Alli Gerrish Bridges Contemporary Abstraction and Mid-Century Design at Agora Gallery

Boulder-based artist presents six paintings in an immersive exhibition pairing contemporary art with collectible Mid-Century Modern furnishings

NEW YORK, NY, UNITED STATES, October 8, 2026 /EINPresswire.com/ — NEW YORK, NY — Boulder-based multidisciplinary artist Alli Gerrish will present six abstract paintings in The Showroom: Mid-Century Modern, on view October 15 through November 3, 2026, at Agora Gallery in New York. Presented in collaboration with furniture design partner Dobrinka Salzman Gallery, the exhibition transforms Agora’s skylight room into an immersive mid-century interior, placing works by five contemporary artists in dialogue with a curated selection of collectible furnishings.

Bringing contemporary art and design together, The Showroom explores the relationship between fine art, color, form, and the spaces we inhabit. Situated within this environment, Gerrish’s paintings underscore the idea of art meant to be lived with, inviting viewers to consider how contemporary painting and design can transform—and be transformed by—their surroundings.

Gerrish’s distinctive vocabulary of organic forms, earthy hues, and hand-worked surfaces finds a natural counterpart in Mid-Century Modern design. Balancing geometric structure with expressive irregularity, her paintings engage with the exhibition’s furnishings while remaining unmistakably contemporary.

Central to the artist’s visual language is the hourglass, a signature shape that serves as a stand-in for the self, measuring not only the passage of time but the movement of universal human experience. Its familiar striped form appears and reappears throughout her work, shifting orientation as circumstances evolve around it. Through this recurring motif, Gerrish expands the hourglass beyond its traditional association with time, using it to trace shifting states of identity and change.

Serving as a visual anchor for Gerrish’s presentation in the exhibition is Weight A Minute (2024), which initially evokes the ordered geometry and graphic vocabulary associated with Mid-Century Modern design. Yet beneath its carefully balanced arrangement of stacked forms lies a more precarious narrative. A pale blue crescent teeters at the top edge of the composition, while a female figure, partially obscured by a black-and-white grid, is physically constrained by bands of white. Addressing the accumulated societal and systemic pressures placed on women, the work transforms a seemingly playful abstraction into a meditation on balance, constraint, and resilience.

“I have always believed in the transformative power of art to reshape both the individual and the surrounding space,” says Gerrish. “In both my practice and the mid-century ethos, there is a common thread of embracing imperfection and material honesty. Just as mid-century design honors the scars and knots of wood as proof of authenticity, my narrative abstractions honor our human vulnerabilities. Through my work, I aim to tell stories of vulnerability not as weakness, but as a profound form of beauty—turning wounds into shields of strength.”

The opening reception for The Showroom: Mid-Century Modern will be held Thursday, October 15, from 6–8 PM at Agora Gallery, 530 West 25th Street, New York.

About the Artist

Alli Gerrish is a multidisciplinary artist based in Boulder, Colorado, whose practice spans painting, digital painting, printmaking, mixed media, video, and narrative voiceover. Moving between abstraction and symbolic representation, Gerrish uses visual storytelling to explore human emotion, energy, and lived experience. Her distinctive vocabulary of geometric and organic forms reflects an interest in metamorphosis as both a personal and collective process, finding possibility, resilience, and renewal in moments of adversity.

Heather Zises
Avril Media Group
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Written By: EIN Presswire