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

Paul Rinaldi Retrospective

Paul Rinaldi: Seeing Through Time — Selected Works from a Creative Life, a retrospective exhibition honoring the late Paul Rinaldi, a beloved Prairie State College professor who taught for over twenty-five years. This exhibition brings together a wide range of Rinaldi’s extraordinary work as a painter, tracing a creative practice that evolved from early figurative imagery to non-objective abstraction. The works reflect his lifelong commitment to experimentation, looking, and transformation, offering insight into an artist who continuously redefined his visual language. The exhibition celebrates not only Rinaldi’s artistic achievements, but also his enduring legacy as a teacher, mentor, and creative force within the Prairie State College community. Faculty are encouraged to visit the exhibition and to share this opportunity with their students. Proceeds from the sales of the work will fund the Rinaldi Family Prize in the Arts Scholarship Fund at Prairie State College.

PAUL RINALDI (1961-2025), Seeing Through Time - Selected Works from a Creative Life

LIVE AUCTION&nbsp;10 FEBRUARY 2026 11 AM CT<a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://wright20.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=50e5c1be866e9aaa28cfec1db&amp;id=fbd9378ae3&amp;e=d509e17cc6" target="_blank">INFORMATION</a><a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://wright20.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=50e5c1be866e9aaa28cfec1db&amp;id=46ad540ac8&amp;e=d509e17cc6" target="_blank">VIEW LOTS</a>

American Design

The Ukrainian Institute of Modern Art (UIMA) is pleased to present It Will Destroy You, a powerful group exhibition curated by Isaiah Lee and Samiah Fulcher. The exhibition opens February 13, 2026, and will run through April 19, 2026, with an artist talk scheduled for Friday, March 6, 2026, from 6:00 PM to 9:00 PM.&nbsp;It Will Destroy You brings together works by 23 contemporary artists who interrogate the deconstruction of systems and structures that have long governed our lives. Through painting, sculpture, installation, and video, the exhibition reflects on themes of self-preservation and reconciliation as we navigate what the curators describe as a "crumbling socio-political landscape built on violence, greed, corruption, and brutality."If the average life cycle of an empire is 250 years, the American experiment is less than two years from its demise. This exhibition invites viewers to critically examine their understanding of the Western world and the foundational beliefs that support it.The exhibition features work by Michelle Alexander, Lauren Bertelson, Matias Brimmer, Robert Burnier, Alison Campbell, Zach Dobbins, Rea-Silvia Emmanouil, Sophia Farmer, Figwürm, Shanti Grandhi, Chloe Harthan, Sascha Huth, Melanie L. Johnson, Diada Amiri Jones, Rohen Jones, César López, Colin Martinez, Van Payne, Dylan Rabe, Austin Reilly, James Ross Servantz, Ethan Shay-Cowell, and Deb SokolowIn a climate of uncertainty and upheaval, It Will Destroy You challenges visitors to consider alternative visions of co-existence that possess the strength to outlive any empire. The works presented spark critical conversation about not only our current moment but the future we can create together.The journey of reconciliation with the self amidst worldly chaos is not merely an introspective one; it's a collective call to action. It is through bridging generations and uniting our collective vision that we can transform the conditions of the world.﻿

It Will Destroy You

Mariane Ibrahim is pleased to present&nbsp;<a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://marianeibrahim.com/exhibitions/113-i-dream-i-cross-the-river-in-one-group-exhibition/overview/" target="_blank">I Dream I Cross the River in One Stride</a>, a group exhibition that gathers the work of Clémence Gbonon (b. 1994), Brittney Leeanne Williams (b. 1990) and Autumn Wallace (b. 1996).&nbsp;I Dream I Cross the River in One Stride&nbsp;takes Lorraine O’Grady’s foundational essay&nbsp;Olympia’s Maid: Reclaiming Black Female Subjectivity&nbsp;as a point of departure. If, as O’Grady argues, the Black female body has long functioned as the unseen reverse side of Western femininity—present as stereotype, absent as subject—these artists reclaim their right to explore an image that is self-authored, multiple and unafraid of its own&nbsp;excess.&nbsp;Across their practices, from painting to sculpture, Williams, Wallace, and Gbonon refuse old dichotomies and instead inhabit a “both/and” space as articulated by O’Grady: sensuous and thoughtful, wild and monumental, intimate and vulnerable, queer and undefined. In their works, bodies bend, double, look back, and sometimes even melt or withdraw from our gaze, asserting that subjectivity is not granted by the viewer but claimed from within. The body no longer stabilizes someone else’s image; it sets the terms of its own existence. Image: Brittney Leeanne Williams, Interruption 10: Transition, 2025. Courtesy of the artist and Alexander Berggruen, NY.

