Independent 2026: Eleanor Conover
Overview
Booth #415
https://independenthq.artsvp.com/d7bedb?link=website
https://www.independenthq.com/fair
Abattoir is thrilled to introduce new paintings by gallery artist Eleanor Conover at Independent 2026, marking the artist’s first solo presentation in New York.
Conover’s work engages with the physical and material conditions of painting as a metaphor for environmental space and time. Conversing with historical painting languages, the work involves process-based abstraction as well as more perceptual approaches to depicting space. The artist maintains an open-ended relationship between surface and scaffolding, figure and ground. In recent work, the non-rectangular, bowed supports play an increasingly active role. The paintings often include sewn, transparent fabric that allows the wooden structures to become involved in the image. The irregular nature of each work emphasizes the perimeter, yet each form remains singular, invoking both topographical and bodily subjects.
By materially alluding to both weight and levity, edges and fragments, Conover pushes up against what painting can collect, hold, or be, allowing for an active negotiation between illusion and reality.
Conover has presented with the gallery at Nada Miami (2024), Arrival Art Fair (2025) and in group and solo exhibitions at the gallery. This body of work will precede Conover's solo exhibition at the Center for Maine Contemporary Art in 2027.
Eleanor Conover was born in Hartford, CT in 1988. She earned an MFA at Tyler School of Art, Temple University (2018) and a BA from Harvard College (2010). She received a post-MFA teaching fellowship at The University of Tennessee, Knoxville, and currently resides in Maine where she is Assistant Professor of Art at Bowdoin College. Recent exhibitions include Abattoir Gallery, Cleveland, OH; Praise Shadows, Boston, MA; White Columns, New York, NY; Hudson House, Hudson, NY; Bad Water, Knoxville, TN; and Ortega y Gasset Projects, Brooklyn, NY. She was the 2022 Donald J. Gordon visiting artist at Swarthmore College and was the 2020-21 recipient of the Wellesley College Alice C. Cole ’42 fellowship. Her practice has also been supported through artist residencies including The Sam and Adele Golden Foundation, Cow House Studios, and the Joseph A. Fiore Art Center. With an interest in land and the environment, she has additionally engaged in the research of geologic histories in Philadelphia, PA and visual work regarding ecology in coastal places as remote as the Aleutian Islands, AK.
Abattoir Gallery | Booth #415
Independent
Pier 36
299 South Street
New York, 10002
Dates
May 14–17, 2026
Hours
Thursday, May 14, 2026 | 11 AM – 5 PM (By Invitation)
Friday, May 15, 2026 | 11 AM – 7 PM
Saturday, May 16, 2026 | 11 AM – 7 PM
Sunday, May 17, 2026 | 11 AM – 6 PM
Conover’s work engages with the physical and material conditions of painting as a metaphor for environmental space and time. Conversing with historical painting languages, the work involves process-based abstraction as well as more perceptual approaches to depicting space. The artist maintains an open-ended relationship between surface and scaffolding, figure and ground. In recent work, the non-rectangular, bowed supports play an increasingly active role. The paintings often include sewn, transparent fabric that allows the wooden structures to become involved in the image. The irregular nature of each work emphasizes the perimeter, yet each form remains singular, invoking both topographical and bodily subjects.
By materially alluding to both weight and levity, edges and fragments, Conover pushes up against what painting can collect, hold, or be, allowing for an active negotiation between illusion and reality.
Conover has presented with the gallery at Nada Miami (2024), Arrival Art Fair (2025) and in group and solo exhibitions at the gallery. This body of work will precede Conover's solo exhibition at the Center for Maine Contemporary Art in 2027.
Eleanor Conover was born in Hartford, CT in 1988. She earned an MFA at Tyler School of Art, Temple University (2018) and a BA from Harvard College (2010). She received a post-MFA teaching fellowship at The University of Tennessee, Knoxville, and currently resides in Maine where she is Assistant Professor of Art at Bowdoin College. Recent exhibitions include Abattoir Gallery, Cleveland, OH; Praise Shadows, Boston, MA; White Columns, New York, NY; Hudson House, Hudson, NY; Bad Water, Knoxville, TN; and Ortega y Gasset Projects, Brooklyn, NY. She was the 2022 Donald J. Gordon visiting artist at Swarthmore College and was the 2020-21 recipient of the Wellesley College Alice C. Cole ’42 fellowship. Her practice has also been supported through artist residencies including The Sam and Adele Golden Foundation, Cow House Studios, and the Joseph A. Fiore Art Center. With an interest in land and the environment, she has additionally engaged in the research of geologic histories in Philadelphia, PA and visual work regarding ecology in coastal places as remote as the Aleutian Islands, AK.
Abattoir Gallery | Booth #415
Independent
Pier 36
299 South Street
New York, 10002
Dates
May 14–17, 2026
Hours
Thursday, May 14, 2026 | 11 AM – 5 PM (By Invitation)
Friday, May 15, 2026 | 11 AM – 7 PM
Saturday, May 16, 2026 | 11 AM – 7 PM
Sunday, May 17, 2026 | 11 AM – 6 PM
