The Brandywine Museum of Art presents Abundance/Excess: A Contemporary Eye on Still Life

On view at the Brandywine Museum of Art, Abundance/Excess: A Contemporary Eye on Still Life hints at an unexpected view of the traditional. And that’s what this exhibition delivers, as eleven contemporary artists explore and expand on what “still life” might mean for them.

More than enough of something

It first explores Abundance, defined here as “more than enough of something”, whether tangible items or abstract concepts. Philadelphia videographers Nadia Hironaka and Matthew Suib Text introduce the exhibition’s theme in their mysterious projection Vanitas MMXVII (2018). The artists prepared items commonly found in still-life works, including fruit (both fresh and rotting), and filmed them floating against a dark background along with shards of tableware and a skull.

Painter Kate Abercrombie (b. 1978), another Philadelphian, takes a more sanguine and upbeat look at abundance, addressing the subject with seven engaging gouaches, recent works on paper that layer the inspirations of artists like Dali or Peto with objects of daily life. Abercrombie flattens their perspective and fills her highly patterned borders with colorful abstractions, as in The Trees are Bowing (2025) whose title is taken from Ada Limon’s poem Dead Stars.

In her first museum exhibition, Katie Butler (b. 1995 and based in Akron, Ohio) created her Kitchen Table series, and here four large oils employ realistic items in an exaggerated perspective that cleverly comment on food and the dynamics of power. Created for this exhibition, Small Potatoes (2026) was inspired by the intimate depictions of home in the works of Carolyn Wyeth, held in the museum’s collection.

Philadelphian King Cobra (b.1986) moves still life into sculpture in three works that “ask the viewer to confront … visceral consequences of radicalized power.” She also works as a tattoo artist, evident in the myriad details in these sculptures. Her riveting White Cake series (2024) references European vanitas paintings illustrating the dangers of earthly pleasures. Here, she frosts a slice of foam and silicone cake with pearls and crystals, but a closer look reveals its anthropomorphic decay.

Photographer Cara Romero (b. 1977) is a Santa Fe artist and an enrolled member of Mohave Desert Chemehuevi Indian Tribe. For her series First American Doll, she collaborated with Indigenous subjects to create four show-stopping large (52” x 43”) portraits, an exhibition highlight. Each person stands in a decorated full-sized “doll-box” frame built and painted by the artist. Dressed in regalia and surrounded by a compelling series of representative objects of their choosing, Romero’s subjects skillfully and successfully straddle portraiture and still life.

Bodies, garbage, and beauty

The Excess portion of the exhibition kicks off with four visceral textile sculptures of Tamara Kostianovsky (b. 1974). Her graphic depiction of carcasses, hanging on meat hooks and created from fabric and discarded clothing, was inspired by artists as diverse as Rembrandt and Chaïm Soutine, her father’s practice as a plastic surgeon, and the butchered cattle she saw growing up in Argentina.

New York-based multidisciplinary artist sTo Len is focused on waste and those who work to clean up urban environments. His practice has included residencies in New York and Alexandria, Virginia, and the seven works here employ the Japanese printmaking technique of gyotaku. But Len rubs trash with the traditional sumi ink to create his monoprints, like the five-foot-long hanging fabric scroll Impressions for Coastal Constellation Alignment: Potomac River, Virginia, 2020 created using trash from the river where he played as a child, a work that transmutes garbage into beauty.

Expanding historic genres

Curator Kerry Bickford, the Brandywine’s first full-time curator of contemporary art, includes three other artists whose arresting works address issues of waste and consumption. But skilled as they are, they seem to stretch the credulity of her still-life thesis. Ilana Harris-Babou (b.1991) employs sculpture and video to explore consumerism and advertising. Philadelphian Misha Wyllie (b.1988) creates collages from the text and images of advertising circulars. And Korean-born sculptor Sungho Bae incorporates ground-up toys in his series of rotating snow globes.

The exhibition has no catalogue, but Bickford has included a bookshelf displaying five well-chosen books that complement this thoughtful and interesting exhibition. They include Living Light, a retrospective look at Romero’s photographic practice, and sTo Len’s record of his 2021-2023 New York residency, cleverly designed to appear like a period publication.

Many works in this exhibition draw directly or indirectly on the still-life paintings and trompe l’oeil paintings now on view in the Brandywine’s noted collections. Abundance/Excess expands and breathes fresh life into those historic genres by showcasing these 11 contemporary artists who seek to transform them.

At top: Kate Abercrombie’s 2020 Last Year’s Leaves are Smoke. Gouache on paper board, 20 x 16". (Courtesy of the artist and Fleisher/Ollman Gallery, Philadelphia; Photo by Claire Iltis.)

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