Facets
of
Sight
This exhibition explores the unstable terrain of perception. Facets of Sight brings together artists who consider how vision is shaped not only by the eye, but by memory, instinct, and emotion. Here, seeing is not a passive act. It is a process of interpretation, revision, and sometimes, surrender.
Many of the works in this exhibition embrace ambiguity. They lean into abstraction, where form slips away from certainty and enters the realm of suggestion. Others use symbolic language or personal narrative to complicate what might first appear familiar. Across media, there is a shared desire to expand the viewer’s understanding of what it means to perceive, to ask not just what we are looking at, but how we are looking, and why.
Like light catching on broken glass, flashes of color flicker and bend along the edges of meaning. One shape may speak in multiple voices. A gesture may evoke both clarity and unease. These are works that invite us to linger, to question, and to return with different eyes.
Facets of Sight does not propose a singular truth. Instead, it offers a space for shifting perspectives, a quiet argument in favor of multiplicity, nuance, and the beauty of not fully knowing.
Explore the Collection
CJ Cowden
James Henry
Yooyeon Nam
Chip Calvin
More About the Works
Broken Infinity
by CJ Cowden
In Broken Infinity, the symbol of the eternal is ruptured, splintered into turbulent blue forms that hover between control and chaos. The work invites viewers to question the permanence of ideas we take for granted love, time, even selfhood. Through gesture and saturation, it captures a moment where perception shifts: what once seemed whole now feels volatile, unraveling at the edges.
This piece speaks to how we see through disruption how clarity sometimes arrives not in stillness, but in fracture.
Order of Vision
by CJ Cowden
Order of Vision arranges color into compartments, suggesting logic yet the rhythm resists perfection. Each block hums with its own frequency, as if sight were not just about what we observe, but how our minds organize what we take in. Perception here is architectural: built, bordered, but deeply human.
Within the grid lies a quiet tension the interplay between chaos and control, emotion and form asking the viewer not just what they see, but how they are seeing it.
Blurred Lines
by CJ Cowden
In Blurred Lines, perception is suspended in motion. Fields of color stretch and smear across the canvas like echoes of thought or memory caught mid-shift. Nothing settles; boundaries dissolve. The painting becomes a meditation on how we see through haze emotional, temporal, or sensory and how clarity often comes not in sharpness, but in suggestion.
This work embodies the slipperiness of vision when filtered through feeling, revealing how truth can live in the in-between.
Capturing the Fae I and II
by CJ Cowden
These twin paintings shimmer with a wild, elusive energy as if trying to hold onto something never meant to be seen directly. Capturing the Fae invites the viewer to consider the act of witnessing the unseen: the flicker of motion in a forest clearing, the electric pulse of imagination, the ancestral echo of myth.
Rendered in a layered storm of color and gesture, the works conjure the Fae not as figures, but as presence a feeling, a glimmer, a question. Here, sight is not just optical but intuitive, emotional, and ancient. In this view, belief becomes a lens and wonder, a form of vision.
Think and You Become
by CJ Cowden
In Think and You Become, soft color fields drift and pool like quiet intentions, while a sharp gold triangle cuts through the composition with purpose. The work moves between meditation and assertion, suggesting that thought itself is a form of sight an internal vision that shapes reality.
By framing emotion and geometry side by side, the painting becomes a quiet argument: that perception begins within, and what we see is often a mirror of what we believe.
Mute Forbearance-blue
by CJ Cowden
Built from hundreds of painted wooden pegs, Mute Forbearance resists immediate comprehension. At first glance, it’s a quiet mass dense, rhythmic, contained. But as the eye lingers, subtle color shifts emerge, and texture becomes language. What seemed silent begins to hum.
This work challenges how we perceive presence: it asks the viewer to slow down, to move closer, to witness the way patience sharpens perception. Mute Forbearance speaks to the parts of vision that are felt more than seen the restrained, the held back, the endured.
