At Gladstone Gallery in New York, American artist Joseph Yaeger explores the elusive relationship between memory and desire. Agita features watercolour paintings that challenge the way we interpret images and construct narratives. This is your last chance to visit the show before it closes on 31st October.

The show brings together paintings on gessoed linen that draw on cinematic and photographic references. Through fragmented compositions and familiar yet dislocated imagery, Yaeger creates scenes that appear recognisable but resist definitive interpretation, hovering between recollection and fiction.

Born in Helena, Montana, in 1986, Yaeger studied at the Rhode Island School of Design before completing an MFA at the Royal College of Art in London in 2019. Moving between painting and writing, his practice investigates how images shape our understanding of experience and how memories shift over time. He was the subject of a remarkable show at the Perimeter in London in 2023.

In Agita, everyday objects, including eyeglasses, charging cables and coins, project from the painted surfaces, introducing tangible elements into otherwise ambiguous scenes. This interplay between material reality and psychological uncertainty gives the works their distinctive tension, inviting viewers to question what they recognise and why.

In a world saturated with visual information, Yaeger reminds us that looking is never entirely passive: memory, emotion and imagination continually influence what we see.

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