James Oliver Gallery presents Slumber Party, on view February 21st through March 28th, 2026. The three-person exhibition features works by Chloe Luisa Piñero, Karen McCool, and Kirsten Valentine. Join us for the Closing Reception on Saturday, March 28th from 6-9pm.
Slumber Party spotlights the body and intimacy, each artist taking a unique approach to figurative work. Through painting and collage, Piñero, McCool, and Valentine explore identity, connectivity, and humanity. Visions of what once was, glances at oneself in the mirror, and scenes otherwise kept behind closed doors are put on display. This serves as a reminder that these compassionate, and sometimes awkward, moments are part of a collective experience. Through the lens of contemporary femmes, Slumber Party, nudges at femininity, gender, and sex in reference to art history.
Working primarily in painting and collage, Piñero extracts imagery and objects from her physical and digital environments to create work that draws from personal histories, while posing broader questions about collective identity embedded in image, object, and material. Through assemblage and mixed media works, Piñero explores the multilayered experiences of mixed-race and queer identities. Her process involves sourcing objects from everyday spaces—discount stores, beauty supply shops, vintage lesbian archives, adult magazines, and digital platforms such as Instagram. Much of her work seeks to disrupt conventional representations of the female body in figurative painting through the use of unconventional materials and fragmented compositions. The hybrid bodies that emerge deconstruct dominant representations of femininity, desire, and beauty found in both mainstream media and the painting canon. The concept of “the grotesque” functions as a critical framework through which Piñero challenges, reclaims, and reimagines queer and femme representation within visual culture.
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Chloe Luisa Piñero
Night Gaze
Oil paint, chalk pastel, rhinestones, and printed image on canvas
30 x 24”, 2023
Chloe Luisa Piñero received her BFA in Painting and Drawing from Tyler School of Art at Temple University in 2018. She has served as a visiting artist at the Philadelphia Museum of Art in 2024 and participated in the Apprenticeship Program at The Fabric Workshop and Museum in Philadelphia in 2023. Her recent solo exhibitions include The Only Way Out Is Through at Hyacinth Gallery, New York, NY (2024); Morph Erotic Dream from a Magazine at Blah Blah Gallery, Philadelphia, PA (2023); In Between and All at Once at Philadelphia’s Magic Gardens, Philadelphia, PA (2022–23). Piñero currently lives and works between Philadelphia and Naples, Italy.
Karen McCool is a contemporary realist painter, working with oil paint in conjunction with sourced vintage photographs that serve as inspiration. Modern technology comes into frame, helping her to re-imagine or modify imagery used as reference. McCool’s interest in reminiscence took a leap after her mother developed dementia. “She loved looking through old photos, even when she didn’t recognize the people. This led to my fascination with memory, connection, and nostalgia. I’m happiest when I’m able to capture transient, often comical moments, that remind the viewer to share their memories and pass on their stories. (Preferably, the embarrassing ones, because if you can’t laugh at yourself, you should at least have the courtesy to let us do it for you),” she says. Using heavy brushstrokes and a bold palette, the resulting narratives encourage connection through memories, reminding viewers of our shared history and experiences as humans.
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McCool was born in Philadelphia, PA and raised in West Chester, PA where she lives today. She began her formal art practice in 2019, and has since had work exhibited in the greater Philadelphia area, with upcoming shows at Beacon Art Gallery (Stone Harbor, NJ) and The Chester County Art Association (West Chester, PA). McCool seeks to illustrate connection through nostalgic vignettes of daily life. Characterized by humor, the light-hearted renderings are created in an alla prima style with bold color.
Kirsten Valentine is a figurative painter living and working in Philadelphia. Her work is an amalgamation of photographic, art historical and personal references translated through painting and contrasting realism and abstraction. While her work may appear pictorially “unfinished” it is compositionally complete. She has exhibited at Zg Gallery and Vertical Gallery in Chicago, IL Galerie Gardette in Paris, Blah Blah in Philadelphia, PA, Lubov Gallery and SPRING/BREAK Art Fair in New York, among others. She has been interviewed by Provk Magazine, Create Magazine and on the WGN podcast “The Cornerstore”, among others. She was shortlisted for the Spring 2020 Hopper Prize and attended the Vermont Studio Center Residency in 2025. Valentine’s work appeared in New American Paintings No. 149, Midwest Issue, in “Soft Punk Magazine” and on the cover of “Self-Imposed Exile” by Gwen Frost, published by Broadstone Books.
Slumber Party will be on view at James Oliver Gallery through March 28th, 2026. For inquiries, please contact us at jamesolivergallery@gmail.com.
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