I Dream I Cross the River in One Stride

Volume Gallery's new location, 1700 W Hubbard, Chicago, IL The Heresy of Legacy, the first exhibition at Volume Gallery’s new, expanded, space, explores the cyclical nature of movements and currents in art, architecture, and design—how innovation emerges in friction with established legacies, and how heresy becomes the foundation for new canons. This group exhibition considers what happens when today’s artists engage the paradox of history: honoring the influence of the past while consciously dismantling it. Rooted in the history of the avant-garde, the exhibition acknowledges how reactionary moves have continually propelled art, architecture, and design forward. Stanley Tigerman once encouraged a protégé to “take the baton—run with it, stab him with it, stab someone else with it, pass it forward and be stabbed by it—just don’t decline it.” This call to action embodies the spirit of the exhibition: a recognition that creative inheritance is both a gift and a weapon—a cycle of making, unmaking, and remaking. The exhibition will feature carefully curated historical and contemporary practices that operate within this matrix: giving equal weight to legacy and heresy, embracing complexity rather than purity, and acknowledging that rebellion itself eventually ossifies into tradition. Through this lens,&nbsp;The Heresy of Legacy&nbsp;will trace the continual renegotiation between reverence and rupture—how artists and designers today contend with inherited ideals, materials, and forms, and how they point toward future iconoclasms. Featuring:Selva AparicioRichard ArtschwagerGarry Knox BennettLia CookJessica Jackson HutchinsNorman KelleyHoward KottlerWilliam J. O’BrienRO/LUSarah RosalenaJoyce ScottStanley TigermanRobert Venturi and Denise Scott BrownJames WinesThaddeus WolfeClaire Zeisler

The Heresy of Legacy

With origins dating to 1875, the art collection at the University of Notre Dame is one of the oldest and most esteemed in the United States. To celebrate and share this landmark event, the Raclin Murphy Museum of Art will host a major exhibition highlighting many of the recent gifts it has received to commemorate the 150th&nbsp;anniversary. The gifts range from single works of art to entire collections.

Bridging Time and Place: The 150th Anniversary of the University of Notre Dame Art Museum

The title of the exhibition is&nbsp;Her Story. The "her" of the title is our daughter, Temma Day Lowly. The title is also a bit of a feminist twist on "history." The&nbsp;Her Story&nbsp;project consists of vertical format black &amp; white paintings, each of which will be accompanied by a text (title + essay, poem, dictionary entry, etc.) written by my partner (and Temma's mother) Sherrie Lowly.&nbsp;Concurrently with paintings of the&nbsp;Her Story&nbsp;project I will be showing a current collaborative project, the&nbsp;Trio Mandorla. This large drawing also depicts Temma, but with her mother Sherrie and caregiver Ellen Herbert). Begun 3 years ago, this project involves a collaborative component wherein people who are interested can draw onto the 2 parts of the drawing that depict quilts. I have exhibited this project previously, and numerous people have joined in the participatory compontent of the piece.

Her Story

The Evanston Art Center (EAC) is excited to welcome the public to&nbsp;Ruth Poor: Beatrice. The exhibition will be on display from February 21 to March 18, 2026, in our Second Floor Atrium Gallery and will be free and open to the public.Beatrice&nbsp;is the culmination of a nearly year-long study and performative execution of "grief-work" as a means to ground oneself amidst the shared loss of environmental sanctity, bodily autonomy, and community from rising authoritarianism, Christo-fascism, and consumerism.&nbsp;Ruth L. Poor, an interdisciplinary artist, embraces an evolving process of creation rooted in research and journaling/sketching as observation. Often implementing or commenting on spiritual/religious practice and ritual as it intersects with the macrocosm of American history and politics, alongside the parallelism of the personal.&nbsp;

Ruth Poor: Beatrice

The Evanston Art Center (EAC) is excited to welcome the public to our upcoming exhibition,&nbsp;In Paper &amp; Shadow. The exhibition will be on display from&nbsp;February 21 - March 15, 2026, and will be free and open to the public. Sarah Nguyen is a mixed media artist, working primarily with paper. Storytelling is central to her hand-cut fiber panels and paintings. Her work has appeared in numerous national and international solo and group exhibitions and publications. Her work has been part of exhibitions in museums and festivals, including (but not limited to) Seattle’s Wing Luke Museum of Asian Pacific Experience, the Daum Museum, Pyramid Hill Sculpture Grounds and Museum, the Truman Museum, Cheekwood Estates &amp; Gardens, and Kansas City’s 2018 Open Spaces. She has taken part in a number of artist residencies from around the world as a visiting artist and teacher, including Serbia, Bulgaria, Japan, and France, as well as the United States.

