American painter Joan Semmel is debuting a dual-continent exhibition titled "Continuities," presented simultaneously at Xavier Hufkens in Brussels and Alexander Gray Associates in New York. The show features recent large-scale paintings, including works like "Here I Am" (2025) and "Red Breast" (2025), which utilize saturated hues and layered compositions to explore the artist's own aging body from her own perspective. By presenting related works across two cities, the exhibition mirrors the internal logic of Semmel’s paintings, which often employ doubling and shifting imagery to represent the body as a site of active presence.
This exhibition is significant for its uncompromising focus on the aging female form, a subject historically marginalized or aestheticized in Western art. At 93, Semmel continues to challenge the male gaze by asserting the agency and lived experience of the elderly body through a sophisticated painterly language developed over six decades. The synchronized presentation in Brussels and New York further highlights the enduring cross-continental dialogue within feminist art history and underscores Semmel's status as a pivotal figure in contemporary figurative painting.