The Visitor
by CJ Cowden
The Visitor lingers at the edge of perception a shadowed figure caught between presence and absence. Rendered in a palette that shifts like light across skin, the form emerges from darkness not as a portrait, but as a sensation. It calls to mind the fleeting things we glimpse from the corner of our eye: memory, intuition, something once known and now barely remembered.
This piece lives in the peripheral, asking what it means to truly see and what it means to feel seen by something we cannot name.
Veiled Garden I & II
by CJ Cowden
Nature reveals itself through layers of mist, memory, and mystery. These circular forms pulse with organic energy roots, vines, and bloom-like gestures rise and fall through a shroud of color and shadow. The garden is not seen directly, but sensed, as though glimpsed through fog or recalled in a dream.
This diptych invites reflection on how perception is often filtered by mood, by time, by what we hope or fear to find. In this softened vision of the natural world, the familiar becomes strange, and the act of seeing becomes a quiet search.
Faith
by James Henry
Not every ascent is upward.
There is a falling that deepens us
where belief is not light,
but a gravity.
It holds us
quietly,
below the surface of certainty,
until we learn to breathe
in the dark
and name it holy.
“Faith” wrestles with the weight of belief when it doesn't lift, but anchors. It asks what it means to remain grounded in uncertainty, and whether struggle itself can be sacred.
Silenced
by James Henry
Two voices
caught in a loop
one louder,
the other vanishing.
Until it’s only the echo
rehearsing its script
against the walls of the self.
Is this still a conversation,
or just the noise we make
to drown the quiet we fear?
“Silenced” explores the tension between expression and erasure. A portrait of conflict that asks whether we’re truly listening or just arguing with ourselves.
Children of Bait
by Yooyeon Nam
‘Children of Bait’ investigates a world in which mystery and grotesque arise from sweetness and fear. The characters evoke a sense of uncanniness because they appear far too innocent to experience suffering or enact violence—yet that is exactly what unfolds. This dissonance renders their world subtly but deeply unsettling.
Oh Well, the Truth is…
by Yooyeon Nam
‘Oh, well the truth is…’ addresses a forced situation where one cannot reveal the truth and must endure disadvantages.
Caring
Gold
Corners
by Yooyeon Nam
by Yooyeon Nam
by Yooyeon Nam
‘Caring’ explores the relationship between a child and a parent, where they may sometimes be a burden to each other, yet still love one another enough to endure that burden.
‘Gold’ explores mysteries in everyday life symbolized by the bird-like creature and the curtain.
Corners’ captures a moment of helplessness—when you're cornered, exposed by a blinding light, and there's no ground left to stand on.
Fire
Payback
by Yooyeon Nam
by Yooyeon Nam
‘Fire’ explores a power struggle over who holds control and who doesn’t, experimenting with composition and the use of the painting’s edges.
‘Payback’ reflects the idea that every action has a consequence—whether you do good or bad, it eventually returns to you.
More About Our Artists
CJ Cowden
Artist Statment and Bio
As a mixed media artist, CJ explores the boundaries of form, texture, and color through abstract compositions. CJ’s work is a dialogue between spontaneity and intention, where different materials and techniques come together to create layered, dynamic pieces. CJ aims to evoke emotion and provoke thought, encouraging viewers to find their own connections and interpretations within the abstract forms. Through this process, CJ seeks to capture the essence of creativity—unpredictable, complex, and endlessly evolving.
CJ’s artistic journey is a testament to the transformative power of creativity in the face of adversity. Born into the whirlwind world of a traveling evangelist, she spent her formative years on the road, bearing witness to the fervor and devotion of her parents’ mission.
After her parents passing at age 10, CJ navigated her new life in foster care with art as it allowed her to express her depth of emotions. Today, CJ stands as a testament to resilience and the enduring human spirit. She has transcended her humble beginnings to become a gallery owner, a curator of dreams, and an artist of international acclaim. CJ’s journey from troubling childhood to a globally recognized artist and gallery owner reminds us that even in the darkest of circumstances, creativity has the power to heal and transform lives.
