Richard Brintzenhofe, Darrel Ellis, Miguel Ferrando

STOREY GALLERY is thrilled to present an exhibition bringing together the work of Richard Brintzenhofe, Darrel Ellis, and Miguel Ferrando—three artists and close friends whose lives and practices were intertwined within the downtown New York art world of the 1970s and 1980s, and whose careers were cut short by the AIDS pandemic.

Presented together in a dedicated exhibition for the first time, their work reveals a remarkable network of friendship, artistic exchange, and shared influence. Their lives intersected not only with one another but also with a wider constellation of artists and cultural figures including Robert Wilson, Peter Hujar, and Malcolm Morley. Moving between portraiture and self-portraiture, still life, landscape, art-historical reference, and deeply personal imagery, Brintzenhofe, Ellis, and Ferrando each developed singular practices while looking closely at—and learning from—one another.

Across paintings, drawings, and photographs, images recur within other images: artworks, reproductions, books, photographs, models, and drawings appear as physical objects inside another work, while details from studios and domestic interiors emerge as subjects in their own right. This recursive quality gives the work a field-note sensibility, grounded in close observation and sustained attention. There is an intimacy and sensitivity to this way of looking—a quieter, more personal sensibility that sits apart from some of the harder-edged visual languages commonly associated with downtown New York in the 1980s. Seemingly peripheral details become charged with memory and feeling, and the ordinary becomes a means of registering relationships, environments, and the texture of a shared artistic life.

The exhibition brings renewed attention to three interconnected artistic lives and to a history of queer artistic exchange irrevocably altered by AIDS.

Co-organized with Candice Madey.

RICHARD BRINTZENHOFE’s paintings, watercolors, and drawings combine expressive figuration with a deep engagement with the Old Masters and the history of European painting. Working across portraiture, self-portraiture, still life, and landscape, Brintzenhofe drew freely from art-historical sources, often copying works by artists from Giotto to Morandi in small sketchbooks as a way of studying composition, perception, and painterly form. His work moves between sensual observation and citation, bringing historical imagery into intimate and highly personal compositions.

Brintzenhofe moved from Washington, D.C. to New York City in 1969 to pursue a life as an artist. He performed in Robert Wilson’s theater pieces and became a close friend of Peter Hujar, who introduced him to the British painter Malcolm Morley. Brintzenhofe worked as Morley’s studio assistant and described Hujar and Morley as the two greatest influences on his understanding of what art-making could contain. He became closely connected with Darrel Ellis and Miguel Ferrando, forming an intimate network of friendship and artistic exchange. Brintzenhofe lived in Zurich from 1980 to 1986 where his work was shown at the Toni Gerber Gallery (in Bern), the Konrad Fischer Gallery in Zurich, the Kunstmuseum Winterthur, and the Galerie Renée Ziegler in Zurich. His life was tragically cut short by AIDS-related causes in 1994 at age 43.

DARREL ELLIS's paintings, photographs, and drawings brought a new and radical approach to portraiture and photography. Working with images of friends, family, and himself, Ellis made portraits through direct observation and through the perspective of other photographers, most importantly his father. Thomas Ellis, a studio photographer who captured the social life of Harlem and the South Bronx in the 1950s, was killed by police two months before his son was born. Ellis discovered his father's archive of family photographs in his early twenties and allowed it to inform his work over the following decade. His approach was consistently empathetic, exploring how private and social identities are shaped by history, memory, and circumstance.

Born in the Bronx in 1958, Ellis spent much of the 1980s active in both the downtown New York and the Bronx art scenes. He had a studio at PS1 in 1980-81 and participated in the Whitney Independent Study Program. Late in his life, Ellis made self-portraits based on photographs of him taken by Robert Mapplethorpe, Peter Hujar, and Allen Frame. His life was cut short by AIDS in 1992 at age 33. Shortly after his death, his photographs were featured in New Photography 8 at the Museum of Modern Art, New York. From 2022 to 2024, the comprehensive survey Regeneration traveled to the Baltimore Museum of Art, Bronx Museum of the Arts, Milwaukee Art Museum, and Columbia Museum of Art. His work is in the collections of Metropolitan Museum of Art; Museum of Modern Art; Whitney Museum of American Art; Art Institute of Chicago; Brooklyn Museum; Los Angeles County Museum of Art; Hammer Museum; and San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, among others. Forthcoming are an exhibition at Hoffman Donahue, New York, and a book on Ellis's journals, edited by Visual AIDS director Kyle Croft and published by Soberscove.

MIGUEL FERRANDO was born in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, in 1957. Working in oil on canvas and watercolor on paper, he explored a wide range of genres and subjects drawn from art history, handling watercolor with a deft, considered touch. Although he moved to New York at the age of five, he returned frequently to Santo Domingo throughout his life; his attentive observations of the city and Dominican culture remained central to his artistic practice. Though his career was cut short by his death at age 38, Ferrando maintained an unwavering commitment to his work, pursuing a singular vision independent of prevailing artistic trends.

Living off Delancey Street, Ferrando was deeply engaged with the nightlife and creative communities of downtown New York, and performed drag at the Pyramid Club on Avenue A. He was closely connected to Richard Brintzenhofe, Darrel Ellis, Allen Frame, Malcolm Morley, and Ann Wilson, who organized a solo presentation of his work at filmmaker and activist K. K. Kean's Mulberry Street loft in 1990. His life was cut short in 1996 at age 38. Luxe, Calme, Volupté at CANDICE MADEY in 2023 marked the first exhibition of his work in New York since 2000. His solo exhibition Off the Shelf is currently on view at Nina Johnson, Miami. Other recent exhibitions include Miguel Ferrando, Works on Paper (1975-1995) at CANDICE MADEY, New York; Postcard Palm at EMBAJADA, San Juan; and The Queer Show, Part I at Hal Bromm Gallery, New York. His work has also been shown at Boston Center for the Arts; National Arts Club, New York; Visual AIDS, New York; White Columns, New York; and Galerie Ziegler, Zurich.