Michelle Lopez: Shadow of a Doubt

Shadow of a Doubt traces sculptor and installation artist Michelle Lopez’s longstanding interest in visibility—and invisibility—which she has explored over the past two decades. Using industrial materials like aluminum, lead, and glass, Lopez creates strikingly precarious and vulnerable forms that speak to the instability of supposedly fixed or rigid societal structures. Reinvesting in the political power of sculpture, Lopez similarly wrestles with the medium’s legacy, recasting minimalist and post-minimalist forms into critiques of critiques of capitalism, chauvinism, and other narratives of hegemony. 

Shadow of a Doubt presents Lopez’s drawing practice for the first time in extensive dialogue with new and existing sculptures, which Lopez often describes as lines in space made from rope and metal. Also included in the exhibition are video and sound installations that operate around and above our understanding of objecthood. Altogether, these works underscore her interest in the barely visible, prompting us to consider who in society is rendered invisible by institutions, governments, and other systems of authority. 

In lieu of our global state of precarity, Lopez makes it clear that we are—all of us, including the hidden and the unseen—standing squarely in the looming shadows of doubt. 

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).

Image: Michelle Lopez, Smoke Cloud VII. Courtesy of the artist and Galerie Christophe Gaillard.