In Paper & Shadow

Image: Colin Matthes, The Intelligentsia, 2025Oil on canvas, 24"x18"

The Intelligentsia is at the Gates

Choreographic Place is an exhibition program presented by Bridge, premiering at the Evanston Art Center, that explores the evolving relationships between dance, sculpture, movement, written choreography, and civic space through the framework of William Forsythe’s notion of “choreographic objects”. Bridge collective members Michelle Kranicke, David Sundry, and Michael Workman seek to expand the definition to architectural or sculptural forms designed not simply to occupy space, but to shape how bodies move, and behaviors may be regulated within it, how choreography is written and read, and how movement is negotiated collectively in shared environments.

Choreographic Place

The KIA is pleased to present the annual&nbsp;Young Artists of Kalamazoo County&nbsp;exhibition, celebrating the artistic achievements of students in grades K–8. Nearly 70 art educators carefully select each featured work, creating a highly-anticipated partnership with our community’s exceptional teachers. This yearly highlight offers visitors of all ages a dynamic and uplifting experience.This show is open to K-8 students attending school in Kalamazoo County. Teachers are able to choose works from their students to be displayed at the KIA. The number of works that a teacher is able to submit is determined by the number of students attending their school.&nbsp;<a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.kiarts.org/yakc-teachers/" target="_blank">View info for educators here.</a>

2026 Young Artists of Kalamazoo County

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

“Something Old, Something New, Something Borrowed, Something Blue” is an exhibition of select works from Chicago artist Ben Foch that span the past 20 + years of his making. Some works are from the early 2000’s, never before exhibited seminal beginnings. Some works are from the 2014-2018 era, created after the 1st and 2nd incarnations of his artist-run project space New Capital, and of course, something new from 2026 will be selected.Cinderella, Dracula, Raiders Logo, Scotch Tape Plaid, Newport cigarettes, Tupac Shakur; these are some of the source content(s) that generate an origin narrative for the painting practice of Ben Foch. It could appear to be a contemporary interpretation of a Pop Culture narrative in art, and in the sense that Foch is engaged in discovering and/or defining an avant-garde in the 21st century, it is. Yet, his work, now in its mid-career mature phase, finds its roots in the 1960’s and 70’s Conceptual practices of On Kawara, Roman Opalka and Olivier Mosset. The only difference being the veneer.This exhibition is a meditation on and a celebration of life dedicated to making. It’s important to tell our stories; to ourselves, so we can know who we are, to each other, so we can know one another, and to share them with the world at large, so we can manifest our being through shared acknowledgements of time and space. Stories can be told in many ways. This exhibition is an accounting that reflects one artist through a curated look of their past in the present.We are the stories we tell ourselves.<a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://mleblancchicago.com/ben-foch" target="_blank">Ben Foch</a>&nbsp;(b. 1977) is an artist based in Chicago. He grew up in Park Forest IL., attended The School of the Art Institute of Chicago (BFA 1995-2000), co-founded the artist-run exhibition space New Capital (2010-2017) and is represented by M. Leblanc.&nbsp;Recent solo exhibitions of Foch’s work include Proof Of Werq (2024) and Hood Ornament (2021) at M. LeBlanc in Chicago, IL, Haiku (2019) at Selenas Mountain in Brooklyn, NY, Full Grown (2018) at Efrain Lopez Gallery in Chicago, IL, and Of Human Bondage (2018) at Roots and Culture in Chicago, IL. Foch’s work has been recently included in group exhibitions such as The Highest Level of Listening (2025) curated by Olivia Swider at Gure, Chicago, IL., Miniotics (2025) curated by Trinity Bavaria and Gunner Dongieux at Weatherproof, Chicago, IL., Tricky Passage (2022) curated by Ben Gill at Rhona Hoffman in Chicago, IL, Ugly Feelings (2016) curated by Karolina Gnatowski at Side Car Gallery in Hammond, IN.

