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Julie Mehretu — Inside Totality (what the belly cannot hold)
Julie Mehretu — Inside Totality (what the belly cannot hold)
Julie Mehretu

Inside Totality (what the belly cannot hold)

2025

Pulsing with the layered density that has come to define Julie Mehretu's most ambitious investigations, "Inside Totality (what the belly cannot hold)" presents a vast, turbulent field in which gestural mark-making and architectural notation dissolve into one another across a monumental canvas measuring 96 by 84 inches. Ink traces accumulate in swirling, storm-like formations while acrylic passages build translucent strata beneath and above, creating a visual space that feels simultaneously archaeological and atmospheric. The work resists any single fixed reading, offering instead a compressed accumulation of forces, histories, and energies that press outward against the boundaries of the picture plane itself. Mehretu has long engaged with the idea that space, whether cartographic, social, or psychological, is never neutral, and this painting extends that inquiry with particular urgency. The title's parenthetical phrase introduces a bodily register that sits in productive tension with the work's otherwise cosmological scale, suggesting an interior reckoning that cannot be fully contained or articulated. What the composition withholds is as significant as what it reveals, and the painting rewards sustained attention as forms emerge from apparent chaos only to recede again into the layered ground. Currently offered through Marian Goodman Gallery New York, this 2025 work represents Mehretu at a commanding point in her practice, with her paintings held in the permanent collections of major institutions worldwide including the Museum of Modern Art and the Guggenheim. For collectors who engage seriously with painting that operates at the intersection of the political, the historical, and the formally rigorous, "Inside Totality (what the belly cannot hold)" stands as an exceptional and timely acquisition.

Medium
Ink and acrylic on canvas 96 × 84 in (243.8 × 213.4 cm)

Notes

From MGG NY — Mehretu Overview 2026. SKU: 31267.

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About this work

Julie Mehretu, Inside Totality (what the belly cannot hold), 2025

Pulsing with the layered density that has come to define Julie Mehretu's most ambitious investigations, "Inside Totality (what the belly cannot hold)" presents a vast, turbulent field in which gestural mark-making and architectural notation dissolve into one another across a monumental canvas measuring 96 by 84 inches. Ink traces accumulate in swirling, storm-like formations while acrylic passages build translucent strata beneath and above, creating a visual space that feels simultaneously archaeological and atmospheric. The work resists any single fixed reading, offering instead a compressed accumulation of forces, histories, and energies that press outward against the boundaries of the picture plane itself. Mehretu has long engaged with the idea that space, whether cartographic, social, or psychological, is never neutral, and this painting extends that inquiry with particular urgency. The title's parenthetical phrase introduces a bodily register that sits in productive tension with the work's otherwise cosmological scale, suggesting an interior reckoning that cannot be fully contained or articulated. What the composition withholds is as significant as what it reveals, and the painting rewards sustained attention as forms emerge from apparent chaos only to recede again into the layered ground. Currently offered through Marian Goodman Gallery New York, this 2025 work represents Mehretu at a commanding point in her practice, with her paintings held in the permanent collections of major institutions worldwide including the Museum of Modern Art and the Guggenheim. For collectors who engage seriously with painting that operates at the intersection of the political, the historical, and the formally rigorous, "Inside Totality (what the belly cannot hold)" stands as an exceptional and timely acquisition.

Medium
Ink and acrylic on canvas 96 × 84 in (243.8 × 213.4 cm)
Year
2025
Seen at
Marian Goodman Gallery New York, New York, NY

Related themes

Ethiopian-American Artist, Gestural Marks, Dynamic Movement, Layered Composition, Large Scale Painting, Abstract Expressionism, Contemporary Art, Ink And Acrylic

More works by Julie Mehretu

Collected by

Alex Capecelatro, Hamilton Selway Gallery