hold and release
Sophie Barbasch photographs
Marion Wilson paintings
January 21 – March 1, 2026
Opening reception January 27, 5–7 pm
Sarah Lawrence College’s Gallery at Heimbold Visual Arts Center is pleased to announce hold and release, a two-person exhibition of photographer Sophie Barbasch and painter Marion Wilson. hold and release will be on view from January 21 through March 1, 2026. In this exhibition, Wilson and Barbasch present a year-long collaborative conversation consisting of portraits and landscapes. The two bodies of work in dialogue consider the weight of individual interactions; the monumental little things that make up ourselves and our relationships. Centering on themes of the body, aging, femininity, intimacy, vulnerability, and the family, the images explore everyday moments with humor and honesty. A catalog will accompany the exhibition highlighting the work presented along with an essay, “While We Are Here,” by Mark Alice Durant.
Sophie Barbasch’s black and white photographs explore the familiar personal connections that make up our world. Using a large format camera, Barbasch focuses on the intimacy of her own life and the raw actualness of lived experience. Subjects are often depicted in isolation; the sole focus of a solitary sandy ground, empty yard or deserted landscape. As Durant writes “...her photographs are an embrace, and an enigmatic transformation of the quotidian into the metaphysical.” The images slowly oscillate between the obscured and confrontational, each work holding the two simultaneously while revealing the tension and power of the simplest gestures.
Marion Wilson’s watercolors capture pivotal exclamations of emotion–of not just her own relationships, but those of the larger community and collective culture. The paintings seem to emerge from the watery depths, floating just shy of the surface before finer brushwork defines facial detail and movement. Durant describes her work as “...emanating from an inchoate brew of memories, unresolved conflicts, yearnings, and existential questions.” These portraits are the result of an extensive translation: beginning with photographs, Wilson draws and redraws these references from memory before laying down the washes for her final versions. The work accentuates the strain between holding fast and letting go, and the resulting play therein.
Though the two artists practice starkly different methods, their work in tandem presents a compelling inquiry into the might and flexibility of image making. Barbasch and Wilson bounce off one another, and enhance each other’s commitment to “mining the emotional, psychological, and spiritual caverns[...] that define us.” (Durant) The viewer can experience either artist separately, but the interplay between the two is very purposeful and active, highlighting this unique, long term collaboration.
Sophie Barbasch
Sophie Barbasch is an artist based in New York. She has been awarded a Fulbright Research Fellowship to Brazil and a NYSCA / NYFA Fellowship in Photography. Selected residencies include Light Work, the Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts, MASS MoCA, the Virginia Center for Creative Arts, Saltonstall, and NARS Foundation. Selected publications include The New York Times, The New Yorker, Artsy, and Hyperallergic, and her writing has appeared in The Brooklyn Rail. Her work is held in various collections, including the Smithsonian Museum of American History and the Rhode Island School of Design Museum of Art, and she has been nominated twice for the Prix Pictet. Penumbra Foundation published her first monograph, Obras, which was included on the list of best photobooks of 2022 by Photobookstore, LensCulture, Deadbeat Club and Nowhere Diary and featured as photobook of the month at the Henri Cartier-Bresson Foundation. She has exhibited internationally and holds a BA in Art and Art History from Brown University and an MFA in Photography from the Rhode Island School of Design.
Marion Wilson
Marion Wilson is an artist born in Manhattan and lives in Brooklyn. She holds a B.A. from Wesleyan University, an M.A. from Columbia University, and an M.F.A. from the University of Cincinnati. Wilson has received an NEA Art Works grant through the Dowd Gallery; an ArtPlace America grant with McColl Center, and the Mural Arts Project/Restored Spaces. Selected residencies include ISCP, a Nancy Graves Endowed Fellowship at Millay Colony, McColl Center for Art and Innovation, Golden Artist Colors, NYSCA funded grant at Sculpture Space, and Light Work. National and international exhibitions include New Museum of Contemporary Art, Taipei Museum of Fine Arts, Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art, the Everson Museum of Art, Munson-Williams-Proctor Arts Institute, and Visual Arts Center of New Jersey; and reviewed in The New York Times, Art in America, Hyperallergic, and BOMB Magazine. In addition to painting, Wilson is also known for upcycling mobile architectures, including MossLab, a repurposed RV she drove from Syracuse to PULSE/Miami in 2017. She taught at Syracuse University for 14 years and is currently a Visiting Professor at Sarah Lawrence College.
