FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
January 2026
HERE NOW and THEN: Tanya Weddemire Gallery and Hamilton-Selway Fine Art present a group exhibition
rooted in the lived realities, memory, and enduring legacy of the Black Diaspora
Opening during Frieze week and Black History Month, the exhibition includes works by emerging and blue chip artists such as
Julie Mehretu, Mickalene Thomas, Kehinde Wiley, Moses Salihou, O’Neil Scott, and more
Candice Tavares, Take Me to the Water, 2025, Mixed Media on Panel, 31 x 31 in
Los Angeles, CA – Tanya Weddemire Gallery, in partnership with Hamilton-Selway Fine Art, presents HERE NOW and THEN, a group exhibition rooted in the lived realities, memory, and enduring legacy of the Black Diaspora. The exhibition is on view February 25 – March 15, 2026, with an opening reception on Wednesday, February 25th, 5:00 – 9:00 pm. In the exhibition, Tanya Weddemire Gallery features works by artists Gregory Saint Amand, Moses Salihou, O’Neil Scott, Floyd Strickland, and Candice Tavares, and Hamilton-Selway Fine Art features works by artists Jean-Michel Basquiat, Julie Mehretu, Mickalene Thomas, and Kehinde Wiley. Together the artworks in HERE NOW and THEN offer a distinct yet interconnected perspective on Black identity across time, place, and experience.
Opening during Frieze Los Angeles and Black History Month, HERE NOW and THEN positions art as a form of cultural caretaking, a practice of preservation, remembrance, and storytelling that honors ancestral knowledge while engaging contemporary life. The exhibition reflects on what it means to exist here in the present moment, while carrying the histories, migrations, and inherited narratives of the Black Diaspora forward into the future.
Each artist in the exhibition contributes to this dialogue through material, memory, and method, Works presented by Tanya Weddemire Gallery foreground emerging and mid-career practices that engage lived experience, personal history and contemporary expressions of identity. Gregory Saint Amand explores themes of joy, youth, and interiority, capturing everyday moments that affirm Black presence and emotional depth. Moses Salihou richly textured paintings navigate abstraction and figuration to reflect familial bonds, intimacy, and collective memory within diasporic life. O’Neil Scott draws from art historical traditions and Caribbean mythology, reimagining realism through a diasporic lens that bridges past and present. Floyd Strickland brings a multidisciplinary approach that interrogates spirituality, migration, and the politics of representation, while Candice Tavares employs hand-carved wood portraiture to honor Black beauty, identity, and resilience, using material as both archive and testimony.
Extending this intergenerational conversation, Hamilton-Selway Fine Art presents works by Jean-Michel Basquiat, Julie Mehretu, Mickalene Thomas, and Kehinde Wiley, artists whose practice have significantly shaped contemporary discourse around visibility, power, and historical reclamation. Together, their work creates critical context and continuity, situating conversations of the present within a broader lineage of artistic innovation and cultural impact.
Through figurative and abstract painting, wood portraiture, mixed media, and material-driven practices, HERE NOW and THEN creates a layered conversation around cultural legacy, movement, and survival within the Black Diaspora. The exhibition invites viewers to consider Black History Month not only as a moment of reflection, but as an ongoing responsibility, one that calls for intentional care, visibility, and preservation of Black stories, then and now.
HERE NOW and THEN affirms art’s role as a living archive, ensuring that the narratives of the Black Diaspora remain seen, honored, and carried forward with purpose.
A percentage of proceeds from sales in the exhibition will be donated to American Friends of Jamaica, a not-for-profit 501(c)(3) organization dedicated to support Jamaican charitable organizations and social initiatives committed to sustainably transforming the lives of Jamaicans.
Details
HERE NOW and THEN
Opening reception: Wednesday, February 25th, 5:00 – 9:00 pm
On view: February 25 – March 15, 2026
Location: 8678 Melrose Ave, West Hollywood, CA 90069
About Hamilton-Selway Fine Art
Hamilton-Selway Fine Art is a leading West Coast art advisory and secondary-market gallery specializing in Pop and Contemporary art. For nearly three decades, the gallery has operated from the West Hollywood Design District, serving private collectors, institutions, and fellow art professionals with a focused approach to acquiring and placing important works. Our program centers on blue-chip masters and influential contemporary artists whose work has shaped, and continues to shape, the market. We work primarily within the secondary market, offering collectors access to high-quality paintings, drawings, and editions with a strong emphasis on condition, provenance, and long-term relevance. Our expertise spans Pop and Contemporary masters such as Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein, Keith Haring, Jean-Michel Basquiat, and Robert Rauschenberg, as well as modern and contemporary figures including David Hockney, Ed Ruscha, Damien Hirst, Alex Katz, and Julian Opie.
At its core, Hamilton-Selway Fine Art operates as a trusted partner. Helping collectors navigate the market with clarity, confidence, and a long-term perspective.
About Tanya Weddemire Gallery
Tanya Weddemire Gallery is a Brooklyn-based art gallery that thrives from being a vital source and representation of the arts. It’s a premier art destination dedicated to showcasing the work of emerging and established artists. Its mission is to deepen the value and importance of art by enriching each person’s perspective on life explorations through exhibits. The gallery applies thoughtful and intentional curation while integrating cultural and historical connections to all their shows that can include, but are not limited to, paintings, sculptures, drawings, photography, fashion and furniture. Renowned for its impact on the art scene, the Tanya Weddemire Gallery has been featured in respected publications such as Forbesblk, Vanity Fair, ARTNEWS, Art in America, Brooklyn Rail, Industry City Publication, Amsterdam News, Black Art Magazine, PR News Wire, Brooklyn Reader, Hyperallergic, Bleucalf, Voice of America, and Park Magazine. TWG has also participated in several art fairs such as EXPO Chicago, Scope Art Show, Art on Paper, Hamptons Fine Art Fair, Scottsdale Art Fair, Atlanta Art Fair and the Affordable Art Fair both NYC and Boston.
