Karen Heagle's 'Invocations' Opens at Sargent's Daughters on Lower East Side

Karen Heagle's exhibition 'Invocations' opened at Sargent's Daughters gallery on March 22, 2019, marking her first show with a new gallery since her previous one closed. The exhibition features a bestiary of paintings that reference Dutch still lifes, Pier Paolo Pasolini, the Book of Revelation, and Greek mythology. According to the gallery's press release, the works explore Heagle's recurrent themes: sexuality and queer identity, feminism, power, history, and the fleeting nature of life. The show runs through April 21, 2019, at 179 East Broadway on New York's Lower East Side. Heagle, who previously worked at Matthew Marks Gallery, was known to visitors as a helpful gallery staffer during the Jasper Johns exhibition there. This parallels historical instances where artists like Jackson Pollock and Robert Ryman worked as museum custodians before achieving recognition. The exhibition presents Heagle's complex visual narratives that weave together diverse cultural and mythological references into contemporary explorations of identity and existence.