IMAGE: Installation view, The Canvas Can Do Miracles, The Contemporary Austin – Jones Center on Congress Avenue, Austin, Texas, 2025. Image courtesy The Contemporary Austin. Photograph by Alex Boeschenstein.
Exhibition
The Canvas Can Do Miracles
September 12, 2025 – January 11, 2026
The Canvas Can Do Miracles presents an intergenerational group of artists who share a commitment to abstraction unbound by formalism and embody an artistic ethos rooted in alchemy, process, and resistance. The exhibition foregrounds their diverse painterly strategies, which draw on varied touchstones ranging from the natural world, Indigenous symbologies, and underground ecosystems. For these artists, the canvas is both a material and a coded space for networked communication, transformation, and metaphysical inquiry.
Ragna Bley’s (b. 1986, Uppsala, Sweden; lives and works in Oslo, Norway) sensuous, mesmerizing canvases and preparatory drawings evoking atmosphere, geological substrates, and water emanate from her deeply physical and intuitive process in the studio. Beyond the works exhibited in the gallery, Bley has created a new, large-scale, painting installation that will respond to the environment at the Betty and Edward Marcus Sculpture Park at Laguna Gloria.
Nathan Carter (b. 1970, Dallas, TX; lives and works in Brooklyn, NY), channels a woman named Mars, a mysterious femme fatale, to trace the contours of gender identification in search of alternative pathways. His mobiles, sculptures, and drawings take inspiration from modernism’s visual rhetoric, botanical forms, the diagrammatic worlds of Richard Scarry, and queer punk histories.
Patrick Dean Hubbell’s (b. 1986, Diné; lives and works on the Navajo Nation) draped, folded, defaced, and deconstructed unstretched canvases and mass-produced textiles ground his unique painterly language. He translates Indigenous stories, traditions, language, and art rooted in his Diné identity into abstract marks and geometric patterning that can read as pure form or markers of cultural significance.
Suzanne Jackson’s (b. 1944, St. Louis, MO; lives and works in Savannah, GA and St. Remy, NY) six-decade painting practice is informed by her background in theater, poetry, dance, bookmaking, costume design, and printmaking. In her suspended, pure acrylic paintings, which have been termed “environmental abstractions,” Jackson incorporates materials from daily life into constellations that enfold storytelling and metaphor, and that act as a physical record of Jackson’s travels and engagement with her studio.
Hayal Pozanti’s (b. 1983, Istanbul, Turkey; lives and works in Manchester, VT) pulsing landscapes and swirling biomorphic shapes articulate an engagement with the organic that informs her paintings’ and sculptures’ stunning symbioses of form, emotion, and sensuality. Her emphasis on the biological world also constitutes a defiant rebuke of a future dictated by a disembodied artificial intelligence.
The exhibition is curated by Alex Klein, Head Curator and Director of Curatorial Affairs, with assistance from Rachel Eboh, Curatorial Assistant.
Artists
Ragna Bley
Ragna Bley’s (b. 1986, Uppsala, Sweden; lives and works in Oslo, Norway) oeuvre comprises painting, installation, sculpture, and performance and language-based works that explore the oscillation between the familiar and alien, looking to narratives within biology, literature, and science-fiction. Through her painting practice, Bley traverses the relationship between abstraction and representation—hinting at and obscuring familiar shapes and organic matter. Bley’s colors vacillate over the surface and seep into the canvas, intermixing like currents and creating the possibility of infinite forms, while other areas of the canvas are left bare, alluding to the instability of images.
Read more
Bley received her BFA at the National Academy of Fine Arts, Oslo in 2011 and her MA in Painting from the Royal College of Art, London in 2015. Solo and two-person presentations include: Silent Arrest, OSL, Oslo (2024); Viridian Land, Pilar Corrias, London (2022); Stranger’s Eye, Kunstnernes Hus, Oslo (2022); Ragna Bley & Inger Ekdahl, Malmö Konsthall, Sweden (2020); Zooid, Kunsthuset Kabuso, Øystese, Norway (2018); Zooid, Kunsthall Oslo (2017); and Lay Open, Frankfurt am Main, Berlin (2017). Selected group exhibitions include: After the Sun - Forecast from the North, AKG Buffalo, New York (2024); Abstraction (re)creation – 20 under 40, Le Consortium, Dijon, France (2024); The Hour of Reckoning, Henie Onstad Art Center, Bærum, Norway (2021); Tempo Tempo Tempo, Kistefosmuseet, Jevnaker, Norway (2019); The Moderna Exhibition 2018, Moderna Museet, Stockholm (2018); The Oslo Museum of Contemporary Art, Kunsthall Oslo (2017); Nomadic Images, Museum of Applied Arts, Vilnius, Lithuania (2016). Her work is included in the permanent collections of David Roberts Art Foundation, London; Henie Onstad Art Center, Bærum, Norway; Malmö Konstmuseum, Sweden; Kistefosmuseet, Jevnaker, Norway; Moderna Museet, Stockholm; and the National Museum of Contemporary Art, Oslo.
