Looking Back: The 16th White Columns Annual: Curated by Augusto Arbizo, White Columns, New York

Curator's Statement

New York art-viewing in 2025 felt unusually generous, shaped for me by a series of charged encounters across galleries, museums, artist studios, and art fairs. The works gathered here share an ethos of obsession and relentlessness—artists pressing their ideas and processes to the edge, testing what inherited forms can still hold. What lingers are moments of recognition and surprise: sustained encounters with artists such as Pacita Abad, Sylvia Sleigh, Atsuko Tanaka, and Jack Whitten, alongside quieter breakthroughs by younger artists including Hardy Hill, Brandon Morris, and Yu Nishimura. Looking Back offers only a partial glimpse of a year rich with work often experienced quickly— absorbed in brief moments, and sometimes repeated viewings, yet holding attention and staying present.