Jessie Schuster Opens Her SoHo Loft to Paul Morehouse’s Sculptural World
Installed throughout the designer’s art-filled downtown apartment, an intimate new show presents a dozen recent works by Morehouse that channel ancient relics through cork, limestone, copper, and razor-thin aluminum
Jessica Schuster has cultivated a discerning eye for fine art—one that buoys the richly appointed residences she conceives for clients from Palm Beach and London to New York. That sensibility is especially palpable inside her own SoHo loft, a stylish retreat she purchased and renovated one year ago overlooking one of downtown Manhattan’s most coveted blocks. There, voluptuous furnishings mingle with singular works from her personal trove, including a painting by Alison Blickle, a shimmering Paco Rabanne metal tapestry, works by Alex Katz, Daniel Buren, and Ted Lawson, plus an impressive cache of artifacts and antiquities arranged throughout the living room with collector-grade confidence.
Sprinkled throughout the loft sit sculptures by longtime friend Paul Morehouse, the upstate New York artist whose rough-hewn works in cork, limestone, stone, and metal carry the weathered gravity of ancient relics. Schuster avidly collects his work, drawn to pieces that slip effortlessly into her soigné interiors and centuries-spanning collection. “We’re very close friends, and I’ve collected his works for years,” she says. That longstanding exchange now culminates in “Phoebe,” an intimate exhibition of Morehouse’s recent works staged throughout Schuster’s apartment and on view by appointment for one month starting Wednesday, May 20.
Rather than present the sculptures inside a conventional gallery, the pair opted to install them among Schuster’s own furnishings and antiquities, allowing visitors to encounter the works in a more intimate setting. “We thought it would be fabulous to stage a show here and invite people into a lived environment to experience the work,” Schuster explains. Morehouse’s artistic evolution emerges vividly throughout the apartment, where earlier sculptures in metal mingle with recent explorations in cork and limestone. Together, the works trace his growing fascination with raw materiality, ancient references, and pared-back silhouettes that at once channel John Chamberlain’s mangled assemblages and the tiered totems of Constantin Brancusi.
One particularly striking work, Black Diamond (2018), resembles a discarded candy wrapper caught midair. Suspended above Schuster’s lacquered white record shelf and near bookshelves chockablock with art and design monographs, the razor-thin sculpture appears practically weightless despite its aluminum construction. Morehouse coated the faceted surface in gesso and wax, simultaneously giving the blackened piece the supple creases of folded paper and the weathered character of an ancient ceremonial object. “This piece is staying with me,” Schuster insists. “I had another artwork hanging there, and the second Paul installed this one, I knew I was keeping it.” In another corner, she positioned Effigy (2026), a hammered copper sculpture inspired by Chamberlain, in front of a photograph depicting legendary dealer Leo Castelli and his wife, Barbara, inside their storied Fifth Avenue apartment.
“Much of my work carries this sense that it could belong to another era,” Morehouse says, noting how Schuster began placing them among the African and Pre-Columbian antiquities that take pride of place on her living room shelves. That dialogue between old and new courses throughout the show, which also grapples with themes of impermanence and transformation. Morehouse titled the exhibition after the Eastern Phoebe, a small migratory bird whose call he heard while visiting home for Easter. “I realized it was the same bird my grandmother loved,” he recalls. “Suddenly, it became this symbol of looking backward while also moving forward, a sense of nostalgia and transformation that became the show’s emotional thread.”
The exhibition gathers a dozen new works by Morehouse, who also shows with Bernd Goeckler, though interested collectors may want to move quickly. Schuster already owned six of his sculptures before mounting the show; now she owns ten. “I bought almost half the show,” she says with a laugh.