Interviews by Brainard Carey

Meena Hasan (born 1987, NYC) received her B.A. from Oberlin College in 2009 and her MFA from Yale School of Art in 2013, where she won the Carol Schlosberg Memorial Prize for Painting. In 2010, she was awarded the Terna Prize Affiliated Fellowship at the American Academy in Rome and in 2025 she was an artist-in-residence in the Winter TNT Residency hosted by Transmitter and Tiger Strike Asteroid Galleries in NYC.

She has participated in group exhibitions at the Kristen Lorello Gallery, NYC, Klaus von Nichtssagend Gallery, NYC, Center for Book Arts, NYC, The Stedelijk Museum, Den Bosch, The Netherlands, Deitch Projects, NYC, Nathalie Karg Gallery, New York, NY, the 2022 New England Triennial at the deCordova Sculpture Park and Museum and Fruitlands Museum and at BRIC Arts and Media in Downtown Brooklyn in Spring of 2023 among others.

Recent two-person and solo exhibitions have been shown at The Old Stone House of Brooklyn, NY, Main Window, Dumbo with Deanna Evans Projects, NYC, and Stowaway Gallery, Los Angeles, CA all in 2025. Meena has taught Painting at Rutgers University – Newark, Pratt Institute’s Painting MFA program, the School of Visual Arts at Boston University and Studio in a School, NYC. She is currently the Graduate Program Director and Associate Professor in Painting at RISD, Providence and lives and works in Brooklyn, NY.

Meena Hasan, jaali 1 (after matisse’s seated odalisque with haiti textile, 1926) acrylic, Flashe, Okawara paper, Tyvek, image transfer, copper pipe, climbing rope, carabiners, 85 x 40 inches
Meena Hasan, jaali 1 (detail, after matisse’s seated odalisque with haiti textile, 1926) acrylic, Flashe, Okawara paper, Tyvek, image transfer, copper pipe, climbing rope, carabiners, 85 x 40 inches
Meena Hasan, Terrible Beauty, at Main Window Dumbo, Was On View: June 5 – August 20, 2025, 1 Main Street, Brooklyn, NY
Meena Hasan, Terrible Beauty (Detail), at Main Window Dumbo, Was On View: June 5 – August 20, 2025, 1 Main Street, Brooklyn, NY

Lola Stong-Brett (b. 1996, London, United Kingdom; lives and works in Margate) most recently graduated the Tracey Emin Artist Residency (2024) following studies at the Edinburgh College of Art (2016). Her first solo exhibition, For That, I’ll Always Smile, was presented at Carl Freedman Gallery, Margate in 2025. While her work has been included in numerous group exhibitions across the United Kingdom and in Mexico City, Sometime Somewhere Someone Is Dancing marks Stong-Brett’s debut in the United States.

Working at a scale that envelops the body, Stong-Brett’s mark-making is deeply diaristic. Cartoon-like figures emerge from fields of heightened gestural abstraction, recording fluctuating inner states to form an entwined world of direct expression. Across the paintings, figures intertwine, drift apart, cling to one another, or reach beyond each other’s grasp. With great emotional immediacy, the works evoke the complex, shifting choreography of human connection—the experience of holding on and letting go, like witnessing someone you love move beyond you.

Within this symbolic setting, Popeye returns from earlier works alongside Bimbo and a newly introduced female figure. Part childhood nostalgia, part reference to tattoo culture, Popeye first entered Stong-Brett’s paintings as an emblem of raw humanity. The artist recalls initially being drawn to the character’s visual language before discovering the significance of Max Fleischer’s early animations, in which Popeye emerged as one of the first distinctly working-class cartoon characters, depicted within commonplace settings in sharp contrast to the polished fantasy worlds of early Disney. Over time and through repeated use, however, Popeye’s original allegorical charge has loosened and expanded. Evolving into a more fluid emotional architecture, the figure retains its cultural and personal history while remaining open enough to be inhabited by multiple identities and relationships—at times forming a stand-in for the artist herself and the people closest to her.

