Kaari Upson

Astonishing sculptures and canvases from a classically trained artist who embraced failure and repetition, experimenting with unorthodox approaches to casting and painting

Based on her posthumous 2022 exhibition Never Enough at the DESTE Foundation in Athens, this publication celebrates American artist Kaari Upson (1970-2021), who worked across mediums--including sculpture, video, drawing and painting--to probe the depths of our collective psyche. Over her brief yet prolific 15-year career, Upson developed an elaborate universe woven out of memory, conjecture, fact and fiction. Imbued with a mystical animism, each work merges personal and collective traumas, desires, fears and fantasies. The colorful design of the exhibition, which featured 31 artworks spanning Upson's career, is faithfully reproduced in the book, which includes an essay by Dakis Joannou about his friendship with the artist and how he acquired the works in the collection, as well as a history of the making of these works by the late artist's close friend and collaborator Michael Benevento.