Image: Blue Mountain Gallery, New York
Marykate O’Neil will present ‘BFF’s Real and Imaginary’, a solo exhibition of paintings at Blue Mountain Gallery in New York from 8 September through 3 October 2026. The exhibition’s opening reception is scheduled for Thursday, 10 September, from 5 to 8pm, according to a Blue Mountain Gallery announcement issued on 18 August.
The gallery describes O’Neil’s paintings as colourful and strongly textured, with an intuitive approach that can be both representational and expressionistic. The works are also characterised by subversive humour and playfulness, while everyday pop culture provides a recurring point of engagement. The announcement does not specify the number of works in the exhibition or identify individual paintings.
O’Neil’s painting practice is closely connected to her music. In the gallery’s description, the artist says: “The more I paint, I feel like my paintings look like my songs sound.” She adds that both practices are drawn to “small everyday moments that stick to you – the ones where contradictions sit comfortably side by side each other.” The statement links the exhibition’s interest in ordinary experience with O’Neil’s work across two creative forms.
The gallery’s announcement also cites a 2020 Hyperallergic assessment of O’Neil’s paintings, which described them as speaking to “her aesthetic of solitude in the digital age.” The quotation records a response to the artist’s work rather than providing further details about the forthcoming presentation; no additional curatorial essay or biography was included in the announcement.
Blue Mountain Gallery is located at 547 West 27th Street, Suite 200, between Tenth and Eleventh Avenues in New York. The gallery lists its hours as 11am to 6pm, Tuesday through Saturday. The exhibition will follow a guest presentation titled ‘World Fine Art’, curated by O’Delle Abney, which the same newsletter lists for 18–22 August; that programme is separate from O’Neil’s September exhibition.
The gallery’s fall announcement also lists subsequent solo exhibitions by Nancy Sandler Bass, whose ‘Explorations in the Spirit of Place’ is scheduled for 6–31 October, and Jane Beckwith, whose ‘Bee-in At Home: Libations and Celebrations’ is scheduled for 3–28 November. O’Neil’s ‘BFF’s Real and Imaginary’ remains on view at Blue Mountain Gallery from 8 September to 3 October 2026, with the reception on 10 September from 5 to 8pm.