Tanya Weddemire Gallery Artist Bios
Gregory Saint Amand, also known as GOGO, is a contemporary and figurative American and Haitian artist. He was born in New York but spent much of his early formative years growing up in Haiti. His perspective on what speaks to human consciousness and understanding, the visual lexicons that influence our communication and culture, is gentle but observantly powerful in its nature. He displays his conversation with art, loving to paint in layers to open the canvas and its limits, bringing about a never-ending exploration. His signature vision is evident in the work, which uses bright colors, inks, and other intriguing mediums and details. He plays with ideas that carry weight and then juxtaposes them with more light-hearted subjects. GOGO attended and graduated from The Cooper Union School of Art. His work has been shown at LA Art Show, Scope Art Show, Art on Paper has been featured in multiple venues and publications such as the ARTNEWS, Huffington Post, The Grio, Crème, Art Voice, 101 Top Artist, and MILK mag, to name a few.
Moses Salihou is a Cameroonian artist based in Toronto whose thick, tactile application of paint creates a textural intensity that mirrors the layered complexities of the human spirit. Central to Salihou’s practice is his belief that human beings are composites of identities, experiences, beliefs, memories, and emotions. His gestural mark-making intentionally leaves facial features loosely rendered, allowing the portraits to become composites of many rather than the likeness of one. In this way, the viewer is not a passive witness but is invited to participate to recognize, interpret, and locate themselves inside the work. These rich surface effects provide Salihou’s paintings with dynamism, movement, and depth capturing the fluidity of identity and personhood. His works vibrate with presence. Salihou has exhibited throughout the United States and Canada, and his work is held in private collections globally including Europe, New Zealand, Africa, Asia, Canada, and the United States. In 2025, Salihou had a sold-out presentation at EXPO Chicago and his work was featured in Art in America’s first printed edition of 2025, marking a powerful critical milestone in his career. He will now be showcasing at SCOPE Art Show, continuing his trajectory of high-profile exhibitions and continued sold-out moments across the art fair circuit.
O’Neil Scott is a Philadelphia-based artist, born in Spanish Town, Jamaica whose practice is rooted in portraiture. Influenced early by his grandfather and uncle, both of whom pursued creative paths. Scott began drawing as a child, filling notebooks with characters both imagined and observed. Scott’s work is inspired by the Old Masters and contemporary realists alike. His transition from acrylic to oil paint marked a pivotal moment in his practice, allowing for greater depth, pliability, and exploration of complex narratives. Through his portraits, he engages with themes such as social justice, climate change, and subjects that speak to both personal truth and collective urgency. In 2025, Scott debuted his first solo museum large scale works exhibition at the Zillman Art Museum (University of Maine) in Bangor, Maine, a milestone that showcased the breadth of his evolving work and his commitment to storytelling through a Black diasporic lens. At the core of his paintings is a desire to invoke mindfulness, inspire contemplation, and foster deeper understanding of the human condition. Scott’s work has been featured at several prominent art fairs in the US and exhibited with notable galleries, and his paintings are part of esteemed corporate collections as well as private collections both in the U.S. and internationally.
Floyd Strickland is a Los Angeles-based artist whose work offers an introspective and critical exploration of American culture, viewed through the eyes of Black and brown children. Drawing on his own childhood experiences, Strickland creates ethereal, figurative oil paintings that merge realistic figures with cultural imagery, evoking both tenderness and strength. Strickland’s journey began while he was working on building and renovating elementary schools across the country, where he observed a troubling lack of confidence among many Black and brown children, and an insecurity that he deeply understood from his own upbringing. This realization led him to dedicate his practice to portraying these children as larger-than-life figures, celebrating their beauty, resilience, and boundless potential. His children often serve as central figures in his work, embodying the profound love and hope that drive his artistic vision. Strickland’s recent solo exhibitions include The Little Devil in America (2025), Higher Learning (2024), and Super Rich Kids (2023) at Thinkspace Projects in Los Angeles, as well as The World is Yours (2023) at Art Angels Gallery in Los Angeles. These exhibitions have further cemented his place as a distinct and powerful voice in contemporary figurative painting. Strickland lives and works in Los Angeles, where he continues to push the boundaries of narrative and representation in his art.
Candice Tavares is a wood artist born and raised just outside of Philadelphia, PA. Her art is a celebration of Black beauty, love and culture that highlights the diversity in our hair texture and styling as well as skin complexion. Candice was formally educated in engineering and pharmacy, but her true passion has always aligned with the freedom of creativity. She was encouraged to experiment with different mediums during Saturday morning art classes and introduced to woodworking while helping her dad build and fix furniture in his woodshop. Years later she was able to combine that knowledge and experience to develop a style of art that felt uniquely hers. Though woodworking has often been classified as a more masculine art form, she does not shy away from using it to depict images of softness and femininity. She sees her art as an opportunity to celebrate Black beauty, history and resilience, while challenging the negative narratives about blackness that she sees perpetuated in healthcare and media. Her art is intended to remind viewers of their inherent beauty and value just as they are, just how God made them.