NEW YORK, NY.- Venus Over Manhattan announced its representation of multidisciplinary artist Brad Kahlhamer. Born of Native American descent in Tucson and adopted by German American parents, Kahlhamer’s practice engages with the complexity of identity and the confluences of cultural experience. His monumental paintings and drawings, intricate sculptures, and intimate sketchbooks capture personal narratives and memories as well as imaginary and constructed worlds, as he searches for a space of belonging. To mark his debut with the gallery, Venus Over Manhattan will present a solo exhibition of Kahlhamer’s work at Independent 20th Century, opening on September 5. This will be followed by a solo show of the artist’s work at the gallery in 2025.

“We look forward to growing our relationship with Brad Kahlhamer, and to presenting his singular work at Independent and in other upcoming exhibitions. Through explorations of his own life, Brad’s work reflects both a unique New York story and one that is also quintessentially American,” said Adam Lindemann, founder of Venus Over Manhattan. “In a moment when our individual identities and the identity of America are foremost in our national dialogues, Brad’s vision, perspective, and work are incredibly timely, resonant, and important. We are excited to engage new and wide-ranging audiences with his practice.”

Kahlhamer’s work is deeply influenced by his personal history and evolution. From his limited knowledge of his birth family to growing up in the beautiful and culturally rich landscapes of the American Southwest, and to his time as a touring musician, Kahlhamer’s path through the world has shaped his artistic vision and identity. His move to New York in the 1980s was particularly pivotal to his career as an artist. Through a job at Topps Chewing Gum, Kahlhamer was introduced to a group of influential underground illustrators, including Art Spiegelman, the renowned creator of Maus, whose vision would prove impactful as he committed to his own artistic practice. In the early 1990s, Kahlhamer’s own artistic career began to gain notoriety, and he was included in several seminal exhibitions at alternative arts spaces such as Exit Art, Thread Waxing Space, White Columns, and Socrates Sculpture Park. His doomsday shelter piece for The Garden of Sculptural Delights (1994) at Exit Art and his model village for Project Room (1992) at Thread Waxing Space captured his early interest in world building by mixing autobiographical details

with imagined experiences and places. In 1996, when the Drawing Center staged an exhibition focused on Plains Indian ledger drawings, Kahlhamer had another breakthrough moment. The ledger drawings were made by imprisoned Indigenous people as a means of documenting their personal stories and passing on tribal histories and mythologies. The show provided a new and fertile pathway for exploration, and the ledger drawings continue to be a critical influence for the artist today. Since those early years, Kahlhamer has developed a distinctive voice and vision, communicated through drawing, painting, sculpture, installation, music, and writing. His work engages with a breadth of cultural references, memories, personal and communal histories, fantasies, and imagined spaces, that together speak to the intricacy and layered realities of identity. He sometimes refers to his work as an artist as the creation of a “third place” that merges the real with the imagined. In this way, his practice is both profoundly personal and highly resonant, as he considers spiritual, cultural, and communal belonging—a subject at the core of many contemporary dialogues within the art world and in broader national and global contexts.

For the forthcoming exhibition of Kahlhamer’s work at Independent 20th Century, Venus Over Manhattan will present a range of paintings, drawings, and sculptures that represent the artist’s early career evolutions, with objects made approximately between 1994 and 2000. The exhibition highlights Kahlhamer’s early influences and the work that helped establish his voice and creative trajectory. In particular, a selection of watercolors on paper, including Bear Birdtail (1999); End of the Trail w/ Nice Music (1999); Surrounded by Friends (1999); and American People in NYC (2000), reflect his direct engagement with Native American ledger drawings. A group of sculptures also offers a compelling reflection of the ways in which Kahlhamer’s vision takes three-dimensional form.

Brad Kahlhamer (b. 1956; Tucson, Arizona) is a distinctive voice in contemporary art, with a long history on the New York City scene. His work has been the subject of numerous solo and two-person exhibitions, including at the Tucson Museum of Art (2022), Plains Art Museum (2019), Joslyn Museum (2015), Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art (2013), Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum (2012), and Museum of Contemporary Art Denver (2008). Kahlhamer has been honored with many awards and residencies, including a residency at Civitella Ranieri in Ranieri Umbertide, Italy (2022), the Foundation for Contemporary Arts Visual Arts Grant (2020), a residency with the Headlands Center for the Arts in San Francisco, California (2016), a residency with the Rauschenberg Foundation on Captiva Island, Florida (2015), and a Joan Mitchell Fellowship (2006), among numerous others. His works are included in the collections of prestigious institutions such as the Museum of Modern Art, Whitney Museum of American Art, Seattle Art Museum, and Denver Art Museum. He earned his BFA from the University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh in 1982. He lives and works in New York.