Harper’s is happy to announce Prussian Blue, New York–primarily based artist Sophia Huitema’s first solo exhibition with the gallery. The presentation options new works by Huitema and will likely be on view by way of April 25, 2026.
Throughout the seven oil work on view, the visible and chemical properties of the pigment Prussian Blue operate as a metaphorical anchor, tying collectively a forged of watchful feminine figures inside Huitema’s hazy, dreamlike worlds. Working inside a restrained vary of blue and inexperienced tones, the work evoke a moody environment by way of cool harmonies and dimly lit interiors. Prussian Blue, derived from chemical processes traditionally linked to cyanide whereas additionally used as an antidote to sure types of poisoning, embodies a uncommon duality wherein toxicity and safety converge, mirroring the emotionally guarded, ambiguous presence of Huitema’s figures.
The stress between magnificence and menace permeates Huitema’s topics. Elongated figures with exaggerated limbs and slender necks slink by way of every scene, usually immediately confronting the viewer’s gaze. Set inside opulent environment that recall Gatsby–period decadence, Huitema’s girls bear the markers of excessive society themselves, wearing elegant robes and adorned with pearl necklaces or jewel-studded headdresses. Transferring by way of film-noir settings with poise and a quietly calculating air, these femme fatales appear both to lure their viewers right into a seductive ruse or to deploy their very own crafty to evade hazard. In Sleeper Automobile, for instance, a lady fitted in a backless night robe tilts her head slyly over her proper shoulder in a relaxed pose whereas her proper hand seems braced and able to strike. As rain streaks throughout the coach’s home windows and the slim aisle stretches into an unsure depth, a second of cinematic suspense emerges, evoking the apex of a psychological thriller. On this means, Huitema constructs a world of heightened environment and theatrical rigidity that opens onto the broader visible traditions and painterly languages informing her work.
Huitema’s work draw on a variety of art-historical and visible references whereas sustaining a definite inside coherence. The attenuated proportions and stylized poses of her figures recall traditions of early twentieth-century trend illustration and Artwork Deco design, the place gesture and embellishment echo the streamlined finesse of illustrators akin to Erté and the theatrical poise present in interwar couture and stage design. Her compressed areas additionally recommend affinities with features of Symbolist and Surrealist portray, wherein shallow interiors and phantasmagoric backdrops operate much less as coherent environments than as psychological realms formed by unconscious expertise. Fairly than aligning with a single historic framework, Huitema synthesizes these influences into a recent visible language that strikes fluidly between illustration, portray, and cinematic staging. Working exterior formal tutorial coaching, she has developed this vocabulary by way of sustained studio observe and shut statement, leading to a physique of labor that situates itself in dialogue with artwork historical past whereas remaining grounded in a self-directed method to picture making. On this context, Prussian Blue operates not solely as a chromatic throughline but in addition as a conceptual one, binding collectively Huitema’s historic references and recurring motifs of safety and menace in fixed rigidity.
