This September, Andrew Edlin Gallery presents Conduits of the Unseen: Women Artists Imagine Other Worlds, an exhibition of 18 artists who gave form to spirits, cosmic forces, and other planes of consciousness, from mediums who worked through séance and spirit contact to Surrealists who conjured alternate realities on canvas.
The show is grounded in the work of Paulina Peavy, who channeled decades of paintings, drawings, and masks through a spirit guide she called Lacamo, alongside works by Agatha Wojciechowsky, Leonora Carrington, Leonor Fini, and Agnes Pelton, among others.
Curated by Susan L. Aberth of Bard College, the exhibition builds on the momentum of previous exhibitions of her work at Andrew Edlin Gallery as well as Paulina Peavy: Etherian Channeler, the artist's first monograph, published by the gallery in 2023. Conduits of the Unseen is on view September 9 through October 31.
Please see the full press release below and linked here. Images are available upon request, and we can also coordinate interviews with Aberth and gallery leadership. Looking forward to hearing your thoughts!
Best,
Shea
SHEA SEERY (she/they)
Resnicow and Associates
sseery@resnicow.com
212-671-5173
PRESS RELEASE
Andrew Edlin Gallery Spotlights Women ArtistsWho Channeled Spirits and Gave Form to Cosmic Visions
Conduits of the Unseen: Women Artists Imagine Other Worlds features work by Paulina Peavy, Leonora Carrington, Agnes Pelton, Leonor Fini, and more
Opening September 9 at Andrew Edlin Gallery, Conduits of the Unseen: Women Artists Imagine Other Worlds brings together 18 artists from the early 20th century onward who gave visual form to alternate realities, spirits, cosmic forces, and other planes of consciousness. The exhibition is anchored by the work of Paulina Peavy, a pioneering visionary artist known for channeling her paintings, drawings, and ornamented masks through a spirit guide, alongside acclaimed Surrealists Leonora Carrington and Leonor Fini, seminal painters such as Agnes Pelton, and mediums like Madge Gill and Emma Kunz. Spanning time periods, nations, socioeconomic backgrounds, and spiritual belief systems, the artists on view are united by a shared desire to give form to their inner visions, expressed across landscapes, portraits, narratives, and pure abstraction. Curated by Susan L. Aberth, Edith C. Blum Professor in the Art History and Visual Culture Program at Bard College, the exhibition is on view through October 31, 2026.
At the center of the exhibition is American artist and medium Paulina Peavy (1901–1999), whose work mapped her understanding of the world and a cosmic philosophy imparted to her by a spirit called Lacamo. Working through an iterative process over many decades, Peavy hoped her creations would expand individual and collective capacity for psychic phenomena. Conduits of the Unseen is grounded in Peavy’s multifaceted body of work, including writings on esoteric metaphysics, drawings and other works on paper, masks she made to facilitate communication with Lacamo, and paintings depicting biomorphic forms and energy beams. The exhibitionfollows the 2023 release of the first monograph dedicated to the artist, Paulina Peavy: Etherian Channeler by Laura Whitcomb, published by Andrew Edlin Gallery.
Conduits of the Unseen features works by other important mediumistic artists, including German-born Agatha Wojciechowsky (1896-1986), who conducted séances in New York and practiced psychic readings and spiritual healing. Wojciechowsky’s black-and-white ink drawings and notebooks record a language she said came to her through spiritual contact, which will be on view alongside brightly colored watercolors of sitters’ hands that revealed faces her clients recognized. Other artists in the exhibition, such as Adele Watson (1873-1947), arrived at similar visionary terrain not through active channeling but through studying the spiritual dimension of nature and esoteric movements. Two of Watson’s symbolist paintings will be on view, depicting ghostly female nudes floating above idyllic landscapes. Agnes Pelton (1881-1961), a Theosophist and practitioner of Agni Yoga whose semi-abstract paintings were made from images she obtained while meditating, became a great influence on the Transcendentalist Group in Santa Fe, New Mexico. One of her key works from this time, The Being: A Transcendental Vision, is included in Conduits of the Unseen, along with an abstract watercolor by Hilla Rebay (1890-1967), co-founder of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, and a watercolor study of floating geometric shapes through an ambiguous space by Helen Kendall (1892-1970), who, like Pelton, drew on the spiritual frameworks of Theosophy and Anthroposophy.
Additional highlights include works from Surrealists, including Leonora Carrington’s unproduced 1970 play Opus Siniestrus, which follows an old woman battling patriarchy and centers on the last surviving human egg, shown alongside a selection of paintings by Carrington’s friend and fellow Surrealist Leonor Fini; Juanita Guccione’s paintings of amazonian women as well as her abstract, New Age-inflected landscapes; and two of Sylvia Fein’s dreamlike, surrealist landscapes.
Featured Artists
Gertrude Abercrombie
Marjorie Cameron
Leonora Carrington
Sylvia Fein
Leonor Fini
Aline Gagnaire
Madge Gill
Juanita M. Guccione
Helen Kendall
Emma Kunz
La Phalérinienne
Paulina Peavy
Agnes Pelton
Hilla Rebay
Irene Rice Pereira
Adele Watson
Marie Wilson
Agatha Wojciechowsky
Exhibition Details
Conduits of the Unseen: Women Artists Imagine Other Worlds September 9 - October 31, 2026 Opening Reception: September 9, 6 – 8 pm
392 Broadway, 2nd Floor New York, NY 10013
About Andrew Edlin Gallery
Andrew Edlin Gallery is a champion for pioneering self-taught, outsider, and art brut artists whose work has expanded and challenged twentieth and twenty-first century definitions of art. This conviction has defined the gallery’s program since 2001, which advances appreciation and understanding of both trained and untrained American and European artists – often ahead of broader recognition within the field. Beyond mounting critically acclaimed exhibitions, the gallery shapes how these artists are studied and interpreted through the production of monographs and original research and the stewardship of artists' estates, including Henry Darger, Beverly Buchanan, Ralph Fasanella, Paulina Peavy, Marcel Storr, and Eugene Von Bruenchenhein. For more information, visit edlingallery.com
Image Caption:Paulina Peavy, Untitled, c. 1930s-80s. Oil and acrylic on canvas. Photograph by Adam Reich. Image courtesy Andrew Edlin Gallery.
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