Kelsey Isaacs (b. 1994, Los Angeles) lives and works in New York City, USA.

Isaacs received a BFA from Rhode Island School of Design, Providence in 2016.

Solo exhibitions include: youngfreaks at Clima, Milan, IT (2024); Kelsey Isaacs at Theta, New York (2023); Ancient Gloss at Chapter NY, New York (2022).

Recent group exhibitions include: my galaxy at Paulina Caspari, Munich, the Lord will spit out the lukewarm at Bortolami, New York, Ten Thousand Ugly Ink Blots, Schiefe Zähne, Berlin (2025); Poplife at Zodiac Pictures, Los Angeles (2024); Plastic Stars at Tara Downs, New York (2023); On Failure at Soft Opening, London (2023); Small Paintings at Venus Over Manhattan, New York (2022); Harkawik, New York (2022); King’s Leap, New York (2021).

Kelsey Isaacs paints from photographs of scenes she has staged and spotlit. Rhinestones, ribbons, and a cast of plastic miscellany are assembled into compositions that are cropped and skewed into a painted language that alternates between trompe l’oeil and abstraction. Each step of her process is orchestrated, from the refractions of a camera flash to a seemingly candid drip of paint. Isaacs plays off conventions of abstract painting, where historic fetishizations of process and spontaneity are seen as truth. These paintings revolve around objects that call attention to their own surfaces. Whether by highlighting the photographic process or caricaturing the painter’s hand, Isaacs works meticulously to build up an artificial reality, only to reveal the apparatus through which it was created.