West Town, Wicker Park, Ukrainian Village, Kinzie Corridor, Humboldt Park

West Town

Wisconsin

IL • MI • IN

West Loop, Fulton Market, East Garfield Park

West Loop and West Side

Evanston, The North Shore, Northern, Western and Southern Suburbs

Suburbs

Old Town, Lincoln Park, Lakeview, Roscoe Village, Bucktown, Wicker Park, Logan Square, Lincoln Square, Ravenswood, Uptown, Edgewater, Andersonville, Rogers Park

North Side

Michigan Avenue, Streeterville, The Gold Coast, The Loop, and South Loop

Michigan Avenue

Pilsen, Bridgeport, Chinatown, plus Hyde Park, Jackson Park/Dorchester, and Bronzeville

South Side

Superior and Franklin streets, West Chicago Ave, and down to Merchandise Mart and the River

River North

this morning there was&nbsp;light,tomorrow morning there&nbsp;will be light,but where is light?&nbsp;&nbsp;- Etel Adnan SECRIST | BEACH is pleased to announce our representation of, and the debut solo presentation for, Chicago-based artist collaborative&nbsp;Luftwerk.&nbsp;Titled&nbsp;The Sun Standing Still, this&nbsp;exhibition features a suite of new sculptures, wall reliefs, and a site-specific installation by Luftwerk that investigate the dynamic interplay between sunlight and the Earth’s revolution. This exhibition is presented concurrently with&nbsp;Luminous Matter, an invitational survey co-organized with Luftwerk and featuring 8 artists. Both exhibitions open Friday, December 5 from 5–8 PM and remain on view through February 14, 2026.The time before and after daylight, when everything appears muted yet quietly spectacular, reveals a distinct and transitory palette. Capturing the fleeting and subjective perception of light and atmosphere, the works on view in&nbsp;The Sun Standing Still&nbsp;explore how color, devoid of literal representation, can evoke emotional and sensory responses. Fittingly, the exhibition dates include December 21, better known as the Winter Solstice, or the first day of winter. This is the day when the Northern Hemisphere is tilted farthest from the sun, resulting in the shortest period of daylight and the longest night of the year.&nbsp;Beyond its astronomical importance, this day also marks the culturally symbolic rebirth of the sun: a renewal imbued with hope, resilience, and the cyclical rhythm of time.Expanding upon their ongoing investigations into the relationship between perception, space, and light, Luftwerk draws conceptual parallels to Claude Monet’s 1872 painting&nbsp;Impression, soleil levant&nbsp;(Impression, Sunrise), the work that gave name to Impressionism. Just as Monet sought to capture the immediacy of light, Luftwerk transforms that fleeting energy into sculptural and immersive forms, translating light itself into color and vibration.The Sun Standing Still&nbsp;features a range of sculptural objects and a large-scale installation that together create a harmonious, meditative environment. With a focus on heightened perception, color, light, and form become the primary materials shaping an experience that unfolds through the viewer’s movement. This reciprocal interaction—light cast as color onto form—reveals a complex dialogue between energy and perception. Filtered through the celestial rhythm of the sun’s path, Luftwerk’s phenomenological approach opens a space for reflection, renewal, and tangible meaning. Luftwerk&nbsp;(Petra Bachmaier and Sean Gallero, lives and works in Chicago) have exhibited broadly at institutions including: Chicago Cultural Center, Chicago, IL; Fosdick-Nelson Gallery, Alfred University, Alfred, NY; Cheekwood Estate &amp; Gardens, Nashville, TN; Mattress Factory, Pittsburgh, PA; Museum für Gestaltung, Zürich; Arts Club of Chicago, Chicago, IL and Garfield Park Conservatory, Chicago, IL. Throughout their practice, Luftwerk has develop a robust portfolio of projects that engage with notable modern and contemporary architecture including: Jay Pritzker Pavilion, Chicago, IL by Gehry Partners;&nbsp;Barcelona Pavilion, Barcelona and Farnsworth House, Plano, IL by Mies van der Rohe; Ford Residence, Aurora, IL by Bruce Goff; Millennium Park, Chicago, IL by SOM; Fallingwater, Mill Run, PA and Robie House, Chicago, IL by Frank Lloyd Wright; and Netsch Residence, Chicago, IL by Walter Netsch. The artists have realized numerous large-scale permanent public and private commissions in Atlanta, Calgary, Charlotte, Chicago, Harare, Tampa, and Kansas City. They have received numerous awards, including project awards from the AIA Chicago, Graham Foundation, and the Illinois Arts Council. Their work is in several public and private collections including the Public Art collections of Chicago and Fulton County, Museum Buchheim, USF Institute for Research in Art.&nbsp;Their work has been featured in publications such as Artforum, Hyperallergic, Time Magazine, The New Yorker.&nbsp; Adnan, Etel.&nbsp;Journey to Mount Tamalpais, 1986. The Post-Apollo Press.

