Courtesy MASSIMODECARLO.
Izzy Barber Presents BADLANDS at MASSIMODECARLO Pièce Unique in Paris
In dialogue with Izzy Barber
FVTVRIST Magazine // 2 April 2026
Interview by Anna S.
From March 31 to April 11, 2026, MASSIMODECARLO presents 'Badlands' by Izzy Barber at PIÈCE UNIQUE, its Paris space at 57 Rue de Turenne. This new body of work marks a decisive shift in Izzy Barber’s practice, extending both its geographic and conceptual scope.
Developed beyond New York City, where the artist is based, the paintings emerge from a series of cross-country journeys through the Badlands and across the United States. In moving outward, Izzy Barber situates herself within unfamiliar and often psychologically charged terrains, allowing lived experience to actively inform both the subject and the conditions of painting.
Installation views, 2026. Courtesy MASSIMODECARLO.
In this series, you place yourself in unfamiliar and sometimes politically tense environments. How do you decide what to capture when the situation feels complex or unclear?
Painting is the record I keep. It is a byproduct of an experience of being in the world. Painting has the wonderful capacity to harbor complexity and contradictions. In many ways, painting is the excuse I use to explore the world. I set out on these road trips across the United States because it was urgent to bring myself closer to what is a politically charged reality. These were all places unfamiliar to me and it was necessary to go into every situation without a preconceived idea of the images that would come from these experiences. The only benchmark I have is whether a painting feels true to my personal experience in a moment in time, in a particular place. When a situation felt complex, I tried to sit with that complexity and I hope that is reflected in the painting.
You paint directly from life. What does physical presence give you that working from images cannot?
I cannot say what it is to work from photos because it has never been something that I do. I have always painted from life and before I was painting I was drawing from life. It’s a practice that’s about curiosity, attention and observation and it’s a way for me to process and understand the world around me on a visceral level. It is a powerful experience to be out in the world, physically present with a subject and directly looking and experiencing it all simultaneously.
You studied Studio Arts and Human Rights. How does that background shape the way you choose what to paint?
There is a clear distinction between political action and art. I am very protective of painting, knowing that it is as a personal kind of investigation and it needs to develop organically. In college it was important for me to keep my two majors of Studio Art and Human Rights separate. My advisors tried to convince me to combine these projects, but I resisted. I did not want to force a connection; I needed the intellectual study of human rights and political philosophy to exist separately from my art. One was intellectual and the other psychological, formal and material. I need painting to exist outside of language.
My background of course affects how I navigate the world. I grew up in Brooklyn on a majority Spanish-speaking block, my sister lives in Mexico, I wrote my thesis in Human Rights on the role of immigrants in American democracy. The fact that I spent summers during college working for immigration lawyers means that I have some familiarity with immigration courts, which makes it easier for me to show up to the courts in NY as well as in El Paso, Texas when I was on my road trips, as I tried to get a sense of this current reality we are living through in the United States.
There is a real tension in painting directly in front of scenes marked by authority or control. How do you experience the act of painting in those moments, and does it change the way you work?
I would say that I am just as curious about authority and control as I am curious about understanding my response to it. There have been times when I made terrible paintings that I will not exhibit, but I needed to go through the act of painting because to abandon it would have symbolic meaning.
Installation views, 2026. Courtesy MASSIMODECARLO.
Your paintings carry both immediacy and a sense of something timeless, rooted in traditions of figurative painting. How do you see your work in relation to these histories today?
I love painting. And I love that sometimes it can allow the experience of a collapse of time or a suspension of time. I have stood in front of paintings from hundreds of years ago and felt the hand that made those gestures. I also appreciate how painting can respond specifically to a moment in time. Painting is fascinating. It can collapse time and confound one’s ideas of linear progress. It can be timeless and also capture a moment in time. I like thinking about how Van Gogh stood in front of Rembrandt’s Jewish Bride and wept. I let a lot swirl around in the background and am happy to let those influences ebb and flow. Right now the people on my mind are Jack Whitten, Ralph Fasanella, Forrest Bess and Masaccio. Whether they make their way into my work is not my immediate concern. I do like spending time with art from a variety of times and situations. Of course, leading up to my trips I had been thinking of the photographs from Robert Frank’s The Americans.
