SoNa Chicago Contemporary Art presents “Beneath an Economy of Sky” featuring the artwork of Jack Poker, a Chicago-based artist who blends painting and collage to make unique and moving works. The exhibition opens Friday, February 20, 2026, at SoNa Chicago Contemporary Art, 1527 N. Ashland Ave, Chicago, IL and continues through March 21, 2026. There will be an Opening Reception on Friday, February 20 from 6-9 pm and an artist talk on Sunday, March 1 from 2:00 - 3:30 pm.

Jack Poker is a Chicago-based artist whose work examines memory and how it is tied to the history of a place. His current body of work explores the economic and environmental impacts on communities of removals of buildings and transformations of spaces. Jack’s paintings, collages, and sculptures depict what happens to abandoned or demolished buildings, city blocks, suburban neighborhoods, and commercial sites as urban and rural landscapes change with economic development or neglect. 

This exhibition also includes several pieces from his Majorette series, which playfully invite the viewer to question the cultural meaning and metaphorical role of these figures in contemporary society. In both the Removal and Majorette series, Jack's paintings depict how histories, without context, are fragmented and distorted until the artist reconstructs them and the viewer gives them meaning.

“Jack came to my attention when we were planning a group show with Tony Fitzpatrick in the months before Tony passed“ said Laura Botwinick, SoNa Chicago gallery owner and director. “Tony encouraged me to look at Jack’s work and when I visited his studio, I immediately offered him a solo show.” 

Tony said of Jack, “For my money he is the most underrated and little-known artist in Chicago. For all of the attention being paid to collage as well as combinations of painting and drawing and collage, Jack has flown under the radar, bringing his own sensibility to ideas of landscape, map-making, place, and poetry… He is only like himself.”

Before moving to Chicago in 1995, New Mexican-born Jack Poker spent his youth in Nebraska, Kansas, and Missouri. He studied history and anthropology at the University of Missouri-Columbia before moving to Seattle, Washington, where he divided his time between work and art. He lived in Alaska briefly, where he worked on a fishing boat in the Bering Sea. 

He participated in group shows in and around Chicago until 2004 but continued to paint and sculpt full-time, selling his work to private collectors. In 2011, he was forced to take a hiatus from painting after his studio, along with his belongings, were destroyed in a flood.  

This is Jack Poker’s first solo show in Chicago. The opening reception is on Friday, February 20 from 6-9 p.m. An artist talk is scheduled for Sunday, March 1, from 2 – 3:30 p.m. For more information about the upcoming exhibition, contact Laura Botwinick at 773.513.4436 or by email at Lkbotwinick@gmail.com. Go to www.sonachicagoart.com for additional details.