SECRIST | BEACH is pleased to present a solo presentation for New York-based gallery artist Liliana Porter. The Strange Task presents paintings, sculptures, assemblages, works on paper, installation s, video, and historic photographs from her six decade career. The works feature Porter’s coterie of endearing inanimate found objects, toys and figurines. This exhibition was presented concurrently with UNREAL, an invitational survey exploring the surreal dimensions of everyday life, on view from April 10 - June 13, 2026.
Porter is widely recognized as an important figure in conceptual, Latin American and feminist art. Her uniquely personal visual language is rooted in the theory of surrealism highlighting not only our relation to objects but the very nature of objecthood itself. The Strange Task investigates the plight of labor, the passage of time, and the beauty of experience—without offering clear resolution. This expansive multi-media presentation features paintings, sculptures, assemblages, works on paper, installations, and historic photographs from her six decade career. Porter's carefully constructed "situations" engage found figurines confronting daunting tasks with a surreal and almost comical determination.
Born in Argentina in 1941 and based in New York since 1964, Liliana Porter has developed an enigmatic multidisciplinary practice spanning more than six decades. Working across video, photography, painting, printmaking, drawing, collage and small-scale installations, her work incorporates everyday found objects to investigate themes of identity, labor, and time, with an idiosyncratic blend of poetic metaphor and humor. Porter constructs situations in which ordinary objects are transformed into agents of reflection on the human condition.
