Rivalry Projects

Wishing everyone a Happy Pride! 🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️

Rivalry is a Q***r-led business that champions intergenerational artists with rigorous, research-based practices. Many of our artists are a part of the LGBTQIA+ community and our model allows for the platforming of diverse voices on a national level.

Stay tuned for more details on our upcoming exhibitions and events and enjoy this Pride weekend Buffalo!

- Ryan & Olivia

Artwork: Hannah Secord Wade, Shrimp World

Rivalry Projects is thrilled to announce Sites of Encounter, the gallery’s first exhibition with Philadelphia-based artist Gabriel Martinez. Including new photographic works of cruising spaces across the US and abroad, Martinez creates fragmented Q***r landscapes that are imbued with anticipation and memorial.

Join us for the opening reception on Friday, June 26 from 5:00-9:00pm. Gabe will also give an artist talk and exhibition walk through on Saturday, June 27th at 11:00am. The exhibition will be on view until Friday, August 15. Stay tuned for more details as the exhibition approaches!

Image: Gabriel Martinez, Dunes, 2026, Silver gelatin print, 20 x 32 inch print, 22 x 34 inches framed

Thank you to Christina Nafziger for her thoughtful piece in Sixty Inches from Center, “Opening Up the Timeline: Jen Everett on photo albums, sonic memory, and Black interiority.”

Jen Everett speaks beautifully about how nostalgia, archives, and family history shape her work, alongside her recent exhibitions at 21c Museum Hotel St. Louis and The Luminary.

A great conversation—linked in our bio.

Kyla Kegler: The Last Whole Earth will be on view through Friday, June 19 ✨

“The earthy terracottas, the velvety blue water and sky colors, the slate stone colors, and the almost-invisible-on-raw-canvas fleshy neutrals are sensuous and soothing—I want to drink them in, smell, touch, and be enveloped by them. The drips of gold, neon, and glitter, and the whispers of pastel are little winks, a reminder of the absurd within the reveling. And the stains of shellac and oil, the defacement with crayon and chalk are signs of life.”

Images: Kyla Kegler: The Last Whole Earth, Rivalry Projects, May 1 - June 19, 2026


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Eben Haines (b.1990) creates paintings, sculptures, and installations that use familiar New England architectural forms to examine shelter, vulnerability, and the social systems that shape who is protected and who is exposed. Recent flood imagery in the work speaks both to the climate realities facing coastal cities like Boston and to the broader political violence and instability defining the present moment.

Eben Haines, This is an Announcement, 2025
Graphite on paper, beeswax, wood assemblage, limewash, acrylic, and galvanized steel
30 x 20.75 x 3.75 inches

Opening today! Stop by Booth E17 at NADA New York to view new works by Kyla Kegler. The fair runs through Sunday at the Starrett-Lehigh Building in Chelsea.

Image: Installation View, Kyla Kegler at NADA NY 2026

NADA New York
May 13–17, 2026

The Starrett-Lehigh Building
601 W 26th Street, 3rd Floor
New York, NY 10001

Wednesday, May 13, VIP 10-4pm, GA 4–7pm
Thursday, May 14, 11am–7pm
Friday, May 15, 11am–7pm
Saturday, May 16, 11am–7pm
Sunday, May 17, 11am–5pm

Congrats to Jen Everett on her inclusion in Elevate at 21c: St. Louis! The exhibition will be on view through June 2026.

Elevate at 21c showcases the work of artists in St. Louis and the central Mississippi River region, highlighting the range and depth of visual culture in this dynamic, ever-changing area.

Image: Installation view, Elevate 21c: Jen Everett, 21c Museum Hotel, St Louis, MO. Photo by Harvey Sees Works available via Rivalry Projects, Buffalo, NY.

Now open! Stop by the gallery to see Kyla Kegler: The Last Whole Earth. And, join us in wishing Kyla a very Happy Birthday!

The exhibition will be on view through Friday, June 19.

Image: Installation view, Kyla Kegler: The Last Whole Earth, May 1 - June 19, 2026, Rivalry Projects, Buffalo, NY

Kyla Kegler’s The Last Whole Earth opens tonight, 5:00–9:00pm!

The exhibition includes new painting and sculpture drawn from Kegler’s ongoing exploration of her evolving relationship to utopia and the pursuit of pleasure.

Raised within the Waldorf education system, Kegler experienced a youth that encouraged imaginative outdoor play, engagement with raw materials, seasonal rhythm, and a reverence for nature. Yet, as is common, she recalls childhood fantasies shaped not by organic materials but by mythic objects she wasn’t allowed to own—Barbies, My Little Pony, and other tools of capitalistic media. This lack of access produced a desire for an imagined paradise where mainstream imagery promised safety, satisfaction, and belonging. As an adult, this quest for utopia has shifted toward a yearning for ecological interdependence, embodied community, and ingenuity.

Join us this evening—in the spirit of May Day—to celebrate the arrival of spring, shared time together, and the simple pleasures that shape how we imagine a more whole world.

Image: Kyla Kegler, Light Keeper Cleopatra, 2026, Pinched black ice porcelain, glaze, gouache (left), Light Keeper Elizabeth I, 2026, Pinched stoneware, glaze
8.5 x 7 x 7 inches (center), Light Keeper Joan of Arc, 2026, Pinched black ice porcelain, gouache, 6.25 x 4.5 x 4.5 inches (right) .kegler