Immensity of Blue: Featuring: Katherine Blackburne, Adam de Boer, Howard Smith, Eva Struble, Jeff Wallace, Allan Wexler, Ayse Wilson
Jane Lombard Gallery is pleased to present the group exhibition Immensity of Blue. This exhibition looks to the conceptual framework of water to highlight places where idle activities are encouraged, rest is granted, new communities are fostered, and time seems to undulate indefinitely. Immensity of Blue will be on view at Jane Lombard Gallery from June 26th - August 14th, 2026, with an opening reception on Friday, June 26th from 6 - 8 PM.
In a vibrant triptych, Adam de Boer reimagines Georges Seurat’s A Sunday on La Grande Jatte through the lens of present-day Los Angeles. Palm trees shimmer in reflective water while figures lounge in states of ease, offering a distinctly Californian vision of sunlight, leisure, and collective gathering. Created using a traditional batik technique, the work merges cultural heritage with a contemporary sensibility, reflecting on the ways inherited traditions continue to shape personal experiences of place. Eva Struble similarly translates her physical experience of landscape into vibrant, multisensory abstract paintings that capture beaches and coastal environments filtered through faded recollection.
Jeff Wallace transforms found and weathered books into tactile sculptural works whose faded blues and sun-bleached yellows evoke water-worn surfaces and afternoons spent under relentless light. Their distressed palettes suggest memories dissolving over time, as though the books themselves had drifted ashore. Paintings by Howard Smith emphasize movement and rhythm through undulating brushwork and layered abstraction. The works possess a meditative cadence, their flowing surfaces recalling tides or currents, as the brushstrokes simultaneously join and dissipate in a rhythm similar to waves.
A more theatrical and surreal interpretation of leisure unfolds in the works of Katherine Blackburne and Ayse Wilson. Katherine Blackburne presents scenes centered on inflatable pool toys, capturing intimate social exchanges that drift into the fantastical. In these works, the inflatables both conceal the human body and create encounters that are uncannily sensuous. Ayse Wilson, by contrast, embraces buoyancy and movement through colorful floating and diving figures that bend effortlessly through space. Untethered by gravity or concern, her works embody the spontaneity and freedom associated with summer. The colorful swimmers become intimate portraits, suspended in moments that feel both personal and universal.
Extending these ideas into the realm of collective experience, Allan Wexler transforms the visual language of the public beach into a contemplative sculptural installation. Inspired by traditional Japanese sand gardens, Wexler replaces stones with a beach chair and towel, reframing familiar markers of recreation as meditative objects. Through handmade rakes and sculptural tools, the act of grooming sand becomes an exercise in ritual and reflection, inviting viewers into the contemplative state. In its entirety, the exhibition considers the emotional and psychological atmosphere of summer: the suspension of urgency, the drift of idle time, and the quiet communities that emerge around places of rest.
