EJ Hauser, Cherry Haze, 2023-24, 20x16" acrylic on canvas
EJ Hauser | Arthur L. and Sheila Prensky Island Press Visiting Artist Lecture
EJ Hauser will deliver the 2025 Arthur L. and Sheila Prensky Island Press Visiting Artist Lecture as part of the Sam Fox School’s Public Lecture Series at WashU.
As the Spring 2025 Arthur L. and Sheila Prensky Island Press Visiting Artist, EJ Hauser will complete a week-long residency working alongside students in Island Press, a research-based printmaking workshop at WashU that is committed to creating and publishing innovative prints and multiples, educating students and the broader community about print media, and advancing the printmaking field.
About EJ Hauser
EJ Hauser (they/them) lives and works in both Brooklyn and Upstate NY, and is represented by Derek Eller Gallery in New York City and Haverkampf & Leistenschneider in Berlin.
Hauser’s paintings are both graphic and open to interpretation, teetering between iconography and something familiar but abstract. This imagery shifts between omnivorous references both ancient and current — the paintings are mysterious talismans, employing buzzing pallets and marks that dance. Stuttering lines form a visual code like musical notes, which coalesce with atmospheric layers to create ineffable messages.
Hauser’s source library draws from the natural world, imagery that is cross-pollinated with the formal qualities found in craftwork like rugs, fabrics, wallpapers, and mosaics, as well as digital visual characteristics, which they interpret through drawing and then transliterate onto canvas. Each piece is composed of multiple layers of color.
They have shown extensively throughout the United States and Europe, including Anton Kern Gallery, New York, NY; Haverkampf Leistenschneider, Berlin, DE; Brigitte Mulholland Paris, FR; Parrasch Heijnen, Los Angeles, CA; Sperone Westwater, New York, NY; White Columns, New York, NY; Participant Inc., New York, NY; Gavin Brown’s Enterprise, New York, NY; Cheim & Read, New York, NY; The Journal Gallery, New York, NY; AWHRHWAR, Los Angeles, CA; KARST, Brighton, UK; The Breeder, Athens, GR.
Hauser’s work has been featured in The New York Times, The New Yorker, Frieze, The Brooklyn Rail, BOMB Magazine, and Turps Banana, among others. Hauser received a BFA from University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA and an MFA from University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, NC. They are a recipient of the 2021 American Academy of Arts and Letters Purchase Prize. In the Fall of 2023, Hauser was the Teiger Mentor in the Arts at Cornell University, Ithaca, NY.
EJ Hauser, Tangerine Dream, 2023-24, 20x16", acrylic on canvas
EJ Hauser, Cosmic Collison, 2023-24, 63x60", acrylic on canvas
More Upcoming Lectures
Apr 15 at 5:30pm • Museum Lobby
Being and Becoming in Contemporary Chinese Art
This talk by Peggy Wang, associate professor of art history and Asian studies at Bowdoin College, addresses the conflicting pressures that artists in China confronted during the 1990s and early 2000s, including rapid urbanization and cultural globalization. Even as they navigated political constraints and deficits in resources, contemporary artists enacted productive strategies for making and exhibiting their art. This lecture foregrounds artists’ assertions of being and becoming, both as critical tactics for configuring identity and generative topics unto themselves. Wang will particularly examine how artists studied the vibrant dynamics of change through temporal, historical, and material dimensions in their art.
This lecture is presented in conjunction with the exhibition Looking Back Toward the Future: Contemporary Photography from China, on view at the Kemper Art Museum from February 27 to July 27, 2026.
Part of the Sam Fox School Public Lecture Series