Sometimes reviews of gallery shows give a ton of history, discuss the studio practice of the artist, and then interpret the meaning of a variety of pieces soon to be on display. But is that how we usually talk about art? Isn’t it more fun to read about paintings in exactly the way you talk about them with friends? Donald Johnson-Montenegro is one of two new partners at Luhring Augustine, a New York gallery that, unlike many of its peers, still puts in the effort and time (and investment) to develop artists for long term careers. Who better to tell us everything to love about the work of Emily Kraus.
Jacob Mendel Brown: How did you first come across Emily’s work?
Donald Johnson-Montenegro: I do quite a bit of traveling, which is a real pleasure of the job. For two years straight, we did these pop-ups in Mexico City. I was really excited because, being from Latin America, I feel like that's where some of the most interesting art is not just being made, but also being shown, from parts of the world outside Mexico.
There is a young gallery there called Mascota that has a really interesting program of local artists and international artists. They were showing two young artists, one of which was Emily, who was actually there when I visited with one of my business partners, Lawrence Luhring.
Without really being able to put my finger on it, there was just something gripping about the work, in terms of scale, chromatically, compositionally. At that time, Lawrence and I were putting together this summer exhibition based on the use of patterns in abstract painting. And I just thought, gosh, she would be such a great addition.
JMB: How did that group show go?
DJM: I put Emily's painting right next to a major protractor painting by Frank Stella, and her painting not only held its own, but it almost dwarfed his piece, which was three or four times its size, so pretty incredible.
As an art dealer, you follow your intuition, you follow your eye. But it's also really gratifying when people whose eye you really admire see something in what you've seen.
We had just finished installing the show, and three people came in that morning before we opened; Christopher Wool, who we've represented for years, Glenn Lowry, who at the time was the director of MoMA, and Madeleine Grynsztejn who is the director of the MCA Chicago. They walked into the gallery, saw Frank Stella's painting, and then turned and saw this Emily Kraus painting. They'd never seen her work before, and they were just as gripped as I was when I first saw her show in Mexico.
JMB: When do you know if it’s time to give a younger artist a solo show?
DJM: When we're starting off with a new artist, we will either include them in a group presentation, like with Emily, or maybe do a two- or three-artist show. It's a safe way for both gallery and artist to make sure that things are simpatico.
It's not really to test the waters in terms of the market. We work in a very long-term way, and we feel that whatever is in the artist's best interest is in our best interest.
I wanted Emily's show up at a time in New York when it would get the most visibility. New York is a really big platform for an artist, and I wanted to make sure that we could do the best for her by having it open at a time when there's a lot of activity in the art world.
JMB: Luhring Augustine has the increasingly rare reputation of developing artists over time rather than chasing the market.
DJM: The art market has really gone on steroids in terms of investing in young artists, and you see these artists' careers kind of explode, and their prices at auction go crazy. Then a lot of times, they crash and burn as a result.
One of the things that we can do, and that we're really good at doing, is keeping the narrative around an artist on the work, and on its critical and curatorial reception; not on the market response.
When prices increase, we do so slowly, because our aim is really to help the artist create a sustainable long-term career, not a flavor of the month situation.
A gallery of our size prides itself in being a bespoke, more thoughtful partner for the artist, rather than a kind of supermarket, like some of these larger galleries can be. We're really there in the trenches with the artist, and really a more useful partner to them, I would say.
JMB: Describe the emotional experience of seeing Emily’s work in person?
DJM: They're so muscular and dynamic and compositionally interesting and varied. There's something very gestural and expressive about the work, but without brushwork. They seem mediated by some kind of mechanical idea, or apparatus.
The compositions have rhythms and forms that we associate with patterns in nature: heartbeats, the veining in a leaf, the way rivers spread. They feel very organic, and that human, expressive notion is at odds with what you can tell is somehow mechanically produced.
Thinking about the world we're living in now and all of its digital complexities, she finds a way of harnessing that to express something innate and human and personal and spiritual.
You can see the history of gestural abstraction in the work, but it is arriving through this mechanical process. So action painting becomes kind of critiqued by this idea that it is partially done mechanically. There's something in there that makes you curious how they were made. That's the thing you want to reconcile in the work. They just have this real joy and strangeness about them.
JMB: So...how are they made?
DJM: She takes unprimed, unstretched canvas and creates a loop, sewing the ends together. She places that loop on what she refers to as an apparatus, or a mechanism. In its most basic way, there are four metal rollers, and she loops the canvas around those rollers, creating this kind of cube-like tunnel space. She gets inside this cocoon of canvas and applies paint either onto the canvas itself or onto one of the rollers. Then she rotates the canvas by hand, and the rollers pick up the paint and spread it. That's what creates this sense of duplication and movement in the paintings. I've started to refer to their general appearance as an eloquent stutter.
I feel like artworks—at the end of the day, what's exciting about them—is if they're points of departure for conversation, and if they get you thinking, and hers is such work.
JMB: What happened when you showed Infatuation in Miami?
DJM: We presented this work in Miami Beach in December 2025 as a way to announce her upcoming show. We designed our booth to highlight it. People just gravitated towards it. When Jorge Pérez walked into our booth, he grabbed a chair from our desk and just sat down and stared at the painting. Then he turned to his wife and his advisor and said, I have to have this.
It was of course fantastic to sell the piece to Jorge. But maybe I'll end with something more personal. Emily's parents had come down to Miami just for the day. For about two hours, they just sat in the aisle, in the hallway just outside, and looked at the painting, enjoyed the painting, and enjoyed seeing the way people responded to it. They're so proud of their daughter, as they should be. It was so sweet, and true, and real.
Emily Kraus runs April 11–June 13, 2026, at Luhring Augustine in Tribeca.