Emma Beatrez: Candy Apple
about exhibition
HAIR+NAILS is proud to present Candy Apple, Emma Beatrez’s third solo exhibition with the gallery and the second at our New York location.
In this suite of new oil paintings, Emma Beatrez continues her visual exploration of subconscious and overt symbolism and rituals inherent in our everyday lives. Drawing on her rural midwestern upbringing and the occult, Beatrez harnesses magic from the commonplace with a keen eye for the subtleties of gaze. These mesmerizing pictures evoke a dreamlike question where the answer rests perpetually on the tip of the tongue; ghostly images and ideas floating on the periphery of awareness.
While familiar themes from past work reemerge, Beatrez offers us new perspectives. The cheerleaders, carousels, chandeliers, and levitating figures feel at once more definitive and yet more visually tenuous. The ephemeral scenes are reinforced by a hazy, diffuse palette that recedes and coalesces, built through meticulous application of many nuanced layers of paint dissolving into one another.
Beatrez has established a specific and delicate tone that is hard to put one’s finger on, an otherworldly, moody atmosphere that is something akin to midwest gothic.
Emma Beatrez (b. 1995, New Prague, MN) is an interdisciplinary artist based in Minneapolis. They earned their MFA in 2020 from Minneapolis College of Art and Design and their BFA at North Dakota State University in 2018. Beatrez is the co-founder/curator at Night Club gallery alongside artist Lee Noble.
Solo shows include “Polyester” (HAIR+NAILS NY, 2025), “Device of Love” (Nemeth Art Center, Park Rapids, MN, 2024), “TECHNOLUST 3000” (HAIR+NAILS, Minneapolis, 2022), and “Quarter Turn” (Fierman Gallery, NYC, 2022). Other recent shows include a two-person show at LVL3 (Chicago), and group shows at Enari (Amsterdam), Nathalie Karg Gallery (NYC), Swivel Gallery (Brooklyn), Anthony Gallery (Chicago) and in collaboration with Lee Noble at the Weisman Art Museum (Minneapolis). Emma’s work is in the permanent collection of Walker Art Center and many prominent private collections. Emma Beatrez is represented by HAIR+NAILS, Minneapolis/NYC.