franklin Parrasch Gallery is pleased to announce Stillness in Motion, the gallery’s second solo show of new paintings by Los Angeles-based artist Edith Baumann. In Edith Baumann’s works, finely-applied lines hover and span, veil-like, across layered rectilinear fields. Inspired by her decades-long meditation practice, the artist mines the sense of focus, balance, and concentration she achieves in a meditative state as she continues to explore the relationship between color and geometry and the tension between stasis and dynamism.

Franklin Parrasch Gallery is pleased to present its first exhibition of work by Ali Dipp (b. 1997, El Paso, TX), American Craft. Born on the binational precipice between the United States and Mexico, Ali Dipp is interested in the evolution of America’s self-representation. Her hometown of El Paso, the former jean capital of the world before NAFTA, sets the backdrop to thematic currents she probes by creating paintings on denim with thread.

Franklin Parrasch is pleased to present Pole Star, an exhibition of recent paintings by renowned earthwork and light artist Charles Ross. The works in this show are the first of their kind: their imagery captures celestial geometries inspired by Star Axis, Ross’ monumental earth/sky work and naked eye observatory, conceived of in 1971 and nearing completion in New Mexico. Pole Star marks Ross’ third solo exhibition at the gallery. The Pole Star paintings are contemplations on our internal connection with the celestial pole. In these works, the unknowable bounds of the cosmos are punctuated only by constellations and traces of the stars as the earth turns on its axis.

Franklin Parrasch is pleased to present the gallery’s first exhibition of recent paintings by Lebanese American artist Tala Worrell. Born in New York City in 1991 and raised in Abu Dhabi, Worrell’s cultural exposure has been steeped in diverse sets of values and the necessity of acceptance and openness to conflicting ways of understanding. Through this lens, Worrell’s approach to abstraction is distilled in the belief that every aesthetic decision involves the resolution of ethical dilemmas.

Franklin Parrasch Gallery presents Joan Snyder, To Become a Painting, an exhibition comprising six large scale paintings created by the artist in her Woodstock, NY studio during the Covid-19 pandemic. The paintings reflect the artist’s engagement with the land, referencing the generative and vital state of earth and water and acknowledging impulses that access nature as a guide for connecting with the most fundamental human emotions.

Franklin Parrasch Gallery is pleased to present its first solo exhibition of works by New York based artist Jackie Ferrara (B. 1929, Detroit, MI). Included in this exhibition are four of the artist’s iconic wood sculptures spanning from 1978-2008, and a more recent series of encoded, color pencil diptych drawings on uniquely-formulated paper that the artist determined collaboratively with a Federal currency paper maker.

Franklin Parrasch Gallery is pleased to present Echo’s in Talavera, an exhibition of new work by Rafael Delacruz (b. 1989, San Francisco, CA) in conversation with ceramic sculpture and works on paper by Ken Price (1935-2012). Rafael Delacruz considers a post-digital world by way of traditional means as he weaves surreal narratives in his canvases. Delacruz’s works, which typically employ painterly brushstrokes in tandem with flattened, screen-printed imagery, emulate a distorted and surreal, pixelated world of nomadic existence. Often rendered head-on, Delacruz mines a steady vernacular of near-universal, clip art-like icons; most common are day-to-day staples (e.g. apples, coffee mugs, baseball caps, sinks, and beds) and vehicular references (e.g. buses, cars, tires, shopping carts, and flying contraptions). Rather than imagined or implied space, these images appear to dictate both narrative hierarchy and visual outcomes. Within each piece, Delacruz rejects stylistic monotony in deference to dynamism and effect, and obscures and reveals information and events in vital syncopation. In many works, painted fields of color nestle into one another like fieldstones, establishing physical and emotional atmospheres and providing compositional - and, occasionally, literal - screens for the scenes unfolding within.

Franklin Parrasch Gallery is pleased to announce the gallery’s first show with Washington, D.C.- based artist Sylvia Snowden (b. 1942, Raleigh, North Carolina). This exhibition, entitled Sylvia Snowden: The M Street Series, is an overview of this iconic body of work which spans from the mid-1970s through the late 1980s.

Franklin Parrasch Gallery is pleased to present its first exhibition of work by Los Angeles-based artist Edith Baumann (b. 1948). Baumann’s most recent paintings emerge from an ongoing series centered on geometric abstraction and veiled fields. This show includes seven recent works on canvas of varying scale that are deeply connected to Baumann’s love for jazz and her daily meditation practice, and which exemplify her technically-driven process.

In a 1977 interview with writer Tony Hiss, MoMA’s then-curator of photography John Sworkowski used the phrase “moments between events” to describe the sensibility of time and space in the work of photographer Stephen Shore1, adding that these points are “not boring, not empty – but suspended.” The frailty and fragility of life, memory, and matter, and how those things never completely leave but are continuously in a state of transformation, is a thought concertedly addressed by each of these artists. The works in this show engage a transition where materials and concepts crystallize, and where the sensation of separate events are bridged.

Mildred Howard's works consistently, persistently, and poetically address themes such as domesticity, transparency, containment, and loss. Mildred Howard (b. 1945, San Francisco, CA) lives and works in Oakland, CA. Her works are held in the permanent collections of such institutions as the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego (CA), the De Young Museum (San Francisco, CA), San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (CA), Wadsworth Atheneum (Hartford, CT) and the Davis Museum at Wellesley College (Wellesley, MA), among others.

Image Caption: Installation View: Peter Alexander: Early Sculpture 1965 - 1972

Image Caption: Charles Ross "Solar Pyramid VII" 1982 exploded pigment on paper 37.25 x 49 inches Copyright Charles Ross, Courtesy Franklin Parrasch Gallery