Enter a space where traditional beauty is both honored and undone in Cynosure, a striking exhibition of still life photography by James Henkel. Blending classical floral traditions from East and West with a contemporary twist, Henkel’s images challenge our assumptions about elegance, decay, and perfection. Fresh blooms tangle with withering petals, weeds rise among prized flowers—each composition a deliberate imbalance that invites viewers to reconsider the aesthetic ideals we’ve inherited. With a crisp, commercial-style clarity and an eye for the quietly absurd, Henkel turns the traditionally serene still life into something more nuanced: at once beautiful and unsettling, orderly yet off-kilter. This is not just a gallery of flowers—it’s a meditation on time, impermanence, and the strange, shifting standards of what we choose to admire.
This is not just a gallery of flowers—it’s a meditation on time, impermanence, and the strange, shifting standards of what we choose to admire.
James Henkel is Professor Emeritus at the University of Minnesota. He has exhibited in over one hundred national and international venues, including shows at the Teheran Museum of Contemporary Art, Iran; SFMOMA; and the Minneapolis Institute of Art, among others. His work is in the collections of The Whitney Museum of American Art, The Walker Art Center, SFMOMA, and many others. He has been the recipient of grants and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Art, the Bush Foundations, the McKnight Foundation and the Minnesota State Arts Board. Henkel lives and works in Asheville and Penland, North Carolina.
Cynosure will run from November 6-25, 2025. Henkel will present a Gallery Talk on November 6, 2025, at 6:00 PM in the gallery followed by a reception from 6:30-8:00 PM.
The exhibition is located in the Milliken Art Gallery and is free of charge. Gallery hours are Sunday 2:00-5:00 PM, Monday – Friday 9:00 AM-5:00 PM. The Gallery is closed during school holidays.
