Sean Horton (Presents) is pleased to announce Beyond the Mountains — the New York solo debut of Madjeen Isaac. The exhibition is a tender offering of utopian urban living. It is a celebration of Caribbean-American ancestry, attitude, and community through an astute observation of urban sprawl.
In her latest series of paintings, Isaac assembles magical realist scenes that hypothesize their existence by hybridizing her ancestral homeland of Haiti with her hometown Brooklyn. The layered compositions bustle with kineticism and burst with flora and fauna, depicting Black and Brown people in scenes of activity, abundance, leisure, and communality.
“If someone had X-Ray vision and looked into the pre-war buildings, they would see all of these Caribbean households,” states Isaac of her Flatbush neighborhood. She was born and raised in Brooklyn, a borough which is home to the second largest community of Haitian-Americans in the USA. The body of work, ranging from 2020–22, can be regarded as a visual diary, capturing an idyllic snapshot of a quickly-gentrifying Flatbush.
Madjeen Isaac (b. 1996, Brooklyn, NY) lives and works in Brooklyn, NY. The artist received a MA in Art + Education & Community Practice from New York University and a BFA from the Fashion Institute of Technology, New York, NY. She also attended a Museum Education Practicum at the Studio Museum in Harlem, New York, NY. Her work has been featured in several group exhibitions in New York and her mural, commissioned by the Haiti Cultural Exchange in collaboration with the New York Department of Transportation, can be seen in Brooklyn. Her artwork also makes a cameo in the new Hulu series Flatbush Misdemeanors.
Sean Horton (Presents) is located at 515 West 20th Street, Suite #3N and accessible by buzzer / elevator. Current gallery hours are Wednesday — Saturday, 12-5 pm and by appointment. For more information, please contact the gallery at info@seanhortonpresents.com or 212-243-2663.
