Humara Abid
Danie Cansino
Brian DePauli
Marc Dennis
Tamara Johnson
Rachel Kalman
Ryosuke Kumakura
Tim Liddy
Dan Life
Rebecca Manson
Rod Penner
Liliana Porter
Christian Rex van Minnen
Bernardo Torrens
Eric Yahnker
Cayce Zavaglia
MARCH 28 - MAY 2
William Shearburn Gallery is pleased to present Made You Look, a group exhibition showcasing artists who employ a keen attention to detail, ranging from hyperrealist painting to conceptual sculpture. Whether through the unconventional application of materials or uncanny realism, the illusionism created in this style is, in itself, a bit of magic. Artists in this exhibition use humor, play, and memory as starting points to explore topics ranging from the mundane to the bizarre—creating works that make viewers do a double take and question what they are truly seeing.
Hyperrealist paintings by artists Marc Dennis, Brian DePauli, Rachel Kalman, Christian Rex van Minnen, and Rod Penner have a significant presence in Made You Look. Marc Dennis’s paintings are characterized by their vivid realism and intricate attention to detail, often blending cartoonish elements with lifelike representations. His work masterfully captures the essence of both beauty and decay, creating compelling visual narratives. Working from direct observation, Kalman’s stilllife paintings feature brightly colored fabrics with intricate patterns, historical photos, thrift store tchotchkes, and lush produce. Her work blends uncanny realism and immaculate detail with themes of representation, kitsch, horror, humor, and metaphor.
Eric Yahnker draws inspiration from pop culture and politics. His piece Kismet (2022) depicts Prince reading the Pulitzer Prize winning novel, The Color Purple. His colored pencil drawings hilariously combine iconography from both the past and the present, creating complex metaphors that spark thought and laughter. Artists Tim Liddy and Dan Life also use pop culture references from the past in the present. Liddy has been using board games as inspiration for over 20 years, while Life references art history, luxury goods, and contemporary iconography.
The exhibition also highlights 3D works by artists Tamara Johnson, Rebecca Manson, and Liliana Porter. Whimsy is present in their work, alongside a sophisticated use of scale and materials. Porter’s studio practice spans works on paper, prints, installations, and videos, often combining these elements in theatrical vignettes. Her thrift store figurines perform various forms of labor, simultaneously evoking humor and distress. With acute material sensitivity, Tamara Johnson recreates ubiquitous objects one might find in a kitchen or backyard. In Colander with Deviled Egg (2025), Johnson uses the everyday kitchen utensil to humorously provoke curiosity.
Artists Humaira Abid, Danie Cansino, Ryosuke Kumakura, and Cayce Zavaglia all use fabric, either as inspiration or as the medium itself, in unique ways to incorporate textiles into their work. Kumakura’s paintings, for example, feature oil-oncanvas renderings of bath towels stretched over a stretcher, mimicking the look of a towel draped over a towel rack. Cayce Zavaglia’s photorealist portraits are meticulously done in cross-stitch, while Cansino’s beautifully executed still lifes and portraits are painted directly on serapes.
Whether you’re looking for a laugh, the slow burn of deeper meaning, or just want to get mesmerized by technical mastery, the artists featured in Made You Look will undoubtedly draw you in for closer inspection.
This exhibition is co-curated by Brian DePauli and William Shearburn Gallery.
Humaira Abid is a Pakistani-American artist who creates provocative and meticulously crafted wood sculptures that challenge cultural taboos by addressing difficult subjects such as displacement, violence against women, and the struggles of refugees. Abid is particularly recognized for her ability to transform wood, a traditionally rigid and masculine medium, into highly detailed, delicate objects that resemble everyday items like shoes, suitcases, and clothing.
Folded Stories: Second Series - VII, 2024
Carved pine wood
14 x 11 x 1 1/2 in.
Danie Cansino is a Los Angeles-based artist and educator notable for her bold chiaroscuro oil paintings and intricate ballpoint pen drawings. Her work delves into personal and communal narratives, drawing inspiration from her own experiences, family, friends, and the vibrant neighborhoods of East Los Angeles.
La Muerte, 2023
serape, diptych 74 in.
Mark Dennis is known for his meticulously detailed paintings that merge historical techniques with contemporary themes. Working primarily in oil on panel, he employs a hyper realistic style influenced by Dutch Golden Age painting, yet his compositions often incorporate surreal elements that challenge conventional narratives of portraiture and still life. His work examines themes of temporality, identity, and artifice, often referencing art history while subverting its traditional motifs.
Manet, 2021
Oil on linen
26 1/2 x 21 in.
Scarab Beetle, Scarabaeus Viettei, 2024
Oil on linen
8 x 8 in.
Rhinoceros Beetle, Oryctes Nasicornis, 2024
Oil on linen
8 x 8 in.
Brian DePauli is a painter whose work questions America’s live-to-work culture, exploring its cultural, environmental, and mental health consequences. Drawing inspiration from John Maynard Keynes and his 1931 essay Economic Possibilities for Our Grandchildren, DePauli envisions a world where Keynes’s prediction of a fiifteen-hour workweek has come true, one where people are freed from unnecessary consumption and devote themselves to leisure and culture.
Sk8 Liborius, 2022
Oil on panel
36 x 45 in.
Garden, 2024/2025 panel
Texas-based artist Tamara Johnson’s work exists at the intersection of sculpture, installation, and public art, focusing on overlooked, un-monumental, mishaps of the everyday. Working in materials like cast bronze, resin, oil-based paints and found objects, she reimagines familiar forms like lawn furniture, deviled eggs, even a saltine cracker, distorting their scale and context to create surreal yet deeply relatable experiences.
Colander with Deviled Egg, 2025
Hydrocal gypsum, gold leaf, paper, resin, fiberglass and acrylic paint
4 x 12 x 10 in.
