Interviews by Brainard Carey

Kevin Umaña (b. 1989, Los Angeles, CA) is an artist who lives and works in Brooklyn, NY. Spending his early years between Los Angeles and El Salvador, Umaña’s personal history has profoundly shaped his visual language.

In El Salvador, he was immersed in a rural environment rich with natural textures, vibrant flora, and traditional crafts. While in Los Angeles, he confronted the intensity of city life and the pressures of assimilation. This duality seeded the fragmented forms and layered symbolism that define his art today. His practice continues to carry echoes of Latin American patterns, nature’s geometry, and American architectural influences, all reimagined through abstraction.

Umaña received his B.F.A from San Francisco State University in 2014. In 2025, Umaña received the Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation Award. He has completed residencies at the Josef and Anni Albers Foundation (2024); Anderson Ranch (2024); Sharpe-Walentas Studio Program (2023-24); Archie Bray Foundation for the Ceramic Arts, Helena, MT (2023); The Center for Book Arts, New York (2019). In 2017, Umaña created a permanent installation at the United Nations Headquarters in New York City. Institutions owning his work include The United Nations Art Collection, New York; Everson Museum of Art, Syracuse, NY; Munson, Utica, NY; Fidelity Mutual Funds Collection; Center for Book Arts Library, New York; and The Marin Museum of Contemporary Art, Novato, CA. In 2026, Umaña will be participating in the MacDowell Fellowship in New Hampshire.

Kevin Umaña, Revisiting the Roman Walls, 2026. Acrylic, oil, flock, ink, sand, marble dust, salt, resin, ceramics on canvas, 24 x 18 x 2 3/4 inches.
Kevin Umaña, Sanguine and Spiraling, 2023. Acrylic, oil, vinyl paint, flock, ink, sand, gouache, ceramics on canvas, 24 1/4 x 18 1/4 x 1 1/2 inches.

Rob Davis was born in 1970 in Norfolk, Virginia. He graduated from The School of The Art Institute of Chicago in 1997 with a degree in painting. His work has been exhibited both internationally and, in the U.S., It has been included in exhibitions at the Kunstmuseum Kloster Unser Lieben Frauen, Magdeburg; Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago; The Andy Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh; Museum of Contemporary Art, North Miami; Chrysler Museum Norfolk, VA; Sommer Contemporary Art, Tel Aviv; Luce Gallery, Turin; Rental Gallery, Long Island; and Untitled Gallery, New York. Davis currently lives and works in New York.

Rob Davis, Clothesline, 2026 oil on linen 48 x 56 inches
Rob Davis, Truck, 2026 oil on linen 48 x 48 inches
Rob Davis, Window, 2026 oil on linen 48 x 36 inches

Jeffrey Heiman is a painter whose work draws on personal memory and art historical references to explore intimacy, absence, and the surreal within domestic or imagined space. Blurring figuration and negative space, his paintings evoke a liminal sense of presence and emotional residue.

He has been an Artist in Residence at the Vermont Studio Center (Johnson, VT), the Byrdcliffe Artist Colony (Woodstock, NY), Neddy Artist Award Finalist 2022 (Seattle, WA), and recently earned his MFA in Painting from Bard College, he currently lives and works in the Hudson Valley.

Jeffrey Heiman, Flip, 2026, oil on canvas, 48 x 30 inches, courtesy the artist and Freight+Volume Gallery.
Jeffrey Heiman, Washing in the Sink, 2026, oil on linen, 34 x 40 inches, courtesy the artist and Freight+Volume Gallery.
Jeffrey Heiman, Jenny Sleeping, 2025, oil on canvas, 48 x 60 inches, courtesy the artist and Freight+Volume Gallery.

Painting by Caroline von Grone, Omar the Prophet
Omar Kholeif is an artist, author, curator, cultural historian and professor of global art theory and practice at the Glasgow School of Art and Program Leader of the Graduate Program in Curatorial Practice with the University of Glasgow.

Luísa Correia Pereira World Child Front Cover Courtesy of Sternberg Press and artPost21
They work and operate under numerous guises, including as the avatar of Doctor O—The World’s Leading Pop Physician (TM).

Born in Cairo, Egypt, they were raised in Glasgow, Scotland, Los Angeles, CA, and elsewhere. An author of over two dozen volumes on art, a curator of over 100 exhibitions, they are the co-founding director of artPost21, a not-for-profit publishing and broadcast platform for artists and their dreamwork.

