Dear Nemesis, Nicole Eisenman 1993–2013 is the most expansive mid-career survey of this major American artist to date. Over 120 paintings, drawings, prints, and sculptures represent Eisenman’s sprawling 20-year output. A painter consistently drawn to figures and faces, Eisenman’s canvases overflow with pathos and humor, tenderness and violence. An early focus on drawing, evident in murals and installations, evolved into large, narrative paintings clustered with bodies—and heads. Often abstracted into planes of color, Eisenman’s heads laugh, cry, kiss, and bend into the glow of cell phones.

Eisenman’s queer and feminist work often repositions historical works of art. We see Gaugin, Picasso, and Manet’s greatest hits recast as bitingly political and deeply intimate subjects, reanimating the radicality of these art historical works.