One Painter, Two Galleries, a Cab Ride Apart: Tessa Greene O'Brien's 'Poems From Here'

♦ ♦ ♦ JUNE 02, 2026 | 3 MIN READ One Painter, Two Galleries, a Cab Ride Apart: Tessa Greene O'Brien's 'Poems From Here' At a Glance Cross-town, and then literally across town — Tessa Greene O'Brien's first New York solo splits one body of stitched, bleached, wax-resist paintings between Alexandre uptown and Candice Madey downtown, and the split is the point. Closes June 12. The first thing in the room is a seam. Walk into Alexandre on East 73rd Street and the painting s on the wall are not single sheets of canvas but several fabrics stitched together, then dyed in color baths, drawn into with bleach, blocked with hot wax, and layered back up in pigment. I read the checklist before I read the wall text: “oil, acrylic, bleach, wax resist on dyed canvas.” That is “Poems From Here,” Tessa Greene O’Brien’s first New York solo, and it runs through June 12. Here is the part that made me stop. It is one body of work, but it hangs in two galleries on opposite ends of the city. Alexandre uptown on the Upper East Side, Candice Madey down on Rivington Street. The gallery’s line is matter-of-fact: “A two-gallery exhibition of new painting s presented with Candice Madey April 23 – June 12, 2026.” Most two-venue shows read as logistics, or a flex. This one reads as method. Why a single body of work hangs in two galleries across town A painter looks at these surfaces and sees that the splitting started long before the city map. Each canvas is already a pieced thing, stitched from separate fabrics into one field. The image gets built by removal as much as addition: bleach pulls color out, wax blocks what stays, and because nothing is buried under a tidy final coat, every step stays legible on the surface. The painting ’s whole history sits there at once, not just its last decision. So splitting the body of work across two rooms a cab ride apart makes the body do what the eye already does inside each canvas. The uptown room stays in memory, travels downtown, and the whole reassembles from parts. The structure of the show is the technique scaled up to the size of Manhattan. The seam is not hidden. It is the subject. That is rarer than it sounds. Most painting works hard to make the seams disappear. What bleach and wax resist do that brushed paint can’t Bleach and batik wax are subtractive, removal tools, the opposite temperament from loading a brush. Air Mail’s listing put the craft plainly: her paintings begin “with the canvas, which is stitched together from a number of fabrics, then bleached, painted, waxed.” For a collector who worries whether a surface is real or just a story, this is about as honest as a painting gets. Nothing is concealed. The work shows its own receipts. The April opening is not the reason to go now; the June 12 close is. That is this week’s window, not next. The verdict is cross-town, and then literally across town. Do both rooms in one afternoon, uptown first, and let the ride downtown be part of the looking. O’Brien is a Maine painter pu