NEW YORK, NY.- David Kordansky Gallery presents Continent of Misbelief, its second solo exhibition of sculptures, paintings, and works on paper by Jared Buckhiester. The exhibition is on view in New York at 520 W. 20th St. from October 30 through December 13, 2025, with an opening reception on Thursday, October 30 from 6 to 8 PM.

In an introduction to the exhibition, Buckhiester writes:

“I found a precedent for my aspirations in the poems of Marianne Moore. You might say that Moore is the patron saint of this exhibition. I did not discover this until most of the work was already made, but that order falls in line with a belief of mine that time is not linear, but cyclical. Her poems have clarity and precision within a structure and cadence that can masquerade as opacity. When reading Moore’s poems, comprehension arises through avenues indirect, but once illuminated, understanding is unshakably clear. This is my hope for material (clay, paint, charcoal, wood) and image.

I always wanted to be a filmmaker. Instead, I took photographs, then I made drawings and ceramics, all before becoming an analysand. It was there on the couch where I learned that the origin of an image is of little significance compared to the emotion or action it stirs. In the practice of building up a ceramic or drawing and then showing it to others, a viewer’s knowledge of the origin of any singular image is of no importance at all. ‘A viewer’ includes me. The exhibition title is my own interpretation of a phrase from one of Moore’s poems. If this were a film, the title might also be the origin story. The paintings are a reference for the time of day and location. The drawings are the director’s notation for action and dialogue. The ceramics are a monument, or memory. The central wall’s interior is an inaccessible void, and the screens are just that, partitions preventing an objective view of both sides. And because images tend to repeat themselves, the story’s arc is indeed cyclical.”

In Continent of Misbelief, Buckhiester returns to the well of subjects and scenes, characters and dramas central to his oeuvre. Just as memories shift each time they’re retrieved, these source images are redeployed and reimagined in ever-changing variations.

The intuitive process by which Buckhiester draws, paints, and sculpts extends to the arrangement and installation of artworks across the exhibition. Experienced both discretely and in concert, a painting might recover the narrative thread dropped by a drawing, while a figurative sculpture, simultaneously animate and object-like, reinforces the feeling of a painted, late afternoon shadow. Freestanding screens serve to divide and disrupt the gallery, acting as backdrops behind sculptures while gaps created by the screens’ oak feet reveal partial glimpses of what’s behind and beneath. Buckhiester’s signature, pulpit-like pedestals, open at front and back, similarly balance negative space with the complexity of the often precariously stacked ceramics.

In their composite construction and archaeological suggestion, Buckhiester’s sculptures, especially, nod toward a cyclical, transhistorical conception of time, one that extends beyond traditional understandings that a single self exists in one, locatable present. Though Buckhiester left his native South more than thirty years ago, a certain regional inheritance persists across his visual language. The restrained, expressive brushwork used to render a shrub or tree stump, cast in the light that presages tornadoes, gives his paintings the patina of myth. These reflections describe the American South not as a region of objective fact, but as an imaginary site in which deeply human impulses, fears, and desires play out in perpetually unresolved scenes.

Like Moore’s imagistic texts, Buckhiester’s artworks prioritize open questions over closed statements. In the poem “Armor’s Undermining Modesty,” the speaker asks, “What is more precise than precision? Illusion,” a riddle made manifest throughout this exhibition. The specificity with which Buckhiester renders facial expressions and physical gestures finds tension—and new meaning—against generalized forms and disappearing lines, leaving the viewer to transpose, create, or misread the rest. Within this balancing act of revelation and repression, the ambiguous interactions between hands and mouths remind us of consumption, self-pacification, and secrets whispered.

Jared Buckhiester (b. 1977, Dahlonega, Georgia) has been the subject of solo exhibitions at venues including Dunes, Portland, ME (2023); Lighthouse Works, Fishers Island, New York, NY (2021); and Clough-Hanson Gallery, Rhodes College, Memphis, TN (2018). His work has been included in notable group exhibitions including The Writing’s on the Wall: Language and Silence in the Visual Arts (curated by Hilton Als), Hill Art Foundation, New York, NY (2024–2025); elbow fist to make, Parker Gallery, Los Angeles, CA (2023); Toni Morrison’s Black Book (curated by Hilton Als), David Zwirner, New York, NY (2022); and One Day at a Time: Manny Farber and Termite Art, Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, CA (2018). His work is in the collection of the Morgan Library and Museum, New York, NY. He received his BFA from Pratt Institute in New York and his MFA from Bard College in Annandale-on-Hudson, New York. Buckhiester lives and works in New York.