James Henry
Artist Bio
James Henry is a New York–based artist and creative designer whose abstract work explores the impermanence of life. Using acrylics, pastels, collage, and screen print, he creates layered compositions that reflect on memory, movement, and the fleeting sense of place. His energetic palette and intuitive process evoke the textures of city life inviting moments of stillness within a rapidly shifting world.
Originally from Staten Island, James studied Communications at St. John’s University and earned his MFA in Theater from The New School. He began painting in 2019 and is constantly expanding and developing his practice through classes and workshops. His work has been exhibited at Van Der Plas Gallery, with Visionary Projects, and at regional art fairs. He recently had his first solo art show in Yonkers.
James draws ongoing inspiration from New York City, travelling, and everyday visual fragments captured through travel, short films, and daily observation.
Artist Statement
My work is rooted in abstraction and reflects on the impermanence of life. How places shift, memories fade, and moments transform before we fully grasp them. I’m drawn to the subtle textures of lived experience: weathered walls, lingering shadows, the remnants of movement and time.
Through layered compositions and an energetic palette, I explore the emotional undercurrents that emerge from everyday environments. My use of color often contrasted against greys, blacks, and off-whites is intentional, and meant to evoke memory and mood rather than depict a literal scene. The process is intuitive and physical: sometimes using screen print, a found printing plate, or even newspaper; sometimes repetitive words or text that are later buried under paint. Each layer, each mark, suggests presence, erosion, and the trace of what once was.
Much of my inspiration comes from city life, the rhythms, the quiet corners, the in-between spaces we pass without noticing. By isolating and abstracting these moments, I aim to create space for stillness and reflection within a constantly shifting world.
Yooyeon Nam
Artist Bio
Yooyeon Nam is a Korean-born, New York-based oil painter. Originally trained in business at Yonsei University and employed in an office setting, she eventually chose to follow her passion for art and relocated to New York. She earned her BFA in Painting from Pratt Institute in 2023, graduating with highest honors.
Nam has had solo exhibitions including "No Home in Wonderland" at A Space Gallery, "Perfect Kidnapping" with ChaShaMa, and "Kidnapped" with Artists Living Room, all in New York City. Her group exhibitions include "Flesh Spa" at Caelum Gallery in Chelsea, "Desire–Body Without Organs" and "KIDS ONLY" at A Space Gallery, "Oasis of Color" at Van Der Plas Gallery, and major fairs such as "The Other Art Fair" by Saatchi, "Artexpo New York" with AGI Fine Art, and "ASYAAF" in Seoul.
Nam was awarded the first grand prize in the Arthouse.Z Art Prize and received first place in "Mythologies," a virtual group exhibition by Goddessart Magazine, which will lead to a scheduled virtual solo show. In 2024, she participated in artist residencies at School of Visual Arts, ChaNorth, and Woodstock Byrdcliffe. She is also scheduled to join the AnkhLave Arts Alliance residency in fall 2025. She currently holds an O-1 visa for individuals of extraordinary ability in painting.
Artist Statement
I am a Korean-born, New York-based oil painter. My works, through my characters, explore both my sense of cultural estrangement and the existential absurdity—its anxiety, ambiguity, and lack of purpose. I investigate what it means to be an outsider in both my own and the wider world, and how this alienation sharpens my awareness of life's fundamental meaninglessness. This eerie discomfort is further evoked through a wide array of colors and mysterious narratives. By depicting my overly cute and adorable characters as suffering or being violent, I accentuate the sense of uncanniness, paradoxically intensifying the seriousness of my narratives.
My round-faced, nose-less characters reflect both my sense of displacement and my cultural heritage. Their blank faces and weird eyes echo norms where direct eye contact and overt emotional expression are considered impolite, a contrast to environments where eye contact is expected. I combine this alienation with my admiration for traditional Korean Buddha sculptures with idealized body forms that are believable, yet anatomically incorrect—qualities I aim to capture in my work.