Simone Fattal imagine otherwise Cover Courtesy Sternberg Press and artPost21
Their recent books include, Nil Yalter: Circular Tension (2024), Otobong Nkanga: Stitched Dreams (2024) and Internet_Art: From the Birth of the Web to the Rise of NFTs (2023).

Huguette Caland imagine otherwise cover Courtesy of Sternberg Press and artPost21
In 2025 their long-awaited critical biography on Huguette Caland was published as part of imagine/otherwise. Forthcoming in 2026 is Luísa Correia Pereira: World Child, published by Sternberg Press. Forthcoming projects include the curated group exhibition, Fellow Travelers at Tabari Art Space, Dubaiand a survey exhibition of their creative practice at The Third Line curated by Sofia Victorino.

A note: On the interview concerning the 3 channel video “Same as me” from 2002 shows an abbreviated day in the life of a total of 18 different versions of the artist. Only viewed three at a time, the possible variations are synchronized across time and space or arise in daydreams of elsewhere or other than. For Campbell, the process of making the video revealed the thesis of the work. “It was very challenging to learn how to reenact my self…. it was hard to keep up with myself.”

Beth Campbell, (USA, born in Illinois), demonstrates the inextricable entanglements of past, present, and future through her thought-provoking sculptures, installations, ceramics and works on paper. Equal parts humorous, prescient and morbid, Campbell confronts an overwhelming multiple future, culled from research on the philosophies that fueled the early internet and AI. Campbell is best recognized for her drawings and mobiles that draw from a specific moment in her life, multiplied into a profusion of speculative possibilities. The drawings, each titled with the opening line, “My potential future based on my present circumstances…”, mimic the form of a tree diagram, a graphic structure used to visualize probability and hierarchy. This diagram becomes Campbell’s means to channel anxieties about an overwhelmingly multiple future. She began to make these drawings about her life as an artist in New York City in the late 1990’s. In them, she suggests taking a moment to look both forward and backwards, taking into account actions and positions and the circumstances that led to them.

Beth Campbell earned her BFA from Truman State University in 1993 (Kirksville, MO) and her MFA from Ohio University in 1997 (Athens, OH). She has held over a dozen solo exhibitions at galleries and institutions, including The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum, Ridgefield, CT (2017); Sculpture Center, Cleveland, OH (2010); “Following Room” at The Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY (2007); Kate Werble Gallery, New York, NY (2020, 2017, 2012); the Public Art Fund, New York, NY (2007); White Columns, New York, NY (2000); and Nicole Klagsbrun Gallery, New York, NY (2008, 2005, 2004). Her work has been shown at MoMA PS1, the New Museum of Contemporary Art, the Brooklyn Museum of Art, Artists Space, and the Bloomberg Financial Offices in Conjunction with Sculpture Center. Campbell has also been featured in exhibitions at the Carnegie Museum of Art, (Pittsburgh, PA); Manifesta 7 (Italy); The Andy Warhol Museum, (Pittsburgh, PA); Contemporary Arts Center, (Cincinnati, OH); OK Center, (Linz, AT); and EX3 Centre for Contemporary Art, (Florence, IT). She has a large commission permanently on view in the Landmarks program at the University of Texas at Austin (Austin, TX).

Campbell received a Guggenheim Fellowship (2011), a residency at John Michael Kohler Arts Center, Arts/Industry Residency (2010), a Louis Comfort Tiffany Fellowship (2009) a Pollock- Krasner Foundation Grant (2006) and a Rema Hort Mann Foundation Art Grant (2000). She currently lives and works in Brooklyn, NY.

Beth Campbell, My Potential Future Based on Present Circumstances (11/3/25), 2025 Pencil on paper 50 × 38 ½ inches (127.00 × 97.79 cm) Courtesy of the artist and Kate Werble Gallery, New York Photo credit by Adam Reich photography
Beth Campbell, There’s no such thing as a good decision (fawn), 2025 Powder coated steel rod and wire, enamel paint 40 × 40 × 33 inches (101.60 × 101.60 × 83.82 cm) Courtesy of the artist and Kate Werble Gallery, New York Photo credit by Adam Reich photography
Beth Campbell, lost socks, 2024 Tinted porcelain 2 ¼ × 6 ½ × 6 ¾ inches (5.72 × 16.51 × 17.15 cm) Courtesy of the artist and Kate Werble Gallery, New York Photo credit by Adam Reich photography