Artist: Danielle Mckinney

Galerie Max Hetzler, London, presents Second Wind, a solo exhibition of new paintings and works on paper by Danielle Mckinney. This is the artist’s debut exhibition in the UK, and her second with the gallery.

Across her practice, Mckinney presents interior scenes which capture moments of human introspection and intimacy. Building carefully constructed compositions from an all-black canvas, her subjects emerge from scenes of darkness in chiaroscuro. Black female figures are portrayed in moments of repose, warmed by the glow of a lamp or a lit cigarette, or punctuated with a flash of bright red fingernails. In her latest works, Mckinney embraces a looser, more visceral approach to painting, marking a deliberate leap into new artistic terrain. Echoed in the paintings themselves, this fresh awakening is born not from loud intensity but rather stillness, silence and the spaces in-between. Stemming from a sensitivity to worldly changes, the exhibition offers a universal reflection on growth through sitting with discomfort. Rendered on an intimate scale, the works encourage a close engagement with the viewer, inviting us to pause, slow down and contemplate anew.

In Mckinney’s paintings, her protagonists are caught in a balance of tension and relaxation. Depicted on the brink of transition, they exist in states of perpetual liminality. Often nude, robed in a dressing gown, or draped in crinkled bed sheets, the figures are at once sensual, emotive and softly formidable. Lost in thought, daydreaming or asleep, each woman is absorbed in her own private world – far removed from the humdrum of external life. In one painting, a solitary figure gazes back at herself in a mirror; one hand raised to her head with a quiet confidence, she seems on the threshold of a new reckoning. In another, a woman in green lounges on a sofa: legs curled beneath her and eyes closed in contented serenity, she resigns herself to the total embrace of surrender. A third painting depicts a nude woman in contrapposto pose, her silhouetted form partially illuminated under the light of a hanging lamp. Her arms extend towards her temple in a gesture of deep introspection. In these scenes of sacred silence, each figure hovers in an intermediary state between action and inertia, containment and release. Highly charged, their expressions and postures suggest a renewal of spirit and energy – a second wind.

In contrast to the poised demeanour of Mckinney’s figures, their surrounding elements are conveyed through fluid, undulating strokes of paint. Influenced by artists including Édouard Vuillard (1868–1940) and Walter Sickert (1860–1942), Mckinney’s dynamic brushwork threatens to unravel into licks of paint and fields of colour. ‘Their environments pulse with abstraction,’ the artist states; ‘curtains swirl like storms, rugs dissolve into brushy tides, walls hum with chromatic tension.’ Clashing with the quietude of the scenes, the paintwork creates a visual friction between the energy of the compositions and the stillness of the subjects. A pointed shift is evident in the palette of these new works too, which is richer and more saturated. The heavy mood and atmosphere, set by the artist’s dark brown tones along with the tension of the figures, is interrupted by striking pops of colour ­– ornate cushions in hues of deep red and auburn; flowers ablaze in orange, yellow and pink; a chartreuse dressing gown which unfurls into pure impasto gesture. Built from darkness, these passages of vibrancy seem to offer a visual metaphor for moments of transformation that arise out of rest. ‘Each brushstroke embodies a fresh breath,’ remarks Mckinney, ‘a reminder that within the intimate spaces we inhabit, there is always room for regeneration and growth.’

Danielle Mckinney (b. 1981, Montgomery, USA) lives and works in Jersey City, USA. The artist’s work has been the subject of institutional solo exhibitions at Kunsthal n, Copenhagen (2024–2025); and Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, Turin (2024).

Mckinney’s work is in the collections of Albertina, Vienna; Blenheim Art Foundation, Oxfordshire; Buffalo AKG Art Museum; Columbus Museum of Art; Dallas Museum of Art; Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, Turin; Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, D.C.; Institute of Contemporary Art, Miami; The Israel Museum, Jerusalem; Longlati Foundation, Shanghai; Los Angeles County Museum of Art; Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth; Moderna Museet, Stockholm; mumok, Vienna; The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; Pérez Art Museum, Miami; Philadelphia Museum of Art; Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; and Studio Museum in Harlem, New York, among others.

Danielle Mckinney’s work is currently the subject of a solo exhibition at Rose Art Museum, Waltham, until 4 January 2026. A forthcoming monograph on the artist will be published by Phaidon in October 2025.