Michelle Lopez: Shadow of a Doubt Artist Conversation + Opening Reception

Join us for the opening celebration of Michelle Lopez: Shadow of a Doubt with a public conversation with Michelle Lopez and art historian and critic Gloria Sutton, followed by a community-wide celebration.

Shadow of a Doubt traces Lopez’s longstanding interest in visibility—and invisibility—which she has explored over the past two decades. Using industrial materials like aluminum, rope, and glass, Lopez creates strikingly precarious and vulnerable forms that speak to the instability of supposedly fixed or rigid societal structures. Presenting Lopez’s drawing practice for the first time in extensive dialogue with new and existing sculptures, the exhibition underscores her interest in the barely visible, prompting us to consider who in society is rendered invisible by institutions, governments, and other systems of authority.

Michelle Lopez: Shadow of a Doubt is organized by TUAG director Dina Deitsch and supported by Girlfriend Fund and The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts. Shadow of a Doubt is accompanied by Halyard, a yearlong sound and sculptural installation in the adjacent Remis Sculpture Court, on view September 2025–June 2026.

Michelle Lopez (b. 1970, Bridgeport, CT; lives and works in New York and Philadelphia) received a BA from Barnard College, Columbia University (1992), and an MFA from School of Visual Arts, New York (1994). She is Associate Professor in Fine Arts and head of the sculpture program at the University of Pennsylvania. Solo and two-person exhibitions have been held at CCA Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts, San Francisco (2025); Ballroom Marfa (2024); Commonwealth and Council, Los Angeles (2023); Institute of Contemporary Art, Philadelphia (2019); Simon Preston, New York (2018); Alt, Protocinema, Istanbul (2016); Galerie Christophe Gaillard, Paris (2016); and Fondazione Nicola Trussardi, Milan (2001). Selected group exhibitions have been held at Jan Kaps, Cologne (2024); Sarasota Art Museum (2024); Institute of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (2024); Protocinema, Philadelphia (2020); i8, Reykjavik (2018); Museum of Contemporary Art and Design, Manila (2017); Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts, Cambridge (2017); MoMA PS1, Long Island City (2000); and Public Art Fund, New York (2000). Lopez has received a Pew Center for Arts & Heritage Grant (2023), Sachs Program for Arts Innovation Grant (2019), John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship (2019), and New York Foundation for the Arts Sculpture Fellowship (2011).

Gloria Sutton is Associate Professor of Contemporary Art History at Northeastern University. Her scholarship has been recognized with awards from The Andy Warhol Foundation, the Terra Foundation for American Art, and the Getty Research Institute. She is currently completing Pattern Recognition: Contemporary Art in the Age of Artificial Intelligence, which argues for a “latent space of art history” — mapping how computational models and machine learning reframe the production, reception, and historiography of contemporary art. A frequent speaker at cultural institutions worldwide, Sutton continues to deepen critical understanding of contemporary art’s entanglement with technological, political, and material systems.