Gallery: Kylie Manning – There Is Something That Stays

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Written by Nina Evans for THE ARTISTS FORUM MAGAZINE
Edited by Amos White V for THE ARTISTS FORUM, INC
Photos: Courtesy of Pace Gallery, Nina Evans, and Amos White V

KYLIE MANNING: THERE IS SOMETHING THAT STAYS AT PACE GALLERY

NEW YORK, NY (March 14, 2025) On Thursday, March 14th, Pace Gallery celebrated the opening of painter Kylie Manning’s first major solo exhibition in New York. There is something that stays explores the experiential passage of time and the tragic struggle against that passage. The title of the exhibition references poet Jorge Luis Borges, whose writing about time blurs past, present and future, representing time as a churning, devouring, unstoppable force. Manning’s paintings, fortified with tourmaline, calcite, and quartz, abstract landscapes and the human body to reflect temporality as it shifts, moves on, and leaves behind. The collection features paintings of various sizes, ranging from small, intimate works to grand triptychs. 

The first thing I noticed about Manning’s large-scale work was the play with texture. Up close to pieces like Years are prowling, you can really feel the differences in focal weight across the composition. Watery washes of color are covered by thick brushstrokes; subtractive processes erode layers of paint and reveal what’s underneath. Manning’s figures are blurred, in motion or lost in the fog of time, conjured to the present by memory, only their strongest shadows and outlines left behind. Manning, who has worked in collaboration with Christopher Wheeldon for the New York City Ballet, continues her studies of bodies and motion in this exhibition. In her studio, she works with models— writers, dancers, creatives, friends— and dynamically captures their movements. The resulting compositions embody flux and immortalize figures of her New York community, distilled in particular moments of time.

“Both dance and painting share a fusion of rigor and fluidity,” says Manning. “My collaboration with Christopher Wheeldon for the New York City Ballet was inspired by the movement in the “Both Sides Now” exhibition at Pace LA. It deepened my understanding of gesture studies, Benesh notation, and speed measurements. I also had the pleasure of having Sara Mearns model for a painting in the New York exhibition—her form and expression embody a unique balance of strength and delicacy; she has expansiveness that is fascinating to draw, as if looking at a clear building that is housing the full spectrum of emotions.”

One highlight of the exhibition is Slow like honey. As I stood in front of this piece, immersed in its crashing rich blues and sap greens, the first figure I could make out was the woman at the top right corner of the painting with her head turned to face front. Her gaze addresses us and beckons us in, but her form blends so well into the background that we lose her as soon as we find her. More figures emerge from the lush abstraction the longer you look; first a leg, then another, then the outline of someone hunched over. Bodies overwrite on top of bodies, appearing then disappearing at once. Like modernity writes over history, like memories situated in one place collapse onto one another, nothing is ever truly erased. 

Another notable piece is Most of the time, the triptych on the back wall of Pace Gallery’s 510 West 25th Street exhibition space. The paintings are atmospheric, and diagonal visual lines in the composition make it feel like the ground itself is evaporating into the air. In the leftmost panel, there is a very abstracted image of what appears to be a mother cradling her child. She is loosely implied in brown strokes, reduced only to the essence of what makes up a figure. A pale blue, distant or even godlike figure looms behind her, waiting and watching. The rightmost panel of the triptych features two clearer subjects: the woman in the foreground, crouched over and holding her arm out in instinctual defense, and again, a mother and child. This time the mother figure is characterized by haunting dark shadows in the eye cavity, looking directly at the viewer. 

This spectacular set of paintings harkens back to the fight against time that is central to There is something that stays— especially concerning the time we have with the people we love, and specifically Manning’s experience with being a new mother. “These works have a force, or an urgency, because time feels utterly predatory,” Manning says. “It’s not about the vanity of time, but the tragedy that those we cherish are fleeting.”

There is something that stays is on exhibit at Pace Gallery across its 510 and 540 West 25th Street galleries, now through April 19, 2025. Catch it while you can, time is fleeting. 

For more information about Kylie Manning, visit: pacegallery.com/artists/kylie-manning/ and kyliemanning.com
For more information about Kylie Manning’s There is something that stays, visit: pacegallery.com/exhibitions/kylie-manning
For more information about Pace Gallery in New York, visit: pacegallery.com