Rivalry Projects is thrilled to present The Last Whole Earth, the gallery’s first solo exhibition with Buffalo-based artist Kyla Kegler. The exhibition includes new painting and sculpture drawn from Kegler’s evolving relationship to utopia and the pursuit of pleasure.

“The earthy terracottas, the velvety blue water and sky colors, the slate stone colors, and the almost-invisible-on-raw-canvas fleshy neutrals are sensuous and soothing—I want to drink them in, smell, touch, and be enveloped by them. The drips of gold, neon, and glitter, and the whispers of pastel are little winks, a reminder of the absurd within the reveling. And the stains of shellac and oil, the defacement with crayon and chalk are signs of life.”

Raised within the Waldorf education system, Kegler experienced a youth that encouraged imaginative outdoor play, engagement with raw materials, seasonal rhythm, and a reverence for nature. Yet, as is common, she recalls childhood fantasies shaped not by organic materials but by mythic objects she wasn’t allowed to own—Barbies, My Little Pony, and other tools of capitalistic media. This lack of access produced a desire for an imagined paradise where mainstream imagery promised safety, satisfaction, and belonging. As an adult, this quest for utopia has subverted, shifting toward a yearning for ecological interdependence, embodied community, and ingenuity.

The paintings embody these desires, positioning world-building as a fantasy that persists and evolves from childhood into adulthood. Kegler utilizes the grid as an organizational structure, freeing her to focus on relationships between material, color, texture, and mark. Finding the grid’s sharp right angles pleasureless, she regards the armature as a container to decorate and disobey. She utilizes interference paint, gouache, beeswax crayon, shellac, chalk, and pastel, along with textural materials like coarse pumice, to create layered surfaces that shift with light and the viewer’s proximity. This intentional shift in perspective is anchored by the Jungian idea that meaning is not immediate but accumulates over time, revealing itself when the psyche is ready to integrate it into their understanding of self.

The paintings are complemented by a menagerie of hand-built vessels, candlesticks, and pegasi, varying in color, glaze, and scale. These works appear askew, distorting symmetry into sensual, protruding forms that interrupt order with something more bodily and unruly. The vessels hold space for emptiness, while the candlesticks become light-keepers, even in the absence of a flame. The accompanying fleet of modeled Pegasi forms what she terms the Pegaverse—a mythic utopia that abandons failed societal systems for the manageability of her own creations.

Three publications from the 1970s are critical to this body of work: The Last Whole Earth Catalog, edited by Stewart Brand, a compendium of products, books, and resources for sustainable living and education; Big Rock Candy Mountain: Resources for Our Education, published by the Portola Institute as an alternative learning resource; and Finding One’s Way With Clay by Paulus Berensohn, a seminal text on hand-pinched pottery that emphasizes imagination, connection, and the expressive potential of clay’s color.

The works in the exhibition are further complemented by a custom t-shirt, screen-printed by LIBBY Projects + Editions, that references the cover of The Last Whole Earth Catalog.

Rivalry Projects

On view