Isaac Howell

Isaac Soh Fujita Howell is a painter living and working in Brooklyn, NY. He received his BFA in Painting and Comparative Arts from Washington University in St. Louis in 2015 and his MFA from Yale University in 2017. 

Howell’s paintings are investigations into 21st-century discontent, self-isolationism, and social-media malaise. He explores these themes by taking cues from authors like Vladimir Sorokin and Olaf Stapledon, who rely on post-apocalyptic fables and interstellar sci-fi narratives to critique socio-political torments. He creates loose narrative frames, exhibition by exhibition, features stiff (at times cybernetic) figures in a backdrop of dark, wired spaces and machines. They are at times participants in seemingly clandestine operations, spying through mechanical peepholes and ultra-zoom cameras, wielding speculative listening devices. At other times they are space voyagers witnessing civilizations disappearing into a dystopian landscape of technological waste. 

Recent solo exhibitions include Malign Influence on the Information Interchange at T293 Gallery (Rome, Italy), Audiovisual at Sébastien Bertrand Gallery (Geneva, Switzerland), and A rabid dog has no choice but to bite at Public Gallery (London, UK). Howell has also exhibited in group shows at François Ghebaly, VACANCY, and Lyles and King. 

Howell is the 2026 recipient of the Stone & DeGuire Contemporary Art Award from Washington University in St. Louis, and in the past received awards and fellowships from Wave Hill, Cité Internationale des Arts, Fondation des États-Unis, and Yale Norfolk.