This body of work engages closely with contemporary American reality. How do you personally feel about the state of America today, and how does that atmosphere enter into your paintings?
I think that one of the most upsetting aspects of living in the United States or in this reality is recognizing in real-time how easily, how quickly, human beings can adapt to disturbing realities and the surreal experience of witnessing how anything can become normalized. It is hard to know what to do, but I know that what makes sense to me is to try my best to continually break habits, to be in the practice of recognizing that which should not be blindly accepted. To not give in to comfort or fatalism.
This is your presentation in Paris, in front of a European audience. How does it feel to show this work here, and do you sense a different kind of reception compared to New York ?
Showing in Paris I am aware of presenting myself as an American painter. I am many things, but I am also from the United States and that is something to contend with.
The show is presented in the Pièce Unique format. Did this influence how you approached each painting as an individual work?
This is the first time I am exhibiting work from my road trips and the Piece Unique format challenged me to think of a way to distill a complex journey into a single emblematic gesture. I was thinking of color and tone as much as I was thinking of geography and political crisis.
These works are smaller and more intimate. How does scale affect your process and the intensity of observation?
I work within the practical concerns and logistics of painting from life. I drove across the country with all my supplies in the back of the car. In many cases, I carried my supplies down a road or a trail until I found what I wanted to paint. I have made a compact set up that allows for agility and spontaneity. I can quickly set up and begin a painting, as well as quickly end a painting if the situation calls for it. Working any larger would come at the expense of this practice of painting from life. I enjoy the challenge of painting as a sport and find creativity because of the limitations.
The exhibition is titled Badlands. What does this title represent for you, and how does it relate to the landscapes and situations you encountered?
Badlands comes from the title of a painting I made in the Badlands of South Dakota. The beginning of this particular trip started in Modoc County of California whose official slogan is “Where the West still lives.” For two weeks I traveled on Highway 50, nicknamed “The Loneliest Highway”, from California through Nevada and Utah, through majority-white small towns with distinct pioneer settler history. I experienced a dramatic shift of reality when I drove through Pine Ridge Reservation, visited Wounded Knee Cemetery and ended up in the geologically wonderous landscape of the Badlands. The formations in the Badlands are the result of 75 million years of geological deposit and erosion. There is a long history of Native Americans in this area. I was overcome with the natural beauty of the landscape when I saw this insistent red vertical line that was the back of a trail marker. It was an intrusive and emphatic mark on the landscape, powerful, simple and symbolic.
Protest in DC, 2026 and Brake Lights (Modoc County), 2025 by Izzy Barber. Courtesy MASSIMODECARLO.
About Izzy Barber
Izzy Barber (b. 1990, Gowanus, Brooklyn) lives and works in Queens, New York. Her practice is grounded in painting on-site, often in public space, at the threshold between day and night. Working at sunset and into darkness, Barber constructs her images directly from the streets, bridges, and scaffolding of the city. Her brushwork, highly impressionistic and at times almost sculptural, retains the immediacy of its execution, embedding each scene with the temporal conditions of its making.
Moving through industrial zones and transitional urban environments, Barber engages what she describes as the “energetic framework” of the city. Twilight becomes a critical zone in her work. As visibility recedes, perception shifts from clarity to intuition. The paintings do not seek to stabilize the image, but to register its instability, where light dissolves form and attention becomes an active, searching process.
Barber holds an MFA from the New York Studio School and a BA from Bard College. Her recent exhibitions include There Is No Time (2024) at James Fuentes, Los Angeles, following earlier solo presentations in New York and Trento. Her work has been presented internationally, including at David Zwirner Platform and Galleria Franco Noero in Turin, and continues to position painting as a durational act within the shifting conditions of contemporary urban life.
About MASSIMODECARLO Pièce Unique
Massimo de Carlo Pièce Unique is a gallery space dedicated to focused, carefully edited exhibitions. Rather than presenting large-scale shows, Pièce Unique invites artists to concentrate on a small number of works and a single idea, allowing each exhibition to be experienced slowly and with attention.
The format encourages clarity and intimacy, creating space for one artistic statement at a time. By reducing scale and excess, Pièce Unique allows works to be seen more closely, and the artist’s intentions to remain clear and undiluted. It is a model of exhibition-making that strongly resonates with us.
