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CHEYNEY THOMPSON

Biography

Cheyney Thompson’s (b. 1975, Baton Rouge, Louisiana) practice is centered on an inquiry into the production, distribution, and exhibition of painting. His projects, which often span several years, impose structures and constraints onto the making of his work. These limitations are in turn generative, resulting in exhaustive investigations into the medium of painting and the problems that surround it. Tying his works to mathematical and economic formulas, his own labor as an artist, and the architecture that his paintings occupy, Thompson enacts a tension between their formal qualities, and the larger systems of circulation they inhabit. 

In 2023, Thompson's work was the subject of the expansive, dual-part solo exhibition Intervals and Displacements, staged across Andrew Kreps Gallery and Lisson Gallery's venues in New York. Other solo exhibitions include L’Écorché, Campoli Presti, Paris, France, 2021, Displacements and Dead Trees, Miguel Abreu Gallery, New York (with Eileen Quinlan) (2020), Sam Lewitt/Cheyney Thompson, The Brno House of Arts, Brno, Czechia, 2017, Cheyney Thompson The Completed Reference: Pedestals and Drunken Walks, Kunstverein Braunschweig, Germany, 2012, Cheyney Thompson: metric, pedestal, landlord, cabengo, recit, curated by João Ribas, MIT Visual Arts Center, Cambridge, Massachusetts 2012.  

His work has additionally been included in numerous group exhibitions, including Between pixel and pigment - Hybrid painting in post-digital times, Kunsthalle Bielefeld, Bielefeld, Germany, 2024, Inaugural Exhibition, The Campus, Hudson, NY, 2024, For What It’s Worth: Value Systems in Art since 1960, The Warehouse, Dallas, TX, 2024, The Cumulative Effect, Songwon Art Center, Seoul, South Korea, 2022, Walk, Shirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt, Frankfurt, Germany, 2022, Drawing 2020, Gladstone Gallery, New York, 2020,  Tainted Love / Club Edit, Villa Arson, Nice, 2019, Low Form. Imaginaries and Visions in the Age of Artificial Intelligence, MAXXI, Rome, Italy, 2018, Programmed: Rules, Codes, and Choreographies in Art, 1965–2018, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, 2018, 99 Cents or Less, Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit, MI, 2017, Colori. The Emotions of Color in Art, Castello Di Rivoli, Museo d’Arte Contemporanea, Turin, Italy, 2017, Invisible Adversaries: Marieluise Hessel Collection, Hessel Museum of Art, Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson, New York, 2016, Money, Good and Evil. A Visual History of Economics, Staatliche Kunsthalle, Baden-Baden, Baden-Baden, Germany, 2016, A Slow Succession with Many Interruptions, SFMOMA, San Francisco, 2016, and  Materials and Money and Crisis, Museum Moderner Kunst, Vienna, Austria, 2013, the 2008 Whitney Biennial, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, 2008, among others. Thompson’s work is held in the permanent collections of the Centre Pompidou, Paris, The Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, SFMoMA, San Francisco, and the Museum of Modern Art, New York. 

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