Shirley Kaneda started exhibiting her work in the late 1980s in New York at such venues as White Columns as well as in the landmark show, Conceptual Abstraction at Sidney Janis Gallery.
The critic, Matt Biro has said, “For more than three decades Shirley Kaneda has expanded the possibilities of abstract painting in a number of unique and thought-provoking ways.
She excels in juxtaposing a wide variety of gestures, shapes, and patterns in a manner that suggests an archaeology of twentieth century modernism.” In rethinking abstraction, she has focused on two of its greatest deficits—its inherent decorativeness and opticality.
By exploiting and building on discriminatory concepts, I hope to continue the process of demystifying such traditionally masculine values as the heroic, the aggressive, and the rational.” Kaneda was a Guggenheim Fellow in 1999, and has received grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, Pollock-Krasner Foundation, the Elizabeth Foundation, as well as The American Academy of Arts and Letters Purchase Award, and CCA Andratx Artist Residency.
She has also conducted many interviews for Bomb Magazine since 1991 with artists such as Jonathan Lasker, Philip Taaffe, Valerie Jaudon, Shirley Jaffe, Robert Mangold, Mira Schor, and Charline Von Heyl among others.