Jeans Generation

Ophelia Arc, Eliza Blakemore, Miguel Caba, Josh Cabello, Ally Cotton, Noah Dillon, Tallulah Dirnfeld, Ugo Ferro, Genevieve Goffman, Michael Haight, Juliet Johnstone, Mariam Kvashilava, Megan Mi-Ai Lee, Wilhelm Neusser, Elspeth Schulze “The ban only heightened their allure, sweeter than forbidden fruit. Soviet youth became obsessed, determined to get their hands on a pair of jeans by any means necessary. Smuggling thrived. Ever so often, a genuine pair of American jeans would appear among the contraband trickling in from across the globe. In those days, every pair of jeans was believed to be American. Because Soviet propaganda so passionately vilified the United States, many of us came to believe that happiness existed wherever denim was abundant. We dreamed about those jeans, not just the fabric itself, but the world they seemed to represent.” Abigail Ogilvy Gallery is pleased to present Jeans Generation, inspired by Dato Turashvili’s novel, which recounts the true story of a group of young Georgians who hijacked a plane in an attempt to flee the Soviet Union. The exhibition brings together fifteen artists whose works investigate the psychology of daydreaming as a form of resistance and self-preservation. Building on this historical framework, the exhibition examines how the capacity to dream operates under constraint, political, social, or psychological. It approaches dreaming as an adaptation, a conscious method of maintaining agency when external freedoms are limited. Within such conditions, imagination functions as a site of endurance and quiet defiance. Positioned as a “how-to manual”, Jeans Generation studies the mechanics of this process. How do individuals construct inner worlds when external ones become untenable, and how does imagination operate as both a coping mechanism and creative methodology. Referencing the concept of maladaptive daydreaming, the exhibition expands the conversation, framing fantasy not as a dysfunction but as evidence of collective longing. Jeans Generation rests upon five conceptual pillars — spirituality, language, cognition, hope, and pain — each representing a vital dimension of the dreaming psyche. Spirituality anchors the exhibition’s search for meaning, positioning faith and intuition as forms of inner navigation. Language functions as a bridge tracing how expression shapes the limits of desire. Cognition reveals the architecture of daydreaming itself, while hope and pain serve as a catalyst, the condition from which the need to dream arises. Through painting, sculpture, and installation, the participating artists explore the boundaries of consciousness and control, proposing that the act of dreaming, even in its most fragile form, remains an essential expression of human agency. Ophelia Arc (b. 2001) is a research-based multidisciplinary artist based in Queens, NY. Working across sculpture, video, and installation, Arc explores psychoanalytic themes rooted in personal experiences and memory. She earned her BFA from Hunter College and received her MFA from the Rhode Island School of Design. Arc’s work has been featured in publications such as Artspiel, ArtNews, ArtNews China, Textiel Plus, Tique, and Visionary Magazine. Her work is included in private collections and has been exhibited in galleries in New York and beyond, including Lyles & King, 81 Leonard, Kates-Ferri Projects, No Gallery, Marinaro, and Collarworks. Arc is represented by Lyles & King and has a forthcoming 2026 Solo Show at Don’t Look Projects in Los Angeles, CA. Eliza Blakemore is a New York-based artist who works with images sourced from online economies of fantasy, including real estate listings, luxury ski resort webcams, live streams, and pornography. These images, designed to entice, sell, and disappear, form the basis of her practice. Blakemore re-advertises this material by translating flat, screen-based imagery into three-dimensional objects such as collage, wall displays, and paintings. Her work freezes digital transactions that are typically transient: listings expire, livestreams refresh, and videos are deleted. By giving these images physical form, Blakemore creates objects meant to be taken home, repositioning images of aspiration