CABIN and New York Life Gallery are pleased to present Haystacks, a collaborative exhibition of works by the inaugural cohort of CABIN’s artist residency: Julia Elise Hong, Christian John Munks, and Pauline Rintsch. Over the two months working in residence in the North Country of New York State, each artist’s process was informed by the rural landscape.
Julia Elise Hong employs impressionistic shapes and suggestive figures in her atmospheric paintings, creating an intimate yet involuted dialogue within each work. She considers each formal compositional element an interlocutor in an open-ended conversation, though despite “the flatness and opacity of the image, neither can fully access the other.”
Christian John Munks meticulously works and reworks the surfaces of his paintings, constructing and deconstructing layers of distemper, pigment, charcoal, and oil paint. This iterative process of overpainting gives form to Munks’ preoccupation with doubt, vulnerability, and anxiety, especially as they relate to masculinity. The resulting impedimenti are testaments to the artist’s ruminative approach to painting and his equivocal, multivalent relationship to his subjects.
Paulina Rintsch explores the effects of scale and texture to offer unexpected and alienating perspectives on her subjects. Close-ups of faces or cropped-out bodies often fill the entirety of her small-scale compositions, frustrating the viewer’s attempts to situate them in pictorial space. The thinness of her paint and its variable application, by turns smooth and coarse, give the surfaces of her paintings a transparency and luster that lends her subjects a fey, haunting quality.
Julia Elise Hong (b. 1985, Incheon, South Korea) is a painter based in Los Angeles, CA. Hong received a BA from University of California San Diego in 2008, an MA from Columbia University in 2010, an MFA from Oslo National Academy of the Arts in 2014, and an MFA from Claremont Graduate University in 2023. She has participated in solo and two-person exhibitions at de boer, Los Angeles, CA (2025); Claremont Graduate University, Claremont, CA (2023); Kunstnernes Hus, Oslo, Norway (2014); Oslo National Academy of the Arts, Oslo, Norway (2013); and Rådhusgata 19, Oslo, Norway (2013). She has participated in group exhibitions at Torrance Art Museum, Torrance, CA (2024); California State University Long Beach, Long Beach, CA (2024); de boer, Los Angeles, CA (2024); Alt Projects, Arcadia, CA (2024); Surely Work Studios, Los Angeles, CA (2024); la BEAST gallery, Los Angeles, CA (2023); Bonehouse Bridge, Claremont, CA (2022); Harvey Mudd College, Claremont, CA (2020); Goethe-Institut, New York, NY (2016); Cinemateket, Oslo, Norway (2016); and Podium, Oslo, Norway (2016), among others.
Christian John Munks (b. 1985, Copenhagen, Denmark) is a painter based in Copenhagen, Denmark. He has participated in group exhibitions at OTP, Copenhagen, Denmark (2025); CABIN, Berlin, Germany (2023); and MAMOTH, London, UK (2023).
Paulina Rintsch (b. 1995, Bensheim, Germany) is a painter based in Düsseldorf, Germany. Rintsch received a Meisterschüler Degree from Professor Tomma Abts at Kunstakademie Düsseldorf in 2023. She has participated in solo exhibitions at Yve Yang, New York, NY (2024); fiebach, minninger, Cologne, Germany (2024); and La Felce, Cologne, Germany (2024). She has participated in group exhibitions at BRAUNSFELDER, Cologne, Germany (2025); Galerie Burster, Berlin, Germany (2025); Rizzuto Gallery Palermo - Düsseldorf, Düsseldorf, Germany (2025); Definition of Done, Cologne, Germany (2023); fiebach, minninger, Cologne, Germany (2023); and Golestani Gallery, Düsseldorf, Germany (2023). She received a scholarship from The German Academic Scholarship Foundation for 2019–2023.