Marc Straus presents (Ti)p of the Spear, Gisela McDaniel’s first solo exhibition with the gallery, bringing together thirteen new paintings made for her New York debut. These paintings register absences too, including sound. Guåhan's forests were emptied of their native birds after brown tree snakes arrived in military cargo following the Second World War, and a few are beginning to return; feathers, light and the vocabulary of angels move through the work as something being recovered rather than simply lost. The CHamoru language, banned in schools and its dictionaries destroyed under the Naval government in 1922, is another such recovery. The people in these paintings speak in their language.
Gisela McDaniel was born in 1995 in Bellevue, Nebraska, and currently lives and works in New York. She received her BFA from the University of Michigan in 2019. Her first solo museum exhibition in the United States opened at the Ogunquit Museum of American Art in 2025. She has also held solo exhibitions at Pilar Corrias in London and Arario Gallery in Seoul. Her work has been exhibited at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; the Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston; the Baltimore Museum of Art; the Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art; and the Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit. It is also included in the collections of the Pérez Art Museum Miami, the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, the Institute of Contemporary Art, Miami, and the Baltimore Museum of Art. McDaniel was named to the Forbes 30 Under 30 list in 2024. Works Gisela McDaniel, Umá’akuentusi Yan Manånghet (Speaking With Angels), 2026 Gisela McDaniel, Ti Techa’-Miyu (Not Your Spear), 2026 Gisela McDaniel, Empi’ Talåya (A Piece of the Net)
