Deep Play

Piece with the bottom half of an image with an orange hue on the top and purple on the bottom. Right on top of the purple box are the words “Deep Play” in italics.

ARIA DEAN
LIZ DESCHENES
DAVID DIAO
HARUN FAROCKI
RACHEL HARRISON
CRAIG KALPAKJIAN
CAROLYN LAZARD
LEE LOZANO
KARA WALKER

									Only when you destroy it do you come to address it, at least formally.
									— Harun Farocki

Deep Play brings together a multigenerational group of artists who share a structuralist tack, using formal means to dismantle the systems that scaffold our lived reality. Across painting and sculpture, video, cut-paper collage, and cameraless photography, their work indexes recent methods to expose and upend art’s means of production—implicating the checkered conditions of life under capitalism in its wake. Employing documentary candor or gallows humor, poetic dissonance or an ethics of care, the assembled artists mount trenchant critiques of the levers of societal control: from automation and surveillance to racial animus and the carceral state, the antiseptic voids of virtual space to the material dreck of industrial consumption. The exhibition’s title is lifted from a 2007 video by Harun Farocki, which urges viewers to look beneath the surface of mass-media events of contrived consensus. Deep Play thus furrows our perceptions to counter a sense of totalizing hold, stressing the fractures in the current order to imply a new way forward.

View of a gallery space with white walls and grey floors. Three big works are in the space with two on the walls and one standing between them. A white column breaks up the left two pieces from the right piece. — Installation view, *Deep Play*, Greene Naftali, New York, 2026

Engraved red panel attached with black bars to a large red frame that stands on its own. — Aria Dean
*fragment from skinning cattle by power 1867 (fig. 122 in gideon)*, 2022
Plywood and rubber
96 x 60 inches (244 x 152 cm)

Two large colorful pieces hung side by side on a white wall. The left piece depicts an image with an orange hue of the torso of a person in a tie and overcoat bending a cane, and a rectangle of purple under it. The right piece depicts a blue negative of the same image with a border of purple — Installation view, *Deep Play*, Greene Naftali, New York, 2026

Black and grey outlines of people layered and jumbled together. Hands and bodies reach up and towards a dot in the left corner. — Kara Walker
*The Inert Scenery of Self-determination*, 2024
Sumi-e ink on cut paper on paper
79 x 87 3/4 inches (201 x 223 cm)

Black and grey outlines of bodies and hands. — Kara Walker, *The Inert Scenery of Self-determination*, 2024 (detail)

View of gallery space with white walls and grey floors. Three artworks are hung on the walls while two are standing on the floor of the gallery. A white support column is present in the middle of the room. — Installation view, *Deep Play*, Greene Naftali, New York, 2026

Silver, metallic toned rhombus in a light brown frame. — Liz Deschenes
*Quincy*, 2026
Silver toned photogram
58 1/2 x 27 inches (149 x 69 cm)

Silver, metallic toned triangle in a light brown frame. — Liz Deschenes
*Braintree*, 2026
Silver toned photogram
19 3/4 x 47 inches (50 x 119 cm)

View of a white gallery space with grey floors. Two works hang side by side on the wall, and a tall sculptural piece stands to the right. On the left is a large support column. — Installation view, *Deep Play*, Greene Naftali, New York, 2026

View of a Gallery space with white walls, grey floors and brightly lit windows. A blue artwork is hung on a wall to the right and to the left stands a tall sculptural piece. A large white support column is present between the two artworks. — Installation view, *Deep Play*, Greene Naftali, New York, 2026

Blue diamond shaped piece in a black frame. — Craig Kalpakjian
*NaturalBeauty?_16v2Etw2ML/qPM*, 2024
UV Pigment on Dibond with custom frame
58 3/4 x 58 3/4 inches (149 x 149 cm)

Gradient of blue that ends at a dark blue line at the bottom of the image. — Craig Kalpakjian, *NaturalBeauty?_16v2Etw2ML/qPM*, 2024 (detail)

Two side by side green rectangles boarded with black. Yellow numbers and letters line the upper and lower borders of the piece. — Liz Deschenes
*Green Screen #6*, 2001
UV laminated Fujiflex print mounted on 1-inch Plexiglass
22 x 36 inches (56 x 91 cm)

View of the corner of a gallery space. Two TV screens with muted colors are mounted on the right wall while a green piece hangs on the left wall. There is a white bench with a dark cushion placed in the middle of the room. — Installation view, *Deep Play*, Greene Naftali, New York, 2026

Two side by side images with a black border. The left image is of green dots in a blue background. The right image shows shirtless people in a concrete yard. — Harun Farocki
*Ich glaubte Gefangene zu sehen [I Thought I Was Seeing Convicts]*, 2000
Two-channel video installation (color, sound)
25 minutes

Crayon drawing with muted colors. Colors and strokes take on organic forms with a mouth depicted on the left side of the piece. — Lee Lozano
Untitled, c. 1960
Crayon on paper
6 3/4 x 23 inches (17 x 58 cm)

View of a white walled and tan floored gallery space, a piece hangs on the wall in the foreground while another artwork is visible through and opening in the wall in the background. — Installation view, *Deep Play*, Greene Naftali, New York, 2026

Still of a projected video in a white walled room with a bench. The still depicts a hand holding bright red pills on top of a table with a floral patterned table cloth and colorful pill organizers. — Installation view, *Deep Play*, Greene Naftali, New York, 2026

Overhead view of two hands sorting pills into seven pillbox compartments on an embroidered tablecloth. The compartments are yellow, blue, pink, green, and white, and the pills inside are various colors. A patch of bright sunlight falls across the cloth, and open pill bottles sit along the edge of the frame. — Carolyn Lazard, *CRIP TIME,* 2018 (still). HD video (color, sound), 10 minutes

[Image Description: Overhead view of two hands sorting pills into seven pillbox compartments on an embroidered tablecloth.T he compartments are yellow, blue, pink, green, and white, and the pills inside are various colors. A patch of bright sunlight falls across the cloth, and open pill bottles sit along the edge of the frame.]

Greene Naftali

Exhibition

8th Floor Through August 7, 2026

Press Release

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