Spotlight: Ellen Altfest

FEBRUARY 27-APRIL 5, 2025

The Spotlight series includes a new or never-before-exhibited artwork paired with a commissioned piece of writing, creating focused and thoughtful conversations between the visual arts and authors, critics, poets, scholars, and beyond. In this iteration, the Spotlight features Ellen Altfest’s Borrowed View, 2022-23. A text by curator Julien Domercq accompanies the presentation.

About:

Ellen Altfest (b. 1970, New York, NY) is an artist living and working in New York, NY, and Rising Fawn, GA. Altfest received a degree English and Painting at Cornell University, Ithaca, NY, in 1993, and later received an MFA in Painting from Yale University, New Haven, CT, in 1997. In 2002, Altfest studied at the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, Skowhegan, ME. Recent solo exhibitions include Nature, White Cube (Online) (2021); Green Spot, White Cube, Hong Kong, China (2019); Ellen Altfest, MK Gallery, Milton Keynes, United Kingdom (2015); Head and Plant, New Museum, New York, NY (2012); and The Bent Leg, White Cube, London, United Kingdom (2011). Recent group exhibitions include Close, GRIMM Gallery, London, United Kingdom (2023); Listen to the sound of the Earth Turning: Our Wellbeing Since the Pandemic, Mori Art Museum, Tokyo, Japan, (2022); Eye to Eye, Peter Freeman, New York, NY (2021); Rear Window, White Cube (Online) (2020); and Sympathetic Magic, Blum & Poe, Los Angeles, CA (2020). Alfest’s work is in the collections of the Dallas Art Museum, Dallas, TX; the Olbricht Collection, Berlin, Germany; Saatchi Gallery, London, United Kingdom; and the Zabludowicz Collection, London, United Kingdom. She received the Richard and Hinda Rosenthal Award in 2006, and an award from the Marie Walsh Sharpe Art Foundation in 2004. Altfest’s forthcoming solo exhibition Forever will be on view at the Frist Art Museum in Nashville, TN, May 31–September 1, 2025. 

Julien Domercq (b. Paris, France) is an art historian and curator living and working in London, United Kingdom. Domercq assumed the role of Curator at the Royal Academy of Art, London, United Kingdom, in 2024, where he recently worked on the exhibition Van Gogh: Poets and Lovers (2024). Previously, he was Associate Curator of Post-1800 Paintings (2023-2024) and Guest Associate Curator for After Impressionism: Inventing Modern Art (2021-2023) at the National Gallery, London, United Kingdom. At the National Gallery, Domercq curated the exhibition Drawn in Colour: Degas from the Burrell (2017) and assisted in organizing the show Painters’ Paintings: From Freud to Van Dyck (2016). He was the Interim Allen and Kelli Questrom Curator of Works on Paper (2019-2020) and the Lillian and James H. Clark Assistant Curator of European Art (2019-2020) at the Dallas Museum of Art, Dallas, TX. Domercq received a BA, History of Art, in 2010, and an MPhil, History of Art, in 2011, both from the University of Cambridge, Cambridge, United Kingdom. Radical Harmony: Helene Kröller-Müller’s Neo-Impressionists, curated by Domercq and Renske Cohen Tervaert, Curator, Kröller Müller Museum, Otterlo, Netherlands, will be on view at the National Gallery September 13, 2025‒February 8. 2026.

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