Hosted by the Painting Department, the Undergraduate Lecture Series is proud to present a talk by Michelle Uckotter (Painting BFA ’15) on March 9, 2026, in Falvey Hall from 12-1pm. Michelle Uckotter’s paintings, which feature visceral and expressive use of oil pastels, render women in interstitial interiors: hallways, attics, and basements. Uckotter’s figures play with the genre tropes of Hollywood horror films, and heighten the stakes inherent to those suspenseful scenes. Her exhibitions include elaborate set-ups: live-action films that serve to inspire her paintings; constructed installations; ready-made dioramas that confront the pressure of psychological spectatorship. The shifting perspectives of her work create a fragmented montage. Uckotter’s formally dexterous compositions reinforce the foreboding atmosphere of her world building, highlighting distorted depths of field, architecture and expressive mark-making. Michelle Uckotter (b. 1992) is a Cincinnati born artist based in New York. Michelle Uckotter's most recent solo presentation was at Frieze London with King’s Leap, where she won the Focus Stand Prize. Select solo exhibitions include Matthew Brown (Los Angeles, CA), Marc Selwyn (Los Angeles, CA), Rubell Museum (Miami, FL), Bernheim Gallery (Zurich, CH), King’s Leap (New York, NY), t293 (Rome, IT), Springsteen Gallery (Baltimore, MD) and A.D. Gallery (New York, NY). Recent group exhibitions include Jeffrey Deitch (Los Angeles, CA), High Art (Paris, FR), Nahmad Contemporary (New York, NY), Modern Art (London, UK), Sebastian Gladstone (Los Angeles, CA), As It Stands (Los Angeles, CA), Lyles & King (New York, NY), New York Academy of Art (New York, NY), Bernheim Gallery (Zurich, CH), Ginny on Frederick (London, UK), Mickey (Chicago, IL), Lomex (New York, NY) and Galerie Hussenot (Paris, FR).