Luftwerk: The Sun Standing Still

Artists: Andrew Bearnot, Larry Bell, James Collins, Shingo Francis, Kate Joyce, Jan Tichy, Ruth Root and Kim Uchiyama “Colours are the deeds and sufferings of light.”&nbsp;- Goethe&nbsp; SECRIST | BEACH is pleased to present the salon invitational exhibition&nbsp;Luminous Matter.&nbsp;Luminous Matter&nbsp;brings together a group of eight artists that formally and conceptually explore the interconnectedness of color, light, and form. The exhibition includes an intergenerational roster of artists and was curated with the assistance of gallery artists’ Luftwerk.&nbsp;Luminous Matter&nbsp;is presented concurrently with Luftwerk’s debut solo exhibition&nbsp;The Sun Standing Still.&nbsp;These exhibitions will be on view from December 5 through February 14, 2026 at 1801 W. Hubbard St. An opening reception will take place on Friday, December 5 from 5 to 8PM.Luminous Matter&nbsp;is an exhibition that examines the interdependent and generative relationship between three elemental constituents of visual experience: color, light, and form. Each, in isolation, holds an autonomous aesthetic and conceptual presence; yet, in their convergence, they produce the perceptual and emotional conditions through which we apprehend the world. This exhibition proposes that the meeting point of these three tropes — their overlaps, tensions, and dissolutions — can offer a renewed lens through which to consider the nature of perception itself.While color, light, and form have historically served as fundamental building blocks of visual art, they also occupy complex theoretical terrain. Goethe’s assertion that “colours are the deeds and sufferings of light” provides an entry point into this dialogue: color emerges not merely as a surface attribute, but as an event — a manifestation of interaction, time, and transformation. Light, meanwhile, becomes both a material and a metaphor, shaping visibility and revealing the interstitial boundaries between presence and absence. Form, often regarded as static or structural, is here treated as fluid and responsive, contingent upon the oscillations of both light and color.In this exhibition, these three forces are explored not as fixed categories but as active agents of experience. They are seen as participants in an ongoing exchange between the physical and the psychological, the empirical and the affective. The works assembled for&nbsp;Luminous Matter&nbsp;engage with this exchange through a range of media — from painting and installation to light-based and spatial practices — each probing how visual phenomena can evoke states of emotion, cognition, and embodied perception.At its conceptual core,&nbsp;Luminous Matter&nbsp;contends that perception is never neutral. It is conditioned by memory, by emotion, and by cultural systems of meaning. The exhibition therefore foregrounds the socio-emotional register of perception: how color can serve as a proxy for mood or identity; how light, in its absence or excess, can structure both social and psychic space; and how form operates as a vessel for the unseen forces of attention, gesture, and time. These investigations bridge the rational and the intuitive, inviting viewers to inhabit a space where vision becomes a mode of introspection.In dialogue with this group presentation, a solo exhibition by the Chicago-based artist collaborative&nbsp;Luftwerk&nbsp;(Petra Bachmaier and Sean Gallero) expands the conversation into an immersive field of light and spatial perception. Known for their site-responsive installations that manipulate color and luminosity to alter architectural experience, Luftwerk’s practice offers a vivid articulation of the exhibition’s central inquiry: how light not only illuminates but transforms — both materially and psychologically.Situated within the gallery’s newly expanded 10,000-square-foot space,&nbsp;Luminous Matter&nbsp;is conceived as an experiential continuum rather than a static arrangement. Viewers are invited to navigate a choreography of light, hue, and shape that evolves with each movement and glance. This mutable environment underscores the exhibition’s central thesis: that meaning is not located solely in the object, but in the relational encounter between viewer, artwork, and environment.Ultimately,&nbsp;Luminous Matter&nbsp;seeks to reactivate our sensitivity to the subtle transactions that occur at the thresholds of perception. In an era saturated by digital imagery and artificial illumination, this exhibition returns to the primal forces of color, light, and form — not as mere formal devices, but as conduits of human experience, capable of evoking wonder, reflection, and the quiet rediscovery of seeing itself.

