BRIAN ALFRED

Plus Ultra is Brian Alfred’s seventh solo exhibition with Miles McEnery Gallery. Timed to coincide with the 2026 FIFA World Cup, being hosted across North America and culminating with the final in the New York area, the exhibition brings together a new body of paintings and a new animation exploring the imagery, spectacle, and collective experience of sport.

Plus Ultra opens Thursday 25 June , on view through Friday 14 August 2026 at 515 West 22nd Street.  Accompanying the exhibition is a fully illustrated digital catalogue featuring an essay by Samantha Chen.

"Sports is one of the most loaded and propagandized visual subjects on earth. “Plus Ultra” grapples with what omission can do with a genre of imagery uniquely resistant to decontextualization: Can we truly separate a sport’s aesthetics from its context? In some instances that is almost impossible. Take, for instance, Alfred’s portraits of prominent athletes like Shohei Ohtani, Lewis Hamilton, and Eileen Gu. Rendered in a graphic style reminiscent of Andy Warhol’s silkscreen portraits—solid black outlines, dimensionless skin tones, posterized backgrounds— these figures appear to us stripped of most contextualizing detail. Yet, much like Warhol’s celebrities, recognizability defeats form; these faces are inseparable from the cultural and political context from which they emerged. Depictions of the iconic do not escape prior associations so much as they canonize them, and Alfred’s portraits, simplified as they are, are no exception."

- Samantha Chen in "Plus Ultra"

Alfred has teamed up with Adidas, a foundational partner of the FIFA World Cup, to create a limited edition soccer jersey for the exhibition. The edition of 75 jerseys will feature the details of Plus Ultra, with customizable patches relating to diverse collectives within both the art and soccer worlds that can be added during the exhibition opening. Each jersey purchase comes with a complimentary, editioned zine specially created for the exhibition.

For this exhibition, GRIMM Artisanal Ales—a frequent creative partner of the artist—will debut a limited-edition light IPA. The beverage features custom-designed sleeves by Alfred and will be served exclusively during the opening night festivities and the reception to follow.