Ben Foch: Something Old, Something New, Something Borrowed, Something Blue

Through the investigation of personal histories, familial ancestry, and the weight of place, the six ACRE alumni artists in&nbsp;tether me to the ground or let me float&nbsp;consider how we gather fragmented ideas of place and identity to piece together notions of belonging and grounding.&nbsp;Grounding becomes a means of navigating obscured histories and solidifying ourselves, our ancestors, and our communities to a place.&nbsp;tether me to the ground or let me float&nbsp;examines how we ground ourselves within our own histories and how we become informed and infused by the places we occupy.&nbsp;The exhibition questions the complexity of home, the relationship between the environment and the body, and the fragility of temporalities. Molded and shaped by the landscapes that surround them, the artists in the exhibition explore the multifaceted, imperfect, and often difficult undertaking of building an ecology of belonging that radically imagines our relationships to the ongoing history of a place.&nbsp;Unearthing and breaking down these relationships, the artists reflect on space in relation to memory, migration, community, and spirituality. They consider the tangible traces of our presence and the ephemeral quality of the personal and ancestral histories that both tether and release us from the places we pass through and remain in. Place and home become at once stark and ephemeral in these narratives, inviting the viewer to imagine how we locate and ground ourselves within these complexities. Featured Artists:&nbsp;Prerna, Colin Martinez, yétúndé ọlágbajú, Lars Shimabukuro, Ian Solomon, Shirin Towfiq&nbsp;Curated by&nbsp;Gemma KimACRE (Artists’ Cooperative Residency and Exhibitions)&nbsp;is an artist-run non-profit devoted to providing resources to emerging artists and nurturing a diverse community of cultural producers. ACRE’s programs support this generative community with materials, equipment, expertise, conscientiously produced food, and opportunities to exhibit and share work.&nbsp;ACRE’s annual summer residency in rural Wisconsin brings together emerging artists to live and work in a communal setting. A corresponding year-long program of exhibitions and events based in Chicago creates ongoing opportunities for idea exchange, feedback and growth. Programs such as ACRE Projects, ACRE Kitchen, and ACRE TV, provide additional venues for collaboration and experimentation.ACRE aims to be a leader at advancing new means of support for emerging artists at critical junctures in their careers. ACRE eschews focus on traditional institutional success, instead prioritizing the unique, individually-defined paths of artists.

tether me to the ground or let me float

Whether shooting from the vast wilds of Alaska, or the familiar Chicago alleys of her hometown, Alexa Viscius manages to create film portraits that feel like peering into a keyhole. Candid shots reveal coveted glimpses of beloved musicians: like New York Phenom Cameron Winter making adjustments to his musical arrangements backstage before his monumental solo performance at Hyde Park’s Rockefeller Church, or the sensational young Chicago band Horsegirl, running down a hill with a certain excitement and teenage-abandon of a group on the cusp of their breakout record, or a contemplative moment shared between longtime friends and prolific Chicago indie rockers Max Kakacek and Julien Elrich of Whitney, sitting in Kackek’s grandparent’s bedroom in Portman, Wisconsin. Many of her portraits, taken at her longtime studio in the historic Flatiron building in Wicker Park Chicago, retain that same sense of tenderness: A portrait of renowned New York musician, and frequent collaborator, Adrienne Linker of Big Thief, displays a sense of intimacy and trust. It’s a trust that has been earned through 20+ years of mastering her craft, allowing her subjects to open up, revealing themselves like flowers. From legendary Chicago DIY venues of yore, to international stages and all those quiet moments in between, she’s been there thru it all, with her finger on the shutter, capturing the music and the people that make it. Alexa Viscius is a Chicago based photographer with a focus on music portraiture, working primarily on film. She received her BFA from the University of Illinois at Chicago in 2011. Her work has been featured in The New York Times, Paper magazine, W magazine, and other publications. She is a recipient of the Abbey Road Music Photography Award for the Editorial category in 2024.In addition to her photography practice, Viscius is an award winning graphic designer and plays bass in the Chicago indie rock band Bnny. She lives in Chicago with her husband Adam and their son Arthur.