and desire as artifacts rather than consumables. Blakemore’s works have been featured in group exhibitions at F.L.A.G.S Studio, Fronteer Gallery, and Perfectly Fair at Ruscha & Co. in Los Angeles, CA. Miguel Caba is an artist based in Boston with a BFA from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts at Tufts University. Their work explores how experiences and relationships can be mediated through technology and digital fabrication. They are a recipient of the Elizabeth Greenshields Grant and the Jeffrey Ahn Jr. Fellowship, and have been featured in New American Paintings Issue 176 Northeast. The artist has exhibited at Overlap, Gagne Contemporary, and Broomfield Gallery. Josh Cabello (b. 1997) is an artist born and based in Los Angeles whose work focuses on creating queer sanctuaries. Cabello paints lush, imagined gardens, steeped with blooming flowers and alluring, nymph-like figures. These works draw from queer history and myth to conjure an expansive world rooted in play, freedom, intimacy, and delicacy. The artist received a BA in Visual Arts from Brown University in 2019. He has exhibited at venues including Luis de Jesus, The Other Art Fair, Bermudez Projects, Lauren Powell Projects, Art Share LA, SideBitch Project Space, SoLa Contemporary, the LA Art Show, RISD Museum, and Cohen Gallery. He has been featured in Forbes and LA Weekly. In 2022, he was selected to curate and exhibit in a group show at Fellows of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles, as a Curator’s Lab Recipient. Ally Cotton is a New York-based painter originally from Austin, Texas. Her work explores the space between figuration and abstraction through surreal, cartoon-like woman creatures that are both endearing and unsettling. Rooted in visual excess, softness, and distortion, these paintings reflect personal experiences of desire, shame, and physical failure. Each piece begins with a sculpted clay maquette, allowing her to bypass anatomical logic in favor of intuition and sensation. These flashy, exaggerated forms serve as avatars, positioned at a distance from the human body to become metaphors, yet intimate enough to evoke sympathy and discomfort. Their inflated, rounded shapes act as a kind of soft armor, protective, absurd, and emotionally charged. Titles like Hooters, Whitewater, and Venus reference kitsch, eroticism, and mythology, pointing to the ways bodies are consumed and performed. Noah Dillon (b. 1994) is an artist, director, and musician based in Los Angeles, CA. Originally from Durango, Colorado, Dillon received a BA from Fort Lewis College. In 2020, the artist was hosted by the Poynter Fellowship at Yale University for a lecture titled “Images from the Void”. In 2023, Dillon had a solo exhibition at Pio Pico Gallery in Los Angeles. Tallulah Dirnfeld is a Los Angeles-based artist known for her emotionally charged oil paintings that blend surrealism with psychological depth. A self-taught painter with a background in horror film productions, Dirnfeld creates haunting, dreamlike scenes that explore themes of memory, identity, and femininity. Dirnfeld, in 2024, presented her debut solo exhibition at Sade Gallery. She completed a residency at La Scuola Internazionale Di Grafica in Venice, Italy, and a solo exhibition at Abigail Ogilvy Gallery in Los Angeles in 2025. Dirnfeld’s work has been acquired in private collections, such as the Beth Rudin DeWoody Collection. Ugo Casubolo Ferro (b. 1999) lives and works in Paris, France. A graduate of the Beaux-Arts de Paris, he holds a bachelor’s degree in Philosophy as well as in French and Comparative Literature from the University of Paris-Nanterre, a master’s degree in Philosophy from Université PSL, Paris, and completed the curatorial program at the Beaux-Arts de Paris. He also studied at the California Institute of the Arts, Los Angeles, CA. His recent solo exhibitions include Ithaque, Elsa Lee Bruno, La Tour Orion, and Beaux-Arts de Paris. A finalist for the Camera Clara Prize in 2023, Ferro won the Nouveau Grand Tour of the Institut Francais in Italy in 2024. Genevieve Goffman is an artist based in New York City. She received her MFA in Sculpture from Yale University in 2020. Goffman’s recent solo exhibitions include Foreign and Domestic, Espace Maurice, Hyacinth Gallery, Money Gallery, and Alyssa Davis Gallery. Her group exhibitions include presentations at Petzel Gallery, Hagiwara Projects, Blade Study, Eyes Never Sleep, Foreign and Domestic, Thierry Goldberg, Fragment Gallery, Real Pain, Patara Gallery, and EXILE. She has also exhibited at NADA x Foreland (2021) and NADA Warsaw (2024) with Alyssa Davis Gallery. In 2023, her installation The View, based on her research into Adolf Loos, was exhibited at the Museum of Applied Arts in Vienna, Austria. Michael Haight (b. 1984) was raised in the Inland Empire of Southern California and now lives and works in Los Angeles, CA. He holds a BA in Creative Writing from the University of California at Riverside, CA, and has an MA in Visual Art from Claremont Graduate University in Claremont, CA. Haight has shown in spaces throughout the US and Europe, including Phillips Auction House in London, UK; G/Art/En Gallery in Como, Italy; One Trick Pony Gallery and LA Beast Gallery in Los Angeles, CA; Lyles and King in New York, NY; UTA Artist Space in Beverly Hills, CA, and Cirrus Gallery in Los Angeles, CA. His work has been featured in the Architectural Digest, New American Paintings, and Art Maze. Juliet Johnstone is a Los Angeles-based artist who received a BA in Visual Arts from Parsons School of Design. Her research-driven practice centers on wearable art, drawing a strong visual and conceptual reference from the 60s. Influenced by her upbringing in Malibu, where surfing and hiking were embedded in daily life, Johnstone’s work reflects a deep connection to movement, landscape, and embodied experience. Blending function with form, the artist’s work explores how objects act as extensions of memory, culture, and personal history. Mariam Kvashilava (b. 1997) is a New York-based painter whose work draws from cultural memory, personal narrative, and material intuition. Born and raised in Tbilisi, Georgia, her layered compositions merge traditional techniques with contemporary forms, creating a dialogue between past and present. Kvashilava earned her BFA in Art History and Archaeology from Sorbonne University in Paris. She recently completed her MFA at the New York Academy of Art. Through her textured and intuitive mark-making, Kvashilava gives form to emotional memory, embodied language, and the shifting narratives that define belonging. Megan Mi-Ai Lee is an interdisciplinary artist working in Brooklyn, NY. Lee has held residencies at Ox-Bow School of Art, Storm King Art Center, and Smack Mellon, and was the 2018 Curatorial Fellow at Socrates Sculpture Park. Recent exhibitions of her work include Room 3557 (Los Angeles, CA), Trestle Art Space (Brooklyn, NY), Godwin-Ternbach Museum (Flushing, NY), Art Lot (Brooklyn, NY), and Park View/Paul Soto (Los Angeles, CA). She is a two-time Canada Council for the Arts grantee and New York Community Trust Van Lier Fellow. Lee received her BFA from the Cooper Union School of Art in 2018. Wilhelm Neusser was born in Cologne, Germany. From 1997 to 2001, he studied at the Staatliche Akademie Der Bildenden Künste in Karlsruhe. After his studies, Neusser lived and worked in Cologne until his relocation to the United States. Neusser’s artwork has been widely exhibited and has received numerous exhibitions, including the Rijksmuseum, the Fruitlands Museum, and Mass MoCA. In 2020 and 2022, he was honored with a finalist grant in Painting from the Mass Cultural Council. Neusser’s work has been included in The Boston Globe, Boston Art Review, Boston Magazine, Artscope Magazine, and Big Red & Shiny. Neusser lives and works in Somerville, MA. Elspeth Schulze (b. 1985) is a studio artist based in Tulsa, OK. Schulze makes sculptural wall works that marry ornaments with architecture, pairing geometric structure with organic, often plant-based forms. Her practice combines ceramic, wood, and textile processes and pairs digital fabrication with traditional methods of making. Schulze holds an MFA in ceramics from the University of Colorado Boulder, a degree in Fashion Design from the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York, and a BA in Literature and Visual Art from Loyola University, New Orleans.