Oswald Saenz

Reception: Thursday, June 25, 2026, 6-8pm

White Columns is pleased to present a solo exhibition by Oswald Saenz (b. 1964, Medellín, Colombia). The artist is currently associated with YAI Arts, a nonprofit studio supporting artists with intellectual and developmental disabilities in NYC. Working entirely from his imagination, and often through the middle of the night, Saenz’s drawings depict familiar, quotidian subjects – women, houses, flowers etc. – distilling them down to their most fundamental curves and contours and infusing them with hallucinatory color, wobbling rhythm, and traces of spirit made flesh.

A cousin of the legendary artist Fernando Botero, Saenz taps into the South American tradition of magical realism, in which the natural and supernatural are wrapped up in one another like his tangled vines. Saenz’s self-identification as an artist recurs in his signature at the bottom of many of his drawings; at times, his name is accompanied by the phrase “The Best Artist.” “Not everybody is an artist,” he says. “I was born with it. It felt natural. Ideas pop into my head. I put them on paper.”

Saenz’s vivid palette and often bawdy, almost farcical depictions at times conceal a darker undercurrent of grief. In 2021, the artist’s mother passed away from complications of the Covid virus. Her death deepened Saenz’s interest in the unseen world – angels, mythical animals, dancing flames. His artistic practice, he says, is his mom’s way of speaking through him. Her presence dwells in every woman he conjures on paper.

There’s a strange rhythm to the works present in this exhibition. The stark lines in the artist’s conception of architectural and interior spaces differ from the flowing curves manifest in the flora and fauna present elsewhere; the over encompassing saturation of color is highly contrasted by the absence of it in other works. Highly structured scenes of dark and seedy bars and pool halls are redolent of adult life, while Saenz’s more loosely rendered cartoon-like figures hover at the threshold between the playful and the fantastical. Saenz’s highly idiosyncratic visual world is both a straightforward evocation of art’s inherent animism and an invocation of the spiritual forces that imbue daily life with meaning.

Oswald Saenz was born in Medellín, Colombia and moved to New York in 1974; he currently works at YAI Arts in Manhattan. He was artist-in-residence at Summertime in 2021, culminating in the solo exhibition Deborah.

To learn more about YAI’s mission and programs: www.yai.org/yaiarts

White Columns’ 2026 summer programs focus on the work of artists who are currently represented in White Columns’ Curated Artist Registry, and have been organized by Violet Saxon (Curatorial Assistant) and Adeja Sterling (Gallery Assistant). Founded in the early 1980s the Registry provides a platform for artists – of all kinds – currently without gallery representation in New York. The Registry currently includes the work of more than 500 individual artists.

The Curated Artist Registry is currently open for submissions through August 6, 2026 at 11:59pm.

To learn more about the Registry, please visit: registry.whitecolumns.org

For further information about this exhibition contact: violet@whitecolumns.org or adeja@whitecolumns.org

Live drawing workshop with YAI Arts and Abby Lloyd
Friday, July 31st, 2026 at 12pm

Please join us at White Columns on Friday, July 31 at noon, for a figure-drawing workshop with the artists of YAI Arts featuring clothed-modeling by Abby Lloyd.

All are welcome, but space is limited, first come/first served. Participants to supply their own drawing materials (drawing utensils and paper not provided).

This event is taking place on the occasion of YAI-affiliated artist Oswald Saenz’s solo exhibition, which is on view at White Columns until August 1.

YAI Arts is a nonprofit studio program for artists with disabilities based in New York City. YAI provides artists with studio space, materials, and mentorship, supporting them in expressing their unique perspectives, deepening their creative practices, forging connections, achieving their goals, and growing careers as artists.

For more information: https://www.yai.org/yaiarts

Abby Lloyd is an artist and independent curator based in New York City. Her work engages with themes of adolescence, memory, and loss, exploring how different stages of life shape our identities. Through sculpture, performance, video, and installation, Lloyd creates works that draw from both personal and shared experiences. Over the past 15 years, she has also organized unconventional projects and events in collaboration with a wide range of artists.