Announcement

Set against the immersive backdrop of James Howell’s studio, Gray Matter is hosted by the James Howell Foundation and presented as a special program accompanying the Vera List Center’s Matter of Intelligence Seminar Series. Inspired by Howell’s practice, the event convenes artists Josiah McElheny, Kameelah Janan Rasheed, and Mika Tajima (TBC) in a moderated conversation by the VLC’s Carin Kuoni about the intimate, rigorous relationships they cultivate with material and subject matter. 

Anchored in Howell’s decades-long inquiry into the color gray, the program examines how sustained, meticulous engagement with a material, its physical composition and form, as well as its symbolic significance, becomes a mode of intelligence. Gray Matter draws on Howell’s profound study of gray—its scientific variations, optical effects, and material properties—as a framework for considering how hyperfocused attention shapes artistic perception and practice. His work serves as a quiet but generative interlocutor for artists whose practices merge intellectual rigor with sensorial experimentation, revealing how repetition and embodied inquiries produce knowledge.

This invitation-only program is free and open to a limited number of New School students. Please register by April 15 at the link below.