Alexa Viscius: Portraits of People Who Make Music

Ringleader&nbsp;is a collaborative furniture design project by artists Noël Morical and Mat Mancini, forged at the intersection of sculpture, utility, and irreverent joy. Rooted in their independent studio practices, the duo merges Noël’s intricate macramé technique with Mat’s materially layered, collage-based approach to create hybrid objects that are as functional as they are fantastically whimsy.The collaboration merges through a heart-to-heart between handcrafted and industrial construction. Noël's use of richly colored paracord—knotted, braided, and tensioned—introduces a tactile softness and sculptural rhythm to the work. Her practice draws from the language of textiles and body adornment, reimagining traditional macramé within a contemporary design context. Chairs, tables, and lighting elements become vessels of texture and intimacy—each loop and knot a deliberate gesture toward intentional care and geometric complexity.In parallel, Mat brings an eclectic material and cultural vocabulary drawn from cast forms, welded steel display systems, resin-infused prints, and 1990s pop-cultural motifs. Splicing structure with spirit, his practice grazes the edges of contemporary furniture’s conventions, guided by an irreverent yet lyrical sensibility. His surfaces feel both archival and futuristic—evoking suburban skate parks,color block fashion, Greco-Roman columns, and the visual clutter of mischievous, meaningful adolescence.Together, their work percolates between design, sculpture, and play—producing objects that are performative, customizable, and unapologetically personal. Whether it’s a chair that functions like a stage prop or a lamp that behaves like a wearable artifact,&nbsp;Ringleader&nbsp;treats furniture as a site of experimentation: a place where memory, humor, tactility, and utility converge.Noël Morical (American, b. 1989) lives and works in Chicago IL. She received her BFA from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2011. Morical is a multidisciplinary artist interested in organizing color, coded experience, and craft techniques.&nbsp;Mat Mancini (b. 1987, Philadelphia) lives and works in Chicago, IL. MFA The School of the Art Institute of Chicago, 2014. BFA Rutgers University, 2010. Recent shows include Peana Projects in MX, Little Berlin in PHL, HG INN, Julius Caesar, Paris London Hong Kong, and LVL3 in CHI.

Noël Morical and Mat Mancini: Ringleader

Forget Me Not&nbsp;features 10 emerging and mid-career Chicago-based artists who showcase the city's burgeoning creative talent and diversity: Mikey Coleman, Stevie Connor, Rex Delafkaran, Bailey Ellens, Bianca Pastel, Alayna Pernell, Juan Molina Hernández, Kitty Rauth, Selma Suleiman, and Marlon Tobias, all of whom broadly reflect on themes of place, home, belonging, and community. Curated by School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC) Arts Administration and Policy graduate students Serena Fox, Isabelle (Izzy) Jaeggin, Tia Lowe, and Helena Rodriguez, in collaboration with Epiphany Center for the Arts, the exhibition presents a diverse range of artistic practices, including installation, photography, ceramics, and sculpture, with fiber, collage, and painting.&nbsp; Throughout these works, “home” appears not as a fixed location, but as an evolving terrain defined by the act of remembering. Some of the featured artists render these ideas tangibly through their usage of objects, materiality, and the natural world. Others probe the emotional and psychological landscapes of nostalgia and childhood. Characterized by movement and diaspora, these artists draw on archival material, ancestral traditions, and cultural motifs, grounding their work in practices of preservation.&nbsp; Forget Me Not&nbsp;highlights both the tension and interdependence between individualism and communal belonging. Together, these artists offer an assemblage of perspectives on how we ground ourselves in the world: through ritual, storytelling, connectivity, joy, and resistance. We invite viewers to consider the power of the collective and how, despite our differences, we all find ourselves here, together.