Luminous Matter

The Art Center's Annual Members and Faculty Exhibition.

In View 2026

"Sabina Ott: all this and not ordinary" is the first solo exhibition of the artist’s work since her death in 2018, presenting 33 works created in the final years of her career. The exhibition’s title is drawn from a poem in Gertrude Stein’s "Tender Buttons" (1914), a text that remained a pivotal source of inspiration for Ott throughout her life. Employing materials such as polystyrene and spray foam, Ott transformed the ordinary into the extraordinary, constructing works of art that are at once imaginative and dreamlike. For Ott, art offered a space of transformation, a means of turning trauma inside out and reshaping it into forms of play and wonder. This exhibition highlights the depth of her experimental practice and affirms her enduring legacy as an artist who expanded the possibilities of material and meaning.

Sabina Ott: all this and not ordinary

Virtual Artists’ Talk:&nbsp;Thursday, January 15th, 2026 at 7 PM | <a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://perspectivegallery.us3.list-manage.com/track/click?u=04a588cae42ffc5c2d944d823&amp;id=e288dd61d3&amp;e=49b9939ea4" target="_blank">Register here</a> Perspective Gallery is pleased to announce&nbsp;Fugue, a solo exhibition of new photographic works by acclaimed music composer, and visual artist William Harper, opening January 2, 2026. In this striking series, Harper explores the visual equivalent of musical counterpoint through motion-intensive photographic techniques, including timelapse, burst sequencing, and drone-based imaging.The exhibition features work that capture the dynamic patterns of landscapes and natural phenomena, revealing hidden harmonic relationships within movement. Each image or sequence becomes a “voice,” interacting with others to create a visual polyphony.Fugue&nbsp;invites viewers to experience time, movement, and structure in a photographic decisive moment.

William Harper: Fugue

Kim Storage Gallery is pleased to present Balance a solo exhibition featuring Chicago artist Susan Hall.Her oil paintings reverently explore nature. Hall’s animal subjects —often deer, birds, rabbits, and other woodland creatures — are rendered with the gravity and presence of portraiture. Sometimes a human figure joins the animal in quiet communion. A lace or crochet pattern runs throughout many of her pieces, veiling the subject to create a dreamlike atmosphere while also suggesting a delicate connection. Hall’s work is informed by meditations on coexistence, vulnerability, and the powerful harmonies that sustain the natural world.Susan Hall was born in Ann Arbor, Michigan, and has been a Chicago area resident since 1993. She has exhibited her work throughout the United States, including shows at Lyonswier Packer Gallery in New York City, Thomas Masters Gallery in Chicago, and Butters Gallery in Portland, Oregon. Her honors include an Illinois Arts Council grant, a Georgia Council for the Arts grant, and Best in Show at the Chicago Anti-Cruelty Society's Animal Images exhibition juried by Ed Paschke. Hall received her MFA from the University of Georgia and her BA from Connecticut College.Image: Watcher, Oil on panel,&nbsp;43 x 48”

Susan Hall: Balance

ESSENCE&nbsp;witnessed by clouds&nbsp; Eight black artists. Seven men, one woman. Seven Nigerian, one American. Through spirit, story, emotion, nature, and culture, ESSENCE reflects the truth that every human being carries within them a light that gives life value, direction, and meaning, and gives voice to the desire to leave something meaningful behind. Opening Reception: February 21, 2026, 5-9 PM ShadowBoxX Gallery, 116 Washington St, Waukegan IL Zoom Collectors Preview/Artist Talk: Friday February 20, 9 AM

Essence

Perspective Gallery is pleased to announce LENS 2026, our 16th annual juried international exhibition of fine art photography. Photographers are invited to submit work for possible inclusion in the exhibition. All subject matter and photographic processes, except AI, are welcome.

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