Miles McEnery Gallery is pleased to present Build, California-based artist Jim Isermann’s second solo exhibition with the gallery. The exhibition is on view 19 February through 28 March 2026 at 511 West 22nd Street. Accompanying the exhibition is a fully illustrated publication featuring an essay by Jesse Dorris.

Build presents sixteen works by Isermann, whose process combines meticulous planning with the deliberate presence of the hand. The palpable architectural influence in Isermann’s latest paintings is evident through carefully executed straight lines, subtle shifts in hue performing as depth, and recognizable geometric frameworks. The new body of work’s advanced dimensionality and a departure from Isermann’s pure patterning style. While patterning remains central to Isermann’s practice, functioning as both formal armature and conceptual device.

His signature rainbow-based palette engages histories of queer formalist abstraction and both the Mid-Century and Post Modern design movements, while transforming color into an architectural element. The work engages Op Art and hard-edge painting through crisp contours, high-contrast chromatics, and interlocking planes that activate optical vibrations. Up close, a brick-by-brick logic emerges; from a distance, reflective grids suggest multi-storied architectural façades.

Isermann’s engagement with architecture has long extended beyond the canvas. His work frequently expands into architecturally scaled installations and public commissions; Recent projects include a 114-foot mural Never turn your back on the ocean (2025) at UC San Diego, and a permanent Palm Springs Pride Monument. As Dorris writes, “These new paintings from Jim Isermann refit a body of work that has already read a rainbow into dreary straight minimalism…turning toward direct reference, with parenthetical allusions to the architects whose achievements Isermann is, here, modeling.” From painting to works on public plinths, Isermann’s vision remains consistently attuned to structure.