NADA NY
Tess Bilhartz, Ben Cowan, Danielle Mysliwiec
May 13–17, 2026
Starrett-Lehigh Building
601 W 26th St, New York, NY 10001
(reach out to info@deannaevansprojects.com for a preview)

Press:
WSJ Best Booths

Deanna Evans Projects is excited to present a three-person presentation with Tess Bilhartz, Ben Cowan and Danielle Mysliwiec at NADA NY 2026. Each artist’s practices sit at an intersection. Bilhartz’s landscapes speak between the actions, its flickering shapes giving form to my unspeakable feelings, its dark places contain threatening channels and uncanny beauty. Cowan’s paintings live at a playful crossroads of object, illusion, and the transcendence of devoted observation. He handcrafts sculptural frames that house layered compositions blending observed places, personal objects, and art historical abstractions. Mysliwiec’s textured surfaces, formed by the slow accumulation of marks, produce incremental visual “events” that resist painting’s lean toward fixed, two-dimensional imagery. Corporeal forms that are seemingly pushed, pulled, gathered, and raised by unseen forces. Together in this presentation we hope to highlight these moments of push and pull as well as confront rifts in understanding.

Tess Bilhartz grew up in Dallas, Texas and currently lives and works in New York City where she teaches art at Borough of Manhattan Community College - CUNY. Recent solo exhibitions include Now You See Me at Deanna Evans Projects (2025), Follow Me Down at Rubber Factory (2022), and What on Earth at Below Grand (2020). Her work has been reviewed in the Brooklyn Rail and BOMB magazine. Her work has been included in recent group shows at Embajada, San Juan, PR, Primary, Miami, FL, Front Gallery, Houston, TX, and Island, New York, NY. Residencies include the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture (2017), and the Sharpe Walentas Space Program (2013).

Ben Cowan was born and raised in Ann Arbor, Michigan. He received a BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and an MFA from Indiana University. The artist can be spotted examining plants and architecture as he walks to and from his studio in Brooklyn, New York. Occupationally, Cowan has worked in the studio of Jeff Koons and presently as a Scenic Artist for motion pictures, both roles have increased Cowan’s resolve for refined painting techniques, experimentation with process, and a keen eye for illusions. In his work, Cowan draws inspiration from urban landscapes and gothic architecture, blending observed places, personal objects, and religious abstractions to create paintings that bridge reality and illusion, personifying the interpersonal and the supernatural.

Cowan’s work has recently been shown in NYC’s Deanna Evans Projects, The Flag Art Foundation, Slip House, NADA Art Fair, Spring Break Art Show, Future Fair, 550 Gallery, and Richmond Virginia’s Main Projects. He has been featured by I Like Your Work, Friend of the Artist, Manifest Gallery’s International Painting Annual and The Brooklyn Review, and also mentioned in articles from cultbytes.com, The Wall Street Journal, and Vice.com. Cowan’s work is in various collections including The University of Scranton, Ann Arbor District Library in Michigan, and The Rockefeller Archive Center in Sleepy Hollow, NY.