WHAAM! is pleased to present Kinda True, a two person exhibition by Grace Horan and Mia Scarpa. The artists first two-person exhibition with WHAAM!, Kinda True will be on view from May 29 through July 3.

The stage is set how many stages have been set before, a small gallery in lower Manhattan, budding artists ready for their next challenge, pruned by masters for their time in the sunlight. The Painter, The Sculptor, like the red and blue lenses of Anaglyph 3D glasses, once both viewpoints merge a new depth entirely is created. There is magic that happens in this moment of unity. The coupling of imagery mirrors the connection between artists; stronger together, new meaning formed by their placement beside each other. Articulating the same moment with different tints. As if one the guardian of the other's achilles heal, this artistic unison: impenetrable. 

Creating Objects of desire is one thing but earning respect and admiration from not only your peers but artists from generations above and below is another challenge in and of itself. It feels as if we are all standing behind these two. Not only the artistic energies of Fort Thunder and the craft and scrap aesthetic of Providence and New York artists of the 2010s but also California's post funk and post mission school artistic energy is all arriving at this singular moment. It might seem like a drop in the bucket or a flash in the pan but there is true artistic lineage here. These artists have earned their place as keystone figures, creating generationally defining work, representing the past, present, and future of the avant-garde. 

Painstakingly crafted imagery sampled from both contemporary culture and the world around them, masterfully rendered pets, skulls, stars, clouds, and rainbows all in the pursuit of eulogizing aesthetics; bestowing dignity and grace upon souvenirs, signage and stickers alike. I like to imagine Mia shining her airbrush, rag over the shoulder with the same immersion as a Motorsports Technician, washing her brushes like a marine reloading. Grace as a quilter connecting images, sewing solder, pulling back the curtainsand letting a little light in.                                      

Written by David Welch

About Grace Horan

Grace Horan (b. 1999, Illinois) work with leaded glass, collage, and found imagery to produce lamps and sculptural objects that occupy a space between furniture, ornament, keepsake. Adapting traditional stained-glass techniques, she treats images themselves as a form of stain, embedding printed matter, photographs, and fragments of visual culture within glass structures. Drawn from discarded archives, decorative motifs, craft traditions, and sentimental ephemera, these images become fixed within labor intensive constructions that transform fleeting encounters into enduring objects. 

Horan’s work considers the emotional residue carried by familiar images and domestic forms. Referencing the history of stained glass and decorative objects such as Tiffany lamps, her practice departs from ideals of refinement and reproducibility in favor of accumulation, irregularity, and personal association. Through processes of collecting, preserving, and recomposing, she creates objects that feel at once intimate and archaeological, suspended between memory and material 

Horan received a BFA in Sculpture from the Rhode Island School of Design in 2021. Her work has been exhibited at The Hole, Martha’s ATX, IRL Gallery, Long Story Short NYC, Gallery SADE, Spy Projects, and VEDA Galleria. She currently lives and works in

Brooklyn, New York.

About Mia Scarpa 

Mia Scarpa (b. 1997) is a Los Angeles–based painter and multidisciplinary artist whose work draws from personal mythology, vernacular Americana, and the visual language of subcultures. Working across painting, collage, and found materials, she constructs layered compositions in which memory, humor, and improvisation coexist. Her surfaces often carry the traces of accumulation and revision, allowing images to emerge through a process  that feels both intuitive and deliberate. 

Rooted in experiences of New England and informed by an attraction to the awkward, sentimental, and handmade, Scarps’s paintings explore how images gather meaning through repetition and use. Familiar symbols, gestures, and fragments of narrative recur throughout her work, shifting between sincerity and parody, nostalgia and invention. Through this process, the ordinary becomes charged with a peculiar emotional weight, at once playful, uncanny, and deeply felt. 

Scarpa received her BFA in Painting from the Rhode Island School of Design in 2020. She has exhibited internationally at Anthony Gallery, Guerrero Gallery, VETA Galeria, 56 Henry, Loyal, The Mass Tokyo, Martha’s ATX, and Spy Projects. She lives and works in Los Angeles, California.