Cracker with Cheese, 2023
Pewter, pigmented resin, oil-based paint, matte varnish
2 1/4 x 2 1/4 x 1 in.
Rachel Kalman is known for her detailed, observational oil paintings. She creates highly rendered still lives that explore the juxtaposition of kitsch and horror. Her work often references mass produced, decorative objects, examining the ways in which humans focus on seemingly meaningless detail in times of chaos.
Known for his conceptual, hyperrealistic paintings, Ryosuke Kumakura crafts illusionistic images on carefully crafted, exposed stretchers that explore intimate, everyday objects like socks and towels. Despite not featuring any decipherable figures, Kumakra considers all of his works self portraits, due to their introspective and sensitive nature.
Towels, 2023
Oil on canvas, wood stain on stretcher
16 x 28 x 1 in.
Socks, 2023
Oil on canvas, wood stain on stretcher
60 x 16 x 1 in.
Tim Liddy replicates vintage board games with uncanny realism, which viewers often walk past thinking they must be found objects. Liddy delights in the confusion. Upon closer inspection, one can see Liddy’s use of enamel on copper, resembling the textures of worn cardboard, with torn edges and faded colors. Within this familiar, mid-twentiethcentury game box, Liddy inserts surprising elements that are often at odds with the traditional object.
The God of Gluclose, 2025 epoxy resin, vintage game board (Candy Land 1962) mounted on board, oil, enamel, red strip candy, silver sugar pearls, red #40, red #3, silver leaf, gold leaf, ants 19 x 16 x 1 3/8 in.
Daniel Jacobs, also known as Daniel Life, is a contemporary artist admired for his jewel application and masterful craftsmanship. Inspired by luxury fashion and pop culture, Dan Life combines fine art and collectible design, creating wearable sculptures that exude opulence and innovation. His signature crystal-encrusted works often reinterpret iconic symbols, Nike sneakers to beloved Simpsons characters. His work invites closer inspection, each gem capturing the light and transforming found objects into extraordinary pieces of art.
Crystals and clay on existing magazine cover 11 7/16 x 8 11/16 in.
Edition of 10
DAN LIFE
What Are You Looking At Rothko Interiors , 2025
Crystals and clay on existing magazine cover
21 3/4 x 17 3/4 in.
Edition of 10
Rebecca Manson transforms porcelain into intricate, otherworldly sculptures that tell stories of nature and its lessons, observed in her own personal garden in the countryside north of New York City. She pushes the physical limits of clay by fusing together thousands of hand-shaped ceramic pieces.
Storm Drain, 2021
Porcelain, glaze, adhesives and metal
55 x 52 x 46 in.
Christian Rex van Minnen is an American contemporary artist notable for his grotesque yet strangely beautiful paintings that blend surrealism, violence, and otherworldly imagery. This includes neon-hued floral arrangements embedded with rotting skulls or cheerful gummy candies that dangle from dead flowers or cling to distorted human forms. Drawing inspiration from Dutch vanitas paintings and the work of magical realist Ivan Albright, van Minnen’s art explores themes of transience, beauty, and horror.
Priestess, 2022 Monotype
19 1/2 x 13 in.
Rod Penner is a Texas-based painter renowned for his hyper realistic depictions of small-town America. With an astonishing attention to detail, he captures quiet, often overlooked scenes, such as faded storefronts, empty streets, and weathered homes. His work, influenced by both Photorealism and 19thcentury American landscape painting, transforms mundane settings into cinematic studies of place and memory.
Simple Simon’s/Eagle Lake, TX, 2022
12 x 18 in.
Liliana Porter, an Argentine-born artist, blends prints, paintings, photography, performance, video, and installation in her multi media practice. Porter’s work is characterized by her use of miniature figurines, everyday objects, and staged vignettes that create surreal and often humorous juxtapositions. Her art often plays with scale and illusion, prompting viewers to reconsider the relationship between fiction and reality.
Man Drawing in Uniform, 2022
Unique installation of found figurine on wooden base with graphite on wall 1 3/8 x 1 3/8 in.
Matthew Rosenquist is an artist and carpenter who specialties in painted wood sculptures. Starting with a simple slab, he skillfully reduces raw material into the human form with tools like chainsaws, bandsaws, rasps, and chisels. Rosenquist then renders these forms with acrylic paint, creating humorous, life sized figures.
Standing Man in Underwear, 2022
Wood and acrylic paint
72 x 19 x 11 1/2 in.
Bernardo Torrens is a Spanish hyperrealist painter best known for his achromatic nude paintings in acrylics. His work continues the tradition of Spanish realism established in the 17th century by masters like Zurbarán, Ribera, and Velázquez. His works are celebrated for their technical excellence and emotional depth, reflecting a profound understanding of his subjects and a commitment to the enduring tradition of Spanish realism.
Ana B. II, 2020
18 x 18 in.
16 1/4 x 13 in.
Renowned for his highly rendered graphite and colored pencil drawings, Eric Yahnker is an American contemporary artist that blends humor with incisive cultural and political commentary. Beginning as a series of words in his sketchbook, his work becomes an artwork featuring elaborate metaphors and witty imagery.
Kismet, 2022
Colored pencil on Stonehenge
50 x 40 in.
Cayce Zavaglia is known for her hand-embroidered portraits that blur the line between craft and fine art. Since 2001, she has used wool and cotton thread to create lifelike depictions of flesh, hair, and fabric, employing techniques that mimic classical oil painting. Her work also explores the hidden side of embroidery through Verso portraits, a series of gouache, acrylic, and mixed-media studies showing the reverse side of her stitchwork.
Backseat Driving, 2025
Embroidery
20 1/2 x 24 3/4 in.
