Curated by Anthony Huberman

Candy Jernigan indexed tiny found things—including Cheez Doodles, crack vials, and chewing gum—in her drawings and assemblages, the faux dispassion of her intimate illustrational style (which extended even to her found-object collage work) somehow imbuing familiar, throwaway items with pathos and personality. This category-defying artist, who deserves far greater recognition than she has received to date, died of cancer at age thirty-nine in 1991, leaving behind a singular body of work documenting her short life, as well as the accumulation of drug paraphernalia and bodega inventory that littered her East Village neighborhood. For this exhibition, curator Anthony Huberman will assemble roughly eighty works from the 1980s and ’90s, including works on paper made with pencil, pastel, and rubber stamps. The show’s must-see centerpiece will be the collected final works Jernigan produced before her death, “Untitled (vessels),” ca. 1990–91, a series of delicate bowls and jugs on watercolor-washed grounds that has only been exhibited once before.

— Johanna Fateman