Lola Stong-Brett On Stage Where You Once Danced, 2026 Oil on canvas 2 panels, overall: 74 3/4 × 130 inches
Lola Stong-Brett Yellow Christ And Raft, 2026 Signed and dated verso Oil on canvas 76 3/4 × 133 7/8 inches (overall) 76 3/4 × 66 15/16 inches (each)
Lola Stong-Brett It’s Like I Can Still Feel Your Arms Around Me, When You’re Standing Behind Me, 2026 Signed and dated verso Oil on canvas 70 7/8 × 59 1/16 inches

Caitlin Keogh (b. 1982 in Anchorage, Alaska) lives and works in New York. Her work has recently been included in group shows at Fondation Carmignac, Porquerolles, France, and The Church, Sag Harbor, NY. Keogh has been the subject of solo exhibitions at the Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston, MA; Melas Papadopoulos, Athens, Greece; and MoMA PS1, Long Island City, NY. In 2021, Keogh completed a mural in the city of Holbaek, Denmark in conjunction with Holbaek Art, and in 2019, she participated in Art Basel Parcours, Basel, Switzerland. Her work has also been exhibited at the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, CA; MoMA Warsaw, Poland; the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY; Künstlerhaus Bremen, Germany; the Costume Institute at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY; and the Queens Museum, Flushing Meadows, NY.

Her work is represented in the collections of the Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston; the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Amorepacific Museum of Art, Seoul; the Rollins Museum of Art, Winter Park, Florida; and the Rhode Island School of Design Museum, Providence.

Caitlin Keogh 07.10.25, 2025 Colored pencil on paper mounted on panel 16 3/8 x 11 5/8 x 3/4 in (41.5 x 29.5 x 2 cm)
Caitlin Keogh Beige Matrix, Woman With Opera Glasses, 2026 Acrylic on canvas 72 x 96 in (183 x 244 cm)
Caitlin Keogh Ultramarine Matrix, La Fornarina, 2026 Acrylic on panel, postcard 23 1/4 x 13 in (59.1 x 33 cm)

Peter Acheson was born in Washington, DC, in 1954 and received his BFA from Yale University in 1976. An early member of Williamsburg’s art scene in the 1980s, he relocated to upstate New York in the 1990s, where he continues to live and work in Columbia County.

His paintings range from textured abstractions to restrained gestures that draw on a wide range of influences, including nineteenth-century French painting, Blinky Palermo, Raoul De Keyser, Bill Jensen, and Forrest Bess, alongside close observation of the landscape surrounding his studio.

Acheson’s concern is less with resolving these references than it is to allow them to coexist, permitting his paintings to act as habitats where various traditions and approaches can meet without hierarchy. This carries through to Acheson’s playful way of treating his compositions, leaving them caught between styles, simultaneously structured and chaotic, with direct references and happenstance similarity.

His work has been exhibited at Anton Kern Gallery, New York; Steven Harvey Fine Arts, New York; Gordon Robichaux, New York; Brennan & Griffin, New York; Novella Gallery, New York; John Davis Gallery, Hudson, New York; the American Academy of Arts and Letters, New York; Elizabeth Harris Gallery, New York; and Baumgartner Gallery, New York. His work has been discussed in Hyperallergic and The Brooklyn Rail.

Peter Acheson Four Levels, 1983 – 1984 Oil on wood 8 7/8 x 11 1/8 inches (22.5 x 28.1 cm) Photography Izzy Leung, Courtesy Anton Kern Gallery
Peter Acheson Untitled, 2020 Oil and stick on wood block 2 x 6 1/4 x 1 3/4 inches (5.1 x 15.9 x 4.4 cm) Photography Izzy Leung, Courtesy Anton Kern Gallery
Peter Acheson Untitled, 2010-2012 Oil on wood 10 1/4 x 6 3/8 inches (26 x 16.2 cm). Photography Izzy Leung, Courtesy Anton Kern Gallery
Peter Acheson Untitled, 2019 Oil on canvas 16 x 20 inches (40.6 x 50.8 cm) Photography Izzy Leung, Courtesy Anton Kern Gallery

Yuya Saito (b. 1982, Japan) lives and works in Brooklyn, New York. He makes wall-based works and freestanding sculpture in laminated and bent wood, a language he has developed over more than a decade out of the craft of bent-wood furniture-making.

Saito’s work has been presented internationally at such institutions and venues as Rockefeller Center, New York; Brooklyn Army Terminal, New York; National Art Center, Tokyo; and Setagaya Art Museum, Tokyo.

Public commissions include installations for the Brooklyn Army Terminal, New York (2026) and Art Link at Yokohama Red Brick Warehouse (2022). He is the recipient of the TRiCERA Award and Jury Award at IAG Awards 2021, as well as the Special Jury Award at Independent Tokyo 2020.

Yuya Saito, Ground Rules, Installation View
Yuya Saito, Ground Rules, Installation View
Yuya Saito, Ground Rules, Installation View