COLLEEN BARRY

Iconophilia

Opening: March 25th, 6-8 PM

March 25th - April 25th, 2026

The Protestant Reformation, the French Revolution, the demise of the Bamiyan Buddhas: all are examples of iconoclasm, the destruction of imagery with political or religious undertones. While Colleen Barry was doing research in this area, she thought to Google the opposite of the term and discovered its iconophilia, the worshiping of pictures. “I’m not a hater of artificial intelligence, but I’ve noticed a growing distrust that’s come into the culture,” explains the artist. “My kids are always pointing at their phone and saying, ‘That’s AI! This is AI!’ specific to certain imagery. Maybe we are entering a new era of iconoclasm with this mistrust and inundation of visuals driven by technology.” 

In many of her new paintings, Barry includes depictions of gorgons - a cousin to the gargoyle - which are intentionally made to look terrifying and off-putting, but serve as protectors to scare away evil spirits and the malicious. “I paired a recumbent female nude with the gargons in a split screen painting,” she explains. “They’re there to guard the sacred part of her, especially in such an explicitly vulnerable position.” Another nude composition, “Fugue,” reveals a woman stickered with an Eros angel. The celestial presence is meant to signal to the viewer that her nudity is not a play at vulgarity or cheap provocation, but conveys a higher vibration of love and sexuality.” In “Origo” Barry shows a pregnant woman - scaled colossally - with a cluster of ancients made miniature around a fire in the foreground. She’s a contemporary fertility figure, Barry’s “Virgin and Child with Saint Anne.” “A woman carrying a female fetus actually represents three generations in one,” notes Colleen. “Because the unborn child comes into this world with all the eggs she’ll ever produce.”

However; not all icons need to be centuries old. For the lone self-portrait in this exhibition, Colleen Barry paints herself with a clay mask worn during a facial, noticing the overlap between her appearance and that of Bob Dylan on his “Desire” tour, resplendent in white face painting. The title of this new work is Petrine, which in Latin means rock or stone. The only part of her face left visible is her striking blue eyes, rendered in Caribbean turquoise. But blue eyes are not actually blue—they are the effect of Rayleigh scattering, light refracted and perceived as color. Barry underscores how easily perception hardens into belief, how illusion becomes doctrine. “We’re living in a pagan world,” she concludes.

Colleen Barry (b. 1981), currently lives and works in New York.