Forget Me Not

Parallel Acts: A Practice of Staying brings together two practices that understand gesture as a durational condition rather than a singular event. In both bodies of work, movement is sustained over time, and repetition becomes a means of transformation rather than reproduction.In Shin’s ongoing series, Pas de Deux, Soo Shin constructs a buoyant vessel that floats in the Pacific Ocean while tethered to her body. Paper and pigmented wooden balls move freely within the structure, allowing ocean currents to register motion across the surface. Gesture emerges through sustained presence and shared agency between body, material, and environment, recorded as residue over time rather than intention.Tim Stone’s works are formed through repeated return to a single drawing. By tracing and retracing his own marks over extended periods, he allows accumulation to alter the surface. Through accumulation, the surface slowly transforms: compression builds, sheen develops, and the drawing shifts toward another material state. Staying with the same gesture becomes a means of altering both surface and substance.Placed together, these practices unfold as parallel acts of staying—where movement persists, time accumulates, and matter becomes the record of duration.<a style="color: rgb(17, 85, 204);" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.sooshin.org/" target="_blank">Soo Shin </a>(b. Seoul, Korea) is an interdisciplinary artist based in Chicago. She received the Northern Trust Acquisition Award (Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts) at Expo Chicago and has been awarded fellowships from the Loghaven Artist Residency (Knoxville, TN), the Djerassi Resident Artists Program (Woodside, CA), the Vilcek Foundation Fellowship at MacDowell, and the Illinois Arts Council Artists Grant. Her work has been exhibited at Block Museum (Evanston, IL), Ohio University (Athens, OH), PATRON Gallery (Chicago, IL), The Rivalry Projects (Buffalo, NY), The Luminary (St. Louis, MO), Goldfinch Gallery (Chicago, IL), Chicago Manual Style (Chicago, IL), LVL3 (Chicago, IL), and the Chicago Artists Coalition (Chicago, IL), among others. She has also completed residencies at the John Michael Kohler Arts Center (Sheboygan, WI) and Ox-Bow (Saugatuck, MI). Shin holds an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, as well as both an MFA and a BFA from Ewha Womans University in Seoul, Korea.<a style="color: rgb(17, 85, 204);" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.circlecontemporary.org/artists/88-tim-stone/works/" target="_blank">Tim Stone</a> was born in Park Ridge in 1973, where he grew up living with his family. Over the years, Stone has created an expansive and cohesive body of work across media, including graphite, watercolor, and acrylic. For the past few years he has focused primarily on grayscale drawings of loose grids in graphite, with titles that hint at personal inspirations. Focused and methodical in his practice, he maintains a diligent studio routine and steadfast artistic vision informed by concepts of abstraction. Stone’s process is driven by labor-intensive, repetitive mark-making that burnishes the graphite and slowly wears away the surface of the paper over time. He’s also an active member of the curatorial committee, assisting guest curators with exhibitions at Circle Contemporary featuring studio artists alongside artists from the broader contemporary art community.

Parallel Acts: A Practice of Staying | Soo Shin and Tim Stone

Kim Storage Gallery is pleased to present Snack Shop, a solo exhibition featuring paintings created at a pivotal moment in Gabrielle Marie Stone's practice. At a time when continuing her painting practice felt uncertain, the artist considered converting the front exhibition space of her studio into a snack shop—a practical solution to keep the lights on and sustain her creative work. While the snack shop concept never came to fruition, the paintings in this exhibition are the first pieces that occupied that never-to-be retail space. Intimate and episodic, they offer entry points rather than resolutions, inviting viewers into a world that sits somewhere between necessity and indulgence. Like little snacks, these works provide sustenance inquieter ways—not essential, yet deeply nourishing. Snack Shop names both the space and practice as it almost was, honoring the conditions in which the work was made: adaptive, provisional, and hopeful. The paintings retain their inherent dreamlike and atmospheric qualities, yet the exhibition grounds them in the real economies and lived decisions of making art today—a reflection on vulnerability, resilience, and the creative impulse that persists even in uncertainty. Gabrielle Stone (b. 1990) is a contemporary abstract painter based in Chicago, IL. Her work explores the nature of place using color, form, and materiality to depict environments that are whimsical in their reimagining. Influenced by her deep attachment to physical spaces, Stone’s paintings communicate geometry and structure while embodying its very dissolution. Stone holds a Bachelor of Arts in studio art and creative writing from Carleton College where she studied under artists Fred Hagstrom and David Lefkowitz, art historian Ross Elfline, and curator Margaret Pezalla-Granlund. The late artist, Larry McKim, was also a significant mentor in her early years before leaving the east coast. On view: February 27 – April 10, 2026Opening Reception: Friday, February 27 from 5 to 8PM Image: Sound of Satin, Acrylic on canvas, 60 x 46”&nbsp;

Snack Shop

Ann Toebbe’s ongoing series,&nbsp;Cooler by the Lake,&nbsp;is set in Hyde Park. For nearly two decades, Toebbe has lived in this Southside Chicago neighborhood with her husband, working and raising her two daughters and stepson. Toebbe’s domestic paintings explore the people, places, culture, and climate that are woven into her daily routine as a working artist and mother—home, garden, studio, grocery store, bakery, park, and local school. Her densely composed multi-point-of-view vignettes capture the sensory impressions and memory layers accumulated in hours and days spent in Hyde Park, meditating on the realization that this is the neighborhood her children know as home and where Toebbe and her husband will grow old.

Ann Toebbe: Cooler by the Lake

The Lena Meijer Tropical Conservatory is transformed into a vibrant sanctuary filled with thousands of tropical butterflies, creating the largest temporary tropical butterfly exhibition in the United States and one of Meijer Gardens’ most anticipated annual experiences.

Fred & Dorothy Fichter Butterflies Are Blooming

Featured artists:&nbsp;J. Adams, Jeff Crisman, Mario Desa, Chad Koeplinger, Dianne Mansfield