Mother’s Last Show
2025–2026
Mixed-media assemblage

In May 2019, the artist and his mother visited the Brant Foundation together to see an exhibition of Jean-Michel Basquiat.

They each bought a poster to remember the day.

His mother displayed hers horizontally. The artist kept his vertically.

Years later, the protective glass from the artist’s poster was removed and written on with letters spelling “Mother’s Last Show,” along with the soundtrack “If I Ain’t Got You” by Alicia Keys—an album the two had listened to together many times.

The original poster remained behind the glass.

The frame later failed. Its hanging wire snapped, sending the glass to the floor and breaking it.

Rather than replace the glass and return the poster to its original state, the poster is now hung freely on the wall beside the empty frame. The frame itself becomes the replacement work: its exposed surface used as a canvas for the title, soundtrack, date, location, and other information that had accumulated around the original object.

The broken glass was also kept. Its shards were later arranged three layers deep across Leaving, allowing the material from one work to become part of another.

What began as something bought to remember an exhibition became a record of something neither of them knew at the time:

It was the last art exhibition they would see together.