KYLE DE LOTTO
Works on Paper
September 25 - October 24, 2026
61 Lispenard St, Unit #2
New York, NY
For Kyle De Lotto, works on paper is where his practice first revealed itself—made quickly and without preciousness, often on the studio floor, offering an immediacy that stretched canvas resisted. That freedom inspired De Lotto to remove the stretcher bars from his paintings, working instead with rolls of pre-primed canvas that he cuts and staples directly to the wall, bringing the same immediacy he found on paper to his paintings.
De Lotto is often drawn to household images, allowing the quotidian to be transformed through paint. In Untitled (Study for August Afternoon) (2026), a woman stands with one hand on her hip, cradling a surfboard. Behind her, a wooden fence gives way to what could be stairs to the beach, dune grass, and a flattened blue-gray sky. She is faceless, more gesture than likeness. The paint does the work, the source barely surviving as more than a starting point. The plain, familiar scene is painted with the same urgency as everything else in the studio: an emotional landscape of American life, caught mid-motion.
Through asymmetry, interruption, color blocking, and moments of harmony, De Lotto’s work feels larger than their boundaries and resists neat resolution. He wants dirt, grime, history, mess, chaos, despair, and big human emotions in every piece. In Untitled (Luca in Tree 1) (2026), a boy stands proudly, feet firmly planted as he is caught mid-climb. His body nearly disappears into the bark, except for the blue of his shirt popping against smears of permanent green. The painting resists sentimentality. De Lotto has painted a kid in a tree, plain and direct—the kind of ordinary moment he is drawn to before it gets dressed up into something falsely profound.
And yet there is something timeless in his work. Where early religious painting sought the divine through technical achievement and the ethereal, De Lotto pursues something more primal and grounded: a human, earthly spirituality that can exist within the present world.
On view by appointment Wednesday - Friday 12-6pm