Dani McKenzie

Long Story Short NYC is pleased to present A Puff of Smoke, a solo exhibition of thirteen new paintings by Dani McKenzie. Working in oil on linen and board, McKenzie paints a New York assembled in fragments. Through windows and fire escapes, we glimpse people reading, dressing, and gathering in bars. Warm rooms glow against blue-gray streets, while flowers at a shop counter suggest an apology still to come. Each scene offers part of a story, leaving its circumstances unresolved.

‘The truth is, I have no idea what this crazy city is about. But like most people in the Western world, I grew up on the stories — books, movies, television shows, all set in New York. Stories steeped in romance, drugs, music and light. Bob and Suze huddled together walking through Greenwich Village. Harry and Sally in the deli. Little Macaulay Culkin lost in Central Park with the pigeon lady. Glamorous people in their glamorous apartments, the perfect meet-cute, Christmas eternal, neurotic conversations, smoking cigarettes out the fire escape, late-night bars, parties in SoHo, ennui.

When it came to painting this show, I briefly considered travelling over to take some photographs to use as reference material. The thing is, my head is already so full of images that I wondered if I’d even be able to see anything. Maybe that’s not the point of New York anyway — objectivity, I mean. For the rest of us who don’t live there, New York is a story, told from the outside. It comes together in fragments — moments glimpsed through windows, overheard conversations and imagined scenes we’re never really a part of.

So I decided to paint a show about that story, and I’ll admit, I pretty much made it up as I went along. At one point, my mother interrupted my pacing around the kitchen to talk about Seinfeld — the show about nothing. She’s not wrong to make that connection. Perhaps this is a show about nothing. A puff of smoke or whatever. Still, I’ll be curious to see if any of it rings true.’

Dani McKenzie (b. 1990, Sydney) lives and works in Melbourne, Australia. She received her Master of Fine Art from the National Art School, Sydney, in 2016. Recent solo exhibitions include Field Notes at Olsen Gallery, Sydney (2025); Ultra Romance at Long Story Short, Paris (2024); Window Watching with MARS Gallery at the Melbourne Art Fair (2024); and Room With a View at Long Story Short, Los Angeles (2023).