David Maisel: Expanded Field

This retrospective look at the career of artist David Maisel brings together a comprehensive chronology of his projects, starting with A Box of Bones from 1983, with a lyrically sequenced plate section drawing formal and conceptual connections across bodies of work that chronicle the complex relationships between natural systems and human intervention. Known for his aerial images of sites around the world, Maisel’s images often initially appear abstract and painterly, offering detailed but open-ended visual information that operates as both documentary and metaphor, seducing viewers with a strange beauty that critics have dubbed “the apocalyptic sublime.”

Works 1983–2026 includes newly commissioned essays by Alexander Nemerov and Geoff Manaugh alongside reproduced earlier writing on Maisel’s work by Terry Toedtemeier and Robert A. Sobieszek and a transcribed conversation between Maisel and author Samantha Harvey focused, among other things, on the visual and psychological perspective afforded by the aerial vantage point.