Hauser & Wirth New York presents Rita Ackermann’s exhibition “The Chemical Alphabet” at its Wooster Street gallery from 9 September to 17 October 2026. The new paintings use letters from a Semitic alphabet as compositional anchors. Each letter is painted in acrylic green chalkboard paint on canvas primed with multiple silkscreen prints. Ackermann then applies her chalkboard method: layers of pastel and chalk drawings are erased, washed away, and redrawn so that successive states remain visible on the same surface. The letter stays in place while the surrounding image shifts through accumulation and erasure. The works record a process of becoming rather than a finished, fixed picture.Ackermann, born in Budapest in 1968, studied at the Hungarian Academy of Fine Arts and moved to New York in 1992 to attend the New York Studio School. Over three decades her practice has moved between figuration and abstraction across drawing, painting, printmaking, music, and video, often using improvisation and negation. Her work is held in collections including the Museum of Modern Art, New York; Fondation Louis Vuitton, Paris; and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles.

Rita Ackermann: The Chemical Alphabet / Hauser & Wirth, Wooster Street, NYC. September 9, 2026.