Dates
Jan 15 – Feb 22, 2026
Maxwell Graham is honored to present an exhibition of new work by Sadie Benning, Daily Forecasts: October 28th, 2020 – September 6th, 2021. This exhibition of Daily Forecasts consists of 37 personally scaled watercolors, each painting habitually performing a psychic read of the day. In the morning Benning would clear their mind, using intuition to formulate a list of terms. The artist then sourced corresponding images, often saving an excess. These images were then fragmented and stitched together as digital collages, the artist then minutely rendering them as watercolor paintings. The paintings do not readily appear as watercolors. Benning expands what is possible within the medium—the lines uniquely deliberating, the fields consistent, the narratives intricately diagrammatic. This is only the most recent body of work over a 35 year oeuvre in which Benning has reinterpreted media and material toward a personal vision. Benning first exhibited in the early 1990s a series of videos shot on a Fisher-Price PixelVision toy camera, that depicted experimental narratives with the intensity and urgency of a journal entry. These were included in the 1993 Whitney Biennial, when Benning was just 19; to this day the youngest artist ever included in the landmark exhibition. These videos were also the subjects of solo exhibitions at Wexner Center for the Arts, Columbus in 2004 and Walker Art Center, Minneapolis in 2005. In 2007 Benning premiered Play Pause, a two-channel projection bringing to life hundreds of the artist’s large scale drawings, set to an ambient soundtrack, telling the story of a day in the life of the city. The video was the subject of solo exhibitions at Dia Art Foundation, New York in 2007, the Power Plant, Toronto in 2008 and the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York in 2009. Benning developed a new form of painted wall-mounted work, which was first shown at Participant Inc., New York in 2011. These highly constructed pieces are cut from wood into components, layered with aqua resin, sanded, painted, then fit back together, the final composition defying categorization. The culmination of this body of work was a multi-panel installation Shared Eye, consisting of 40 painted objects with integrated photographic and sculptural components; each panel proportioned according to the mathematical parameters of Blinky Palermo’s To the People of New York City, 1976. Shared Eye was shown in solo exhibitions at the Renaissance Society, Chicago in 2016 and Kunsthalle Basel, Basel in 2017. The entire installation was acquired for the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art, New York where it was exhibited in 2019. MoMA’s first inclusion of Benning’s work was in the exhibition Fact/Fiction in 1991. Sadie Benning was born in Madison, Wisconsin in 1973. Their work has been exhibited internationally since 1990, including solo exhibitions at Wexner Center for the Arts, Columbus, 2004, 2007, 2020; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, 2005; Orchard Gallery, New York, 2007; Dia Foundation for the Arts, New York, 2007; Power Plant, Toronto, 2008; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, 2009; Participant Inc., New York, 2011; Renaissance Society, Chicago, 2016; Kunsthalle Basel, Switzerland, 2017, and Camden Arts Centre, London, 2018. There work has been included in important group exhibitions including the Whitney Biennial, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, 1993 and 2000; Gwangju Biennale, 2008; Carnegie International, Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh, 2013; Greater New York, MoMA PS1, New York, 2015; Painting 2.0: Expression in the Information Age, Museum Brandhorst, Munich in 2015; Tell It To My Heart: Collected by Julie Ault, Artists Space, New York and Kunstmuseum Basel, 2013. There work has been in group exhibitions at Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1991, 1996, 2000, 2001, 2003, 2019. Benning’s work is in the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art, New York; Centre Pompidou, Paris; Kunstmuseum Basel, Switzerland; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; Los Angeles County Museum of Art; the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; and the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York. They have received grants and fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, Andrea Frank Foundation, National Endowment of the Arts, and the Rockefeller Foundation. Awards include Wexner Center Residency Award in Media Arts, National Alliance for Media Arts & Culture Merit Award, Grande Video Kunst Award, Kahrlsrule, Germany, and the LA Film Critics Circle Award.