Johnathan Monaghan: Lush Pixels
Jonathan Monaghan: Lush Pixels
Curated by Beth Giacummo
February 12 - April 17, 2026
GALLERY EVENTS
Lecture: Thursday, February 12 from 11:00 AM - 12:00 PM
Campus Center Ballroom A
Reception: Thursday, February from 4:30 - 6:30 PM
Memorial Gallery Hale Hall
Farmingdale State College Memorial Gallery presents Lush Pixels, a focused survey of artist Jonathan Monaghan, featuring prints, sculpture, and video produced over the past decade. The exhibition traces Monaghan’s interplay of art history and technology to explore desire, anxieties, and power in the digital age.
This exhibition will be on view from February 12 - April 17, 2026. The Farmingdale
community is invited to join us for a special lecture with artist on Thursday, February
12 from 11:00 AM - 12:00 PM in the Campus Center Ballroom A, followed by a reception
on Thursday, February from 4:30 - 6:30 PM at the Memorial Gallery in Hale Hall.
Monaghan’s practice is defined by a precise and glossy visual language that borrows
from the aesthetics of luxury and advertising, while critically examining their ideological
underpinnings. Through meticulously 3D-rendered imagery, the artist constructs speculative
worlds in which historical references collide with the infrastructure of contemporary
digital life, producing works that are both seductive and unsettling.
The exhibition includes selections from After Fabergé, a series of large-scale prints
in which photo-realistic 3D graphics are used to reimagine the iconic luxury of the
Fabergé egg. Also featured is Soft Power, a body of prints and sculptures appropriating
the tradition of aristocratic portraiture, replacing human subjects with opulent assemblages
of modern furniture, consumer electronics, and surveillance technology. Here, historical
modes of representation become a lens through which Monaghan examines authority, wealth,
and the invisible power structures of technological control.
Completing the survey is Gotham, a series of sculptural aluminum prints that transform
nineteenth-century New York Beaux-Arts architecture into fleshy, organic surfaces;
emphasizing the blurry boundaries between the natural and the man-made in the digital
age.
Together, the works in Lush Pixels articulate a critical vision of the present, one
in which historical opulence and contemporary technology are inseparable. Monaghan’s
practice invites viewers to consider how the visual languages of the past continue
to shape our relationship to the digital systems that increasingly govern everyday
life.
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Jonathan Monaghan is an artist whose prints, sculptures, and video installations weave
together elements of ancient mythology, science fiction, and consumer culture. His
work explores the intersections of power, wealth, and technology in the digital age,
in an imaginative and satirical critique that challenges viewers to examine their
relationship with these forces.
Past exhibitions include Sundance New Frontier, The Walters Art Museum in Baltimore,
NRW Forum in Düsseldorf, and The Palais de Tokyo in Paris. His work has been featured
in The New York Times and Vogue Italia. His work sits in numerous public and private
collections including The Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, The Phillips Collection
in Washington, D.C. and the Microsoft Art Collection. He earned his B.F.A. in computer
graphics from the New York Institute of Technology and his MFA from the University
of Maryland in 2011. Jonathan grew up in Queens, NY and now lives and works in Washington
D.C.
ABOUT THE MEMORIAL GALLERY
The Memorial Gallery's mission is to serve as a vital teaching instrument and visual
resource that enriches campus cultural life as well as that of the surrounding community.
This is to be accomplished through the exhibition of imagery related to the communication
arts, which represent a wide range of media, cultures, and time periods.
The Memorial Gallery is located in Hale Hall on the campus of Farmingdale State College
– State University of New York – 2350 Broadhollow Road (Route. 110).
