Lee Maxey: Pearly Whites
09.06.25 - 10.18.25
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12.26 is pleased to present Pearly Whites, a solo exhibition by Brooklyn-based artist Lee Maxey.
Pearly Whites showcases new delicate egg tempera paintings, the artist's typical medium of choice. Tempera’s slowness and precision mirror the psychological atmosphere that Maxey’s paintings create—a steady accumulation of control that builds toward revelation, but never allows release.
Paintings of oversized dominoes are scattered across the gallery. Repetition encourages a gamelike attitude toward Pearly Whites, and sleuth work is overtly promoted by the frequent game references, extending to Pick-up Sticks and flashcards. In Maxey’s hands, a domino may first read as a color field painting, or its pips may strike one as orifices: eyes, mouth, camera. Commonplace objects—a hinge, wristwatch, door latch—hang amid the dominoes. Maxey’s precision paired with her concisely cropped compositions dislodges her mundane subjects from passive familiarity, endowing them with an almost religious weight.
In Git, we see Maxey herself, baring her teeth with a confrontational intensity. Git is the first representational self-portrait by the artist, who regularly uses a cutout felt figure as a stand-in for herself. This motif is included in All-One! All-One! amid corrugated bordettes that recall elementary or Sunday school. In Falling Out, the same figure is rendered geometric; this decontextualized design is repeated on the box lid of Maxey’s Fact Pak.
Fact Pak is a series of enlarged flashcards that present charged theological questions answered on their opposing sides by abstract drawings in colored pencil. The text is a direct recreation of select flashcards from the game Junior Bible Quiz, a competition for children ongoing since the 1970s.
Pearly Whites strikes clarity while leaving room for expansive, enigmatic experience. While Maxey’s upbringing was shaped by apocalyptic narratives, her paintings shift focus to the present, toward a more ambiguous and ambient sense of unease.
Lee Maxey (b. 1988, Little Rock, AR) lives and works in Brooklyn, NY. Maxey received her MFA in 2016 from Boston University, and her BFA in 2011 from the University of Central Arkansas. Maxey has presented solo and two-person exhibitions with Olympia, New York, NY (2024, 2021); 12.26 (2023); and Yutaka Kikutake Gallery, Tokyo, Japan (2023), among others. Her work has been included in group exhibitions at Olympia, New York, NY (2025, 2024, 2023, 2022, 2020); NARANJO 141, Mexico City, MX (2025); and Deanna Evans Projects, New York, NY (2024), among others. Maxey completed a residency at NARANJO 141 in 2024 and at the Fire Island Artist Residency in 2018. Her work resides in the Rare Books Collection at the Howard Gotlieb Archival Research Center in Boston, MA. She teaches painting at Brooklyn College.
Pearly Whites showcases new delicate egg tempera paintings, the artist's typical medium of choice. Tempera’s slowness and precision mirror the psychological atmosphere that Maxey’s paintings create—a steady accumulation of control that builds toward revelation, but never allows release.
Paintings of oversized dominoes are scattered across the gallery. Repetition encourages a gamelike attitude toward Pearly Whites, and sleuth work is overtly promoted by the frequent game references, extending to Pick-up Sticks and flashcards. In Maxey’s hands, a domino may first read as a color field painting, or its pips may strike one as orifices: eyes, mouth, camera. Commonplace objects—a hinge, wristwatch, door latch—hang amid the dominoes. Maxey’s precision paired with her concisely cropped compositions dislodges her mundane subjects from passive familiarity, endowing them with an almost religious weight.
In Git, we see Maxey herself, baring her teeth with a confrontational intensity. Git is the first representational self-portrait by the artist, who regularly uses a cutout felt figure as a stand-in for herself. This motif is included in All-One! All-One! amid corrugated bordettes that recall elementary or Sunday school. In Falling Out, the same figure is rendered geometric; this decontextualized design is repeated on the box lid of Maxey’s Fact Pak.
Fact Pak is a series of enlarged flashcards that present charged theological questions answered on their opposing sides by abstract drawings in colored pencil. The text is a direct recreation of select flashcards from the game Junior Bible Quiz, a competition for children ongoing since the 1970s.
Pearly Whites strikes clarity while leaving room for expansive, enigmatic experience. While Maxey’s upbringing was shaped by apocalyptic narratives, her paintings shift focus to the present, toward a more ambiguous and ambient sense of unease.
Lee Maxey (b. 1988, Little Rock, AR) lives and works in Brooklyn, NY. Maxey received her MFA in 2016 from Boston University, and her BFA in 2011 from the University of Central Arkansas. Maxey has presented solo and two-person exhibitions with Olympia, New York, NY (2024, 2021); 12.26 (2023); and Yutaka Kikutake Gallery, Tokyo, Japan (2023), among others. Her work has been included in group exhibitions at Olympia, New York, NY (2025, 2024, 2023, 2022, 2020); NARANJO 141, Mexico City, MX (2025); and Deanna Evans Projects, New York, NY (2024), among others. Maxey completed a residency at NARANJO 141 in 2024 and at the Fire Island Artist Residency in 2018. Her work resides in the Rare Books Collection at the Howard Gotlieb Archival Research Center in Boston, MA. She teaches painting at Brooklyn College.
