Selena Kimball's 'Ice-blink' at Ulterior Gallery Reconfigures Victorian Arctic Explorations

Ulterior Gallery in New York presents "Ice-blink," an exhibition by Selena Kimball running through October 17, 2026, at 424 Broadway, #601. The show centers on Kimball's cut-paper works made from first-edition copies of Elisha Kent Kane's 1856 series Arctic Explorations, a harrowing account of a polar expedition. Kimball cuts and reassembles the book's steel-plate and woodblock engravings into faceted, painterly geometries, often staining the lower portions with iodine and water to evoke sepia photographs and medical supplies. Works such as Gathering Moss (2026), Forced on an Iceberg (2026), and Walrus Sporting (2026) incorporate physical gaps that raise questions about missing figures and colonial heroes, while smaller pieces like Sonar Reading (2026) use fragments to depict a boat from a 1985 newspaper clipping. Kimball enlisted friends and family to cut pages and sort clippings by dark, medium, and light values, a process she describes as bricolage. The title Gathering Moss also references Robin Wall Kimmerer's book on moss and lichens, which notes their presence on every continent. Kimball observes that the high-quality cotton rag paper of the Kane volumes has outlasted the geography the book depicts, a comment on global warming. The exhibition is reviewed by Sharon Garbe, an artist and writer based in New York City.