Muna Island: A Survey of Painting

Tom Allen, Sophie Barber, Joe Brainard, Benjamin Echeverria, Aaron Gilbert, David Gilbert, Anna Glantz, Ishi Glinsky, Glenn Goldberg, Adam Higgins, Merlin James, Ian Kiaer, Laura Larraz, Audrey Leshay, Deborah Hanson Murphy, Edgar Ramirez, Angeline Rivas, Mark A. Rodriguez, Sean Sullivan, Altoon Sultan, Masanori Tomita, Tyler Vlahovich, Eri Yagi, Evian Wenyi Zhang

July 18 - August 22, 2026

 Chris Sharp Gallery is pleased to present the group exhibition, Muna Island.

Muna Island, Southeast Sulawesi, Indonesia, is where the oldest known cave paintings can be found. The paintings are at least 67,800 years old. Less a metaphor than a point of departure for this exhibition, Muna Island contains incontestable proof that painting is the oldest known recorded art form, predating writing by roughly 35,000 years. This not only means that anyone who paints has to contend with close to 70,000 years of art history, but that it is also pretty safe to say that painting is virtually timeless. Given the sheer, almost geological vastness of the field, painting might very well be the hardest medium to add something new, or even meaningful, to. And yet, painters keep trying. It’s as if they have no choice, or that the will to paint is part of some fundamental human drive, regardless of trend, technological innovation, or cultural taboo.

In good old-fashioned semiotic terms, Muna Island could be seen as the mythical signified, the point of origin in an ongoing pictorial colloquy— a timeless and even placeless mural, to which painters throughout the ages seek to add if only one significant mark. The exhibition then is not only a multifarious meditation on this primeval impulse, but also ultimately constitutes a part of the ongoing conversation started in Muna Island some 70 millennia ago. Here’s to keeping it going in ways as diverse as they are deliberate and impactful.