Opening September 11, 2025, Jesse Mockrin: Echo at the Art Gallery of Ontario brings the acclaimed American painter’s latest body of work into powerful conversation with historical masterpieces. Drawing inspiration from 17th-century Baroque art, Mockrin channels its scale and emotional intensity to reimagine female figures from mythology and the Bible, placing them in the present tense. Her large-scale, multi-panelled paintings zoom in on cropped details from works in the AGO’s Collection of European Art, allowing overlooked women—such as Judith, Daphne, and Bathsheba—to take centre stage.

Best known for her 2020 Caravaggio-inspired portrait of Billie Eilish, Mockrin is celebrated for her faithful use of historical oil painting techniques, including invisible brushwork and glazed finishes. But unlike her Baroque predecessors, her compositions are fractured, intimate, and contemporary. Her figures, often truncated and framed against empty backdrops, exist outside time—unmoored from the male gaze and traditional narrative control.

Curated by Adam Harris Levine, AGO Associate Curator of European Art, Echo is on view in the Philip B. Lind Gallery. Works are displayed in direct dialogue with pieces from the AGO’s own collection. This includes In mid-stream (2017), inspired by Rubens’ Massacre of the Innocents, and Witness (2025), which repositions the overlooked Black servant in Luca Giordano’s Bathsheba Bathing as the focal point of her own story.

Mockrin also reclaims meaning through symbolism. In Forbidden Fruit (2025), Eve holds pennyroyal—a plant long associated with women’s reproductive health—linking the Biblical narrative of sin and knowledge to bodily autonomy.

A highlight is The Descent (2024), a nearly 8-metre grisaille painting that magnifies the tiny ivory women in Elhafen’s Abduction of the Sabine Women, rendering them life-size and human in their resistance and suffering.

Admission is free for AGO Members, Annual Passholders, Ontarians under 25, and Indigenous Peoples. For tickets and catalogue details, visit AGO.ca.

Exclusive Members’ Access: Wednesday, September 10, beginning at 5 pm, until Friday, September 12
Annual Passholder and Public Access: Saturday, September 13

PROGRAMMING HIGHLIGHT

To accompany the exhibition, the AGO and Del Monico Books publish Jesse Mockrin: Echo, a 116-page illustrated catalogue featuring essays by Carmen Maria Machado and Jacoba Urist, and an interview with the artist.

On Saturday, September 13 at 1 p.m. join Jesse Mockrin and Associate Curator Adam Harris Levine in conversation, to mark the exhibition opening and catalogue launch. Catalogues will be available for sale and signing. This is a free ticketed event. For more information and to book your ticket, visit ago.ca/events/jesse-mockrin-echo-public-opening-and-book-launch.

ABOUT JESSE MOCKRIN

Jesse Mockrin (b. Silver Spring, MD, 1981) received her M.F.A. from the University of California, San Diego in 2011, and her B.A. from Barnard College, New York in 2003. She has had solo exhibitions at James Cohan (New York), Night Gallery (Los Angeles), Nathalie Karg Gallery (New York), Galerie Perrotin (Seoul), and the Centre for International Contemporary Art (Vancouver). Her work is in the collections of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Dallas Museum of Art, MOCA Los Angeles, the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, and the Santa Barbara Museum of Art among others. Mockrin’s work has been covered extensively, appearing in publications including The New York Times, The Brooklyn Rail, Vogue, Artforum, T Magazine, Art in America, and Modern Painters, among others.

ABOUT THE AGO

Located in Toronto, the Art Gallery of Ontario is one of the largest art museums in North America, attracting approximately one million visitors annually. The AGO Collection of more than 120,000 works of art ranges from cutting-edge contemporary art to significant works by Indigenous and Canadian artists to European masterpieces. The AGO presents wide-ranging exhibitions and programs, including solo exhibitions and acquisitions by diverse and underrepresented artists from around the world. The AGO is embarking on the seventh expansion project undertaken since it was founded in 1900. When completed the Dani Reiss Modern and Contemporary Gallery will increase exhibition space for the museum’s growing modern and contemporary collection and reflect the people who call Toronto home. With its groundbreaking Annual Pass program, the AGO is one of the most affordable and accessible attractions in the GTA. Visit ago.ca to learn more.