Nathan Carter
Nathan Carter’s (b. 1970, Dallas; lives and works in Brooklyn, NY) diverse body of work is inspired by biomorphic botanical forms, volatile urban landscapes, and punk histories. Most recently, a survey of the artist’s works on paper explored depictions of imagined metropolises and multicolored abstractions in a variety of media—colored pencil, ink, collage, gouache, graphite, acrylic, and enamel. Cityscapes are populated by lightning bolts, twisting power lines, and precarious structures, while in other abstract works, looping lines and gestural marks interlock with biomorphic forms and fields of color.
Read more
The artist’s sculptural practice engages with unlikely and enlarged manifestations of fanciful objects in the form of aluminum wall-based reliefs and free-hanging mobiles. Termed “fascinators,” these dynamic works were predominantly inspired by the decorative headpieces of the same name. In recent years, Carter has expanded on and transformed the visual language of the fascinators into boldly colored and gold-painted forms that billow across aluminum panels, growing fluidly from one shape into the next in a cross between carnal and botanical.
Carter received his BFA from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston in 1995 and MFA from Yale University School of Art, New Haven in 1999. Carter has exhibited internationally at institutions such as the MCA Detroit (2018); the Nasher Sculpture Center, Dallas (2010); the MCA Denver (solo) (2016); the Bristol Museum & Art Gallery, Bristol, UK (2016); Middlesbrough Institute of Modern Art, Middlesbrough, UK (2015); Gallery of Modern Art, Glasgow, UK (2014); Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art, Kansas City, MO (2013); Blaffer Art Museum, University of Houston (solo) (2012); Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago (2012); Bass Museum of Art, Miami Beach, FL (2011); Museo de Arte Raul Anguiano, Guadalajara, Mexico (solo) (2010); and ArtPace, San Antonio (solo) (2008). The artist’s work is included in the public collections of the Nasher Sculpture Center, Dallas; the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; Art Gallery of Toronto; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; Miami Art Museum; Tate Modern, London; DA2 Centre of Contemporary Art, Salamanca, Spain; Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, Madrid; and CU Art Museum, Boulder, CO.
Patrick Dean Hubbell
Patrick Dean Hubbell (b. 1986, Diné; lives and works on the Navajo Nation) is To’ahani' (Near to Water Clan), born for Dibe’lizhini (Black Sheep), Maternal Grandfather is Kinyaa’aanii (Towering House People), Paternal Grandfather is Hona’ghaahnii (One Who Walks Around Clan). He is originally from Navajo, New Mexico, located near the Northeast region of the Arizona–New Mexico border of the Navajo Nation, in the Southwest region of the United States.
Read more
Hubbell’s work has been exhibited at galleries, museums, and institutions nationally and internationally, including the Heard Museum, Phoenix; the Autry Museum of the American West, Los Angeles; Rochester Contemporary Art Center, NY; and the Utah Museum of Contemporary Art, Salt Lake City. Most recently, he presented his second solo exhibition, You Guide Me Through, at Nina Johnson, Miami where he is represented. Hubbell’s work is in the collections of the Denver Art Museum; the Pérez Art Museum, Miami; the Peabody Essex Museum, Salem, MA; the Tia Collection, Santa Fe, NM; the Arizona Community Foundation, Phoenix; and the Addison Gallery of American Art, Andover, MA.
Most recently, he presented his second solo exhibition, You Guide Me Through, at Nina Johnson, Miami, FL where he is represented. Hubbell’s work is in the collections of the Denver Art Museum, Denver, CO; the Pérez Art Museum, Miami, FL; the Peabody Essex Museum, Salem, MA; the Tia Collection, Santa Fe, NM; the Arizona Community Foundation, Phoenix, AZ; and the Addison Gallery of American Art, Andover, MA.
In 2017, Hubbell was awarded a Pollock-Krasner Foundation grant. He is the recipient of the New Artist Society Award (SAIC, 2019) and the James Nelson Raymond Fellowship (SAIC, 2021), and he is a graduate of the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.
Suzanne Jackson
Suzanne Jackson (b. 1944, St. Louis; lives and works in Savannah, GA and St. Remy, NY) has worked, for nearly five decades, experimentally across mediums including painting, drawing, poetry, dance, theater, and costume design. In the early 1970s, Jackson was known for her figurative paintings using layers of acrylic wash to depict the melding of humans and nature. During this time, Jackson was also a teacher in Los Angeles, where she engaged a community of artist peers and established Gallery 32, showcasing figures like David Hammons, Senga Nengudi, and Betye Saar. Jackson’s recent “environmental abstractions” are composed of pure acrylic and recycled materials from the artist’s life such as produce bags, rods, paper fragments, peanut shells, bamboo bells, and leather string. In dispensing with the canvas, the paintings move off the wall and function from all sides.
Read more
Jackson received an MFA in theater design from Yale University in 1990 and is a recipient of the Helen Frankenthaler Award for Painting (2024), Jacob Lawrence Award from the Academy of Arts and Letters (2022), an Anonymous Was A Woman grant (2021), NYFA Murray Reich Distinguished Artist Award (2020), and a Joan Mitchell Foundation Painters & Sculptors Grant (2019). Jackson will have her first major retrospective from 2025 to 2026, organized by SFMOMA and the Walker Art Center and traveling to the MFA Boston. Recent solo and survey exhibitions include Whitney Biennial 2024: Even Better Than the Real Thing, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York (2024); Finding Aid, Goldsmith’s Center for Contemporary Art, London (2024); Vital Signs: Artists and the Body, The Museum of Modern Art, New York (2024); Somethings in the World, Galleria d’Arte Moderna of Milan (2023); To Bend the Ear of the Outer World: Conversations on contemporary abstract painting, Gagosian, London (2023); Tennessee Triennial for Contemporary Art, Knoxville Museum of Art (2023); Suzanne Jackson: Listen’ N Home, the Arts Club of Chicago (2022); Just Above Midtown: Changing Spaces, the Museum of Modern Art, New York (2022); Joan Didion: What She Means, Hammer Museum, Los Angeles (2022); Suzanne Jackson: Five Decades, Jepson Center/Telfair Museums, Savannah, GA (2019); Life Model: Charles White and His Students, Los Angeles County Museum of Art (2019); West by Midwest, Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago (2018–2019); Soul of a Nation: Art in the Age of Black Power, Brooklyn Museum, New York; Now Dig This! Art and Black Los Angeles 1960–1980, Hammer Museum; Gallery 32 & Its Circle, Laband Art Gallery, Loyola Marymount University, Los Angeles (2009). Her work is held in the collections of the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art; Museum of Modern Art, New York; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; Buffalo AKG Art Museum, NY; MCA San Diego; California African American Museum, Los Angeles; The Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; Baltimore Museum of Art; the Art Institute of Chicago; and The Morgan Library and Museum, New York, among others.
In 2023, the artist established the Suzanne Fitzallen Jackson Foundation (SFJF), an artist foundation dedicated to providing fully supported residencies for emerging and mid-career artists, particularly those underrepresented from the South. The foundation is based in her beloved Savannah home, where she has lived and worked for nearly three decades.
Hayal Pozanti
Hayal Pozanti (b. 1983, Istanbul; lives and works in Manchester, VT) has a BA from Sabanci University and an MFA from Yale University. Her work is in the permanent collections of Eli & Edythe Broad Art Museum,; East Lansing, MI; JP Morgan Chase Art Collection, New York; Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), CA; San Jose Museum of Art, CA; UCLA Grunwald Center for the Graphic Arts, Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; Smith College Museum of Art, Northampton, MA; and the Long Museum, Shanghai. Pozanti has been awarded large-scale public projects and commissions by the New York Public Library; Public Art Fund, New York; and Cleveland Clinic and Case Western, OH. She has presented institutional solo shows at the Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum, Ridgefield, CT and the Brooklyn Academy of Music, New York. In 2024, she was included in the American Pavilion at the Gwangju Biennial. Pozanti is represented by Jessica Silverman, San Francisco and Timothy Taylor in London and New York.
Acknowledgments
The Contemporary Austin’s Exhibition Program is supported in part by Malú Alvarez, Rachel and Jeff Arnold, Bettina and Brian Barrow, Adrienne and Christopher Bosh, Suzanne Deal Booth, Debbie Dupré and Richard Rothberg, Kathleen and Christopher Loughlin, Chris Mattsson, Danielle Nieciag and Brian Sharples, O’Shaughnessy – Rivers Family Fund, The Lora Reynolds and Colin Doyle Curatorial Fund, Zarmeena Vendal, and anonymous donors. Exhibitions and programming are also made possible by The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Still Water Foundation, and Stratus Properties.
The Contemporary Austin is supported by the generosity of its Board of Trustees, Members, and donors.
Additional support for The Canvas Can Do Miracles is provided by the Office for Contemporary Art Norway and the Barbro Osher Pro Suecia Foundation.
Press Release
Related Events
Member Preview The Canvas Can Do Miracles, Teddy Sandoval and the Butch Gardens School of Art, and HOST: Raul De Lara
Members see it first! Preview our fall exhibitions ahead of the general public.
Public Opening Reception The Canvas Can Do Miracles, Teddy Sandoval and the Butch Gardens School of Art, and HOST: Raul De Lara
Come celebrate our fall exhibitions at the Jones Center!
Second Saturdays Are for Families: Marvelous Mobiles & Swirly Surprises
Join guest artist Nathan Carter to create your own whimsical shapes for a community mobile!
In Conversation: The Canvas Can Do Miracles with Ragna Bley, Nathan Carter, and Patrick Dean Hubbell, moderated by Alex Klein
Exhibiting artists Patrick Dean Hubbell, Ragna Bley, and Nathan Carter will be in conversation with Head Curator and Director of Curatorial Affairs, Alex Klein
Perspective Tour with Laurie Frick
Exploring The Canvas Can Do Miracles
Public Curator-Led Tour
with Head Curator and Director Curatorial Affairs, Alex Klein and Assistant Curator, Julie Le