Michelangelo Pistoletto

A pioneer of the radical Italian Arte Povera movement that favored everyday industrial objects over traditional materials, Michelangelo Pistoletto has made work for over six decades and continues to work well into his nineties. His ever-expanding practice culls from Conceptual art, Minimalism, and Pop art in equal measure. He has employed mirrors for the deeper conception of reflection since the 1960s, with his Quadri specchianti (Mirror Paintings) (1966–69). Pistoletto’s practice expands beyond one medium, incorporating performance as well as monumental sculpture and installation. The artist’s work reflects on the political climate and social transformations of his native Italy to more general experiences of spectatorship and the representation of the self.

Kindly donated by the artist and Galleria Continua, Lévy Gorvy Dayan, with the support of Zegna.

Xinyi Cheng

Xinyi Cheng’s painted protagonists beckon their viewer with an intimate, often coy, invitation to stare. Her paintings are studies in introspection and alienation, rendered in front of bright, glowing monochrome backgrounds. Many paintings depict solitary figures, pairs in embrace or close proximity, and, amusingly, dogs. The Paris-based Cheng sensitively captures the quiet affection between lovers and loved ones.

Xinyi Cheng will have a solo presentation at Aspen Art Museum in summer 2027.

Kindly donated by the artist.

Kelly Akashi

Kelly Akashi’s sculptures explore memory and personal history, often in relation to her own body. The Los Angeles–based artist uses glass, bronze, wax, concrete, water, rope, and marble to explore each material’s impressionable and indexical properties. The artist’s solo presentation Cultivator (2020–21) brought a larger-than-life-size bronze cast of her hand overgrown with glass flowers and vines to the Aspen Art Museum Commons.

More recent works expand into broader themes, such as the inherited impact of her family’s imprisonment in a Japanese American incarceration camp during World War II. Most recently, Akashi made the Hyundai Terrace Commission for the 2026 Whitney Biennial, a multimedia installation centered around her fireplace, the only standing structure that survived from her home in Altadena, California, after it was destroyed in the Eaton Fire in January 2025. The work is as much a testament to resilience as it is to the complexity of loss.

Kindly donated by the artist and Lisson Gallery.

George Condo

George Condo’s psychologically charged paintings merge classical portraiture with grotesque distortion and cartoonlike abstraction. The artist has dubbed his work a type of “artificial realism,” one that incorporates styles as disparate as Cubism, Surrealism, and Pop art with those of the Old Masters. Fragmented faces appear with exaggerated, unsettling expressions, exploring a sense of unstable identity and emotion. Balancing humor with unease, Condo’s works reflect the chaos of contemporary life.

Kindly donated by the artist and Skarstedt Gallery.

Keith Mayerson

Janaina Tschäpe’s abstract paintings and works on paper vibrate with a sense of momentum,

This Los Angeles–based artist looks to his own surroundings for inspiration, painting from found images that range from pop-culture cartoon characters such as Snoopy and Kermit the Frog to maps and old family photographs, all of which evoke a nostalgia for a bygone time or place. For over two decades, the artist has turned his focus to the cultural heritage and folklore of the United States, scrutinizing the complex visual symbolism of Americana. His paintings immerse viewers in the media culture, political history, and cultural icons that characterize his perception of the world.

His exhibition My American Dream (Rocky Mountain High) was on view at Aspen Art Museum from March 20 to May 31, 2026.

Kindly donated by the artist and KARMA.

Adrián Villar Rojas

Adrián Villar Rojas was born in Rosario, Argentina, in 1980. He lives and works nomadically. Recent solo exhibitions have been held at Art Sonje Center, Seoul (2025); The Tank, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney (2022); The Bass, Miami (2022); Oude Kerk, Amsterdam (2019); Tank Shanghai, China (2019); The Geffen Contemporary at Moca, Los Angeles (2017); NEON at Athens National Observatory, Greece (2017); Kunsthaus Bregenz, Austria (2017); The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (2017).

Villar Rojas’s exhibition First Gods, Lost Animals is on view at Aspen Art Museum through April 11, 2027.

Kindly donated by the artist, Marian Goodman Gallery, and kurimanzutto.

Rachel Rose

Rachel Rose’s immersive video installations explore the intersections of history, mythology, and contemporary experience. Rose’s paintings and drawings integrate a more intimate and tactile language, and look to memory, landscape, and narrative through layered and luminous compositions, while retaining the cinematic atmosphere of her films. Moving fluidly between figuration and abstraction, Rose’s paintings invite viewers into dreamlike spaces where personal and collective stories converge.

Kindly donated by the artist and Gladstone Gallery.

Louise Giovanelli

All that glitters isn’t gold in Louise Giovanelli’s paintings. The Manchester-based artist’s canvases delve into human desire and spiritual devotion, expanding on the Renaissance’s painterly obsession with religion and worship. For Giovanelli, society is still hyperfocused on worship; today’s deities have been replaced by celebrities. While sometimes abstract or ambiguous, Giovanelli’s work hones in on how icons manifest in our more contemporary world. Surface is a key stylistic element, both literally and figuratively—some of her most compelling works depict a closely cropped head of hair or a set of hyperreal, beautifully rendered curtains.

Kindly donated by the artist and White Cube.

Phillip K. Smith III

The changing light patterns of the desert serve as a point of departure for Palm Desert, California–based artist Phillip K. Smith III. His works manipulate luminosity to challenge his viewer’s sense of atmosphere and perception. A descendant of the California Light and Space movement, which included luminaries such as John McCracken, Larry Bell, Robert Irwin, and Mary Corse, Smith’s works take on a new edge. Aluminum and  glass are combined with LED lights that are often preprogrammed with set electronic rhythms. Smith incorporates this precisely paced choreography of light, which fades or brightens much like daylight itself.

Kindly donated by the artist and Hexton Gallery.

Camille Henrot

Camille Henrot explores the systems humans use to make sense of the world—from language, technology, and psychology to mythology, ritual, and everyday behavior. Working between film, sculpture, drawing, and installation, Henrot combines intellectual inquiry with humor, emotion, and playfulness. Her work often juxtaposes personal experience with vast cultural histories in compelling ways. The artist invites viewers to reflect on contemporary life and the often arbitrary ways we attempt to construct order and meaning.

Henrot’s first play, Commedia dell’arte, will premiere at Aspen Art Museum’s AIR Festival this July, and is commissioned in collaboration with Performa. The work uses anthropomorphic animals to unravel the trials and tribulations of paying rent in New York.

Kindly donated by the artist and Hauser & Wirth.

Ding Shilun

A master of the covert self-portrait, Shilun’s paintings blend memory, fantasy, and observation to explore different iterations of selfhood and the absurdity of the everyday. The artist applies thin layers of diluted oil paint to concoct these scenes, applying traditional Chinese painterly customs and Japanese manga references to decidedly contemporary scenes. In Shilun’s worlds, human figures, mythical animals, and objects rife with symbolism take on eerie and enigmatic persona and forms. These works are at once familiar and unexpected.

His carefully orchestrated tableaux evoke expressive, emotive states, inviting viewers to navigate uncertainty and transformation. The artist’s paintings reflect on the complexity of contemporary experience, balancing personal reflection with broader questions about life.

Kindly donated by Bernheim Gallery London.