Two Bridges, New York
Group Exhibition
Focal Point 5
Long Story ShortSam Bornstein, Amanda Marrè Brown, Michael Bühler-Rose, Masao Nakahara, Kitty Ng, Sage Schachter, Crys Yin Long Story Short is pleased to present Focal Point 5, a group exhibition featuring works by six artists. Focal Point 5 brings together seven artists whose practices traverse material, cultural, and psychological thresholds. Through diverse approaches to two-dimensional media—including oil painting, collage, and layered surface treatments—the exhibition explores liminal space, where the visible slips into ambiguity, memory, and emotional resonance. From architectural abstraction to ritual vessels, shadow doubles to uncanny upholstery, the works open portals between perception and sensation. Though each artist speaks in a distinct visual language, the exhibition hums with shared sensibilities. Soft textures, muted palettes, and layered surfaces evoke spaciousness and introspection. Crys Yin’s ash-toned vessels and incense motifs carry the quiet gravity of communal mourning. Kitty Ng’s silhouettes and gentle washes flicker like half-formed memories. In Amanda Marrè Brown’s work, radiant skies and glowing thresholds suggest spaces caught between presence and absence. The exhibition also moves into more surreal territory, where the everyday takes on a dreamlike quality. Sam Bornstein builds layered, city-like compositions where folklore, daily life, and subconscious imagery intertwine. Sage Schachter’s textiles hint at ghostly presences—limbs curled in cushions, faces emerging from folds. Michael Bühler-Rose transforms sacred objects, punk ephemera, and Mysore-crafted wood inlay into devotional portraits of identity. Masao Nakahara paints misty groves and ageless figures suspended in time. Together, the works create an atmosphere that doesn’t seek resolution—it invites reflection and lingers in the in-between. Sam Bornstein’s cinematic, multi-figure paintings explore the friction between external life and interior states. His narratives remain open-ended, shaped by myth, memory, and the urban landscape. He holds an MFA from Hunter College and has exhibited at Charles Moffett, Embajada, and Galleria Richter in Rome. Amanda Marrè Brown’s paintings use transparent glazes and precise gradients to explore the tension between interior and exterior. Her compositions—of uncanny architecture and glowing skies—feel both grounded and dreamlike. She earned her MFA from Hunter College, where she now teaches, and has exhibited at 1969 Gallery and My Pet Ram. Michael Bühler-Rose draws from the Gubbio Studiolo to merge Renaissance craft with punk culture and Hindu ritual. came of age in the hare krishna movement, he constructs devotional still lifes from sacred objects, books, and rare punk vinyl—often in collaboration with Mysore artisans. His work is in the collections of the Fogg Museum, Ford Foundation, and Museum of Art and Photography in Bangalore. Masao Nakahara’s paintings and sculptures draw from Japanese mythology and German Expressionism, often depicting cherry blossoms, fog, and timeless figures. His work meditates on impermanence and spiritual transition. After a long hiatus, he returned to exhibiting in 2021 with shows at YKG Gallery and Kunsthalle Düsseldorf. Kitty Ng’s ghostly compositions use collage, soft color, and negative space to explore identity as something fluid and elusive. Influenced by Liu Bai, the Chinese principle of meaningful absence, her paintings evoke memory through what is left unsaid. A RISD graduate and incoming MA student at the Royal College of Art, she has exhibited at WOAW Gallery and ART SG. Sage Schachter transforms domestic materials—rugs, garments, cushions—into surreal figures and psychological landscapes. Their paintings and ceramics play with pareidolia and distortion, often beginning with photographs and evolving through memory. A 2025 graduate of the School of Visual Arts, they’ve shown in New York and London, including Maison Palo and Echoes in Color. Crys Yin’s paintings center on vessels, incense, and repeated forms that mark rituals of care and remembrance. Emerging from the isolation of the pandemic, her muted palette and intimate scale reflect private grief held communally. She lives and works in New York and has exhibited at Deanna Evans Projects, A.I.R. Gallery, and the Chinese American Arts Council. She received a 2024 NYFA New Work Grant.