Thiel College welcomes back Kyle Utter for collaborative exhibition with Clare Kambhu

Posted January 28, 2026 Print

GREENVILLE, Pa.-- New York City-based artist Kyle Utter, M.F.A. and abstract painter Clare Kambhu, M.F.A. will have a shared exhibition of paintings “Back and Forth: The Paintings of Kyle Utter and Clare Kambhu,” on display in Thiel College’s Weyers-Sampson Art Gallery starting Feb. 11 through March 27. An artist talk and reception will be held at 2 p.m. Feb. 13.

This exhibition at Thiel College features the solo paintings of Utter as well as a series of collaborative paintings with Kambhu. In these works, Utter and Kambhu handed paintings back and forth, working intuitively and reacting to the others’ painterly maneuvers. Starting at 30 seconds, successively longer time restrictions were put on each maneuver made. These rules provided a game-like framework, which fostered a process that was simultaneously playful and structured.

Utter is a painter based in Queens, N.Y. He completed his Master of Fine Arts at Hunter College in 2018 and received a Bachelor of Fine Arts from Pratt Institute in 2011. His work has been featured in the Bronx Museum’s 6th AIM Biennial and the SPRING/BREAK Art Show. He has been an artist-in-residence at the Blue Mountain Center and the Byrdcliffe Guild in New York State. Utter’s paintings depict chimerical landscapes and spaces rendered with mathematical perspective. They are populated with objects, letters, and signs drawn from memory, direct observation and found imagery. Both highly playful and insidiously unsettling, the tone of his work reveals itself slowly as the viewer continues to look.

Kambhu is an assistant professor at Allegheny College. Her work has been exhibited at institutions including the Bronx Museum of Arts, Katonah Museum of Art, Artspace New Haven, and the A-Museum of Quickroots/Un-Museo de Raíces Movedizas on Governors Island. Kambhu is an artist who works in two modes, observation and abstraction. Her observational paintings draw attention to everyday, overlooked objects. Her abstraction pieces come from a studio practice that provides a counterpoint to the slower, representational work. Through abstraction, she attempts to challenge her intuition, yielding compositions with a sense of visual tension. She earned a Master of Fine Arts in Painting from Yale University in 2018. She received a Master of Arts in art education and a Bachelor of Fine Arts in studio art from New York University.

The Weyers-Sampson serves the college community and regional residential communities in northwest Pennsylvania and northeast Ohio. The exhibitions and gallery presentations are free and open to the public.

The Weyers-Sampson Gallery is located on the first floor of the Howard Miller Student Center. Gallery hours are from Monday and Friday, 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. and 2-4 p.m.; Tuesday and Thursday, 1-4 p.m.; and Wednesday, 2-4 p.m. The Gallery is closed March 7-15.

Appointments are available by contacting Professor of Art and Curator of Art Sean McConnor, M.F.A. at 724-589-2095 or by email.