Whaam! is pleased to present Caught in My Eye, a solo exhibition of new paintings by Andrew Durgin-Barnes. The exhibition brings together a series of works made over an intensive two-week period in New York City, each produced directly on site in locations that inform the artist’s daily experience—subway tunnels, parks, rooftops, alleyways, and the interstitial spaces of downtown.

Working within the environments he navigates as a skateboarder and participant in the city’s subcultures, Durgin-Barnes turns close observations of the urban landscape into finely rendered oil paintings. This new body of work carries a notably rawer hand; many paintings were made quickly in response to shifting outdoor conditions or the practical realities of working in less accessible sites, such as active subway corridors or rooftops. The immediacy of these circumstances is embedded in the surfaces of the paintings themselves.

The still lifes depict objects encountered across the city: pizza slices, overturned ice cream cones, bagels left on sidewalks, traffic cones, and occasional anomalous forms that interrupt the familiar—a misplaced toy, metrocard, a fallen bird. These subjects, collected intuitively and without hierarchy, emerge as grounded yet quietly uncanny markers of place.

In Caught in My Eye, Durgin-Barnes approaches these everyday elements with a considered, almost classical attention to light and detail. By isolating objects that might otherwise go unnoticed, the works offer a slowed moment of recognition, proposing another way of seeing the surfaces and rhythms of New York. Each painting serves simultaneously as a record of its site and as a distillation of the artist’s immediate encounter.

About Andrew Durgin-Barnes 

Born in 1985 in San Diego, California, Andrew Durgin-Barnes is an American artist working in painting, drawing, and mixed media. Raised in Bremerton and Port Orchard, Washington, he developed a passion for art and skateboarding, which continue to influence his creative practice. 

Durgin-Barnes’s work reflects personal history, urban environments, and cultural narratives. His paintings often feature allegorical elements, combining classical techniques with contemporary themes to evoke the human experience. Over the years, he has lived in cities across the United States, including Florida, Reno, Portland, Oakland, San Francisco, New York, and Miami. He is currently based in Los Angeles, where the urban landscape continues to inform his art.