Solo exhibitions of work by Arcmanoro Niles and Claire Watson will open Sunday at Guild Hall and continue through July 19. “Forgotten Words I Never Got to Say” traces the evolution of Niles’s work since his 2016 residency at the East Hampton cultural center. That was the inaugural year of its residency initiative.
Known for his saturated color, reflective surfaces, and emotionally charged scenes informed by daily life and memory, Niles has developed a distinctive visual language that challenges conventions of portraiture.
Early in his career, he became frustrated with traditional methods of rendering skin tone, finding they lacked the depth and dimension he observed in real life. This led him to experiment with color, layering pinks, oranges, and purples to evoke an internal light.
Niles’s chiaroscuro-like approach reveals both a dedication to craft and a palette that defines his work across portraits, domestic interiors, and landscapes, says the museum. The exhibition also includes a selection of works from the past decade, juxtaposing recent and earlier pieces that highlight the growth and complexity of his practice.
Niles holds a B.F.A. from the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts and an M.F.A. from the New York Academy of Art. He has exhibited at the Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston; the Philbrook Museum of Art, Tulsa; Jeffrey Deitch, Los Angeles, and the MAC, Belfast.
Watson won Top Honors in Guild Hall’s 2023 Artist Members Exhibition, having been selected by Virginia Lebermann, co-founder and board president of Ballroom Marfa. “Re-Paired” is her first major institutional solo presentation on the East End, where, for three decades, she has maintained a house and studio in Water Mill.
Her sculpture and mixed-media assemblages are created from found materials. In her recent work, she deconstructs salvaged leather garments and reconfigures them into new formal compositions, using traditional sewing and pattern-making techniques.
Those works highlight the tactile and structural qualities of leather, transforming utilitarian objects into expressive forms with renewed potential. The traces of wear embedded in the garments reflect histories of the wearer’s labor, which, says the museum, the artist “refashions into abstract meditations on human form and presence.”
Watson earned a B.F.A. in painting from the University of Texas, Austin, and an M.F.A. in sculpture from the Tyler School of Art in Rome and Philadelphia. Her awards and honors include residencies at the Watermill Center and the Saltonstall Foundation for the Arts in Ithaca, N.Y.; a fellowship from the New York Foundation for the Arts, and a Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant.
Both shows are organized by Melanie Crader, museum director and curator of visual arts, with support from Philippa Content, museum manager and registrar, and Claire Hunter, museum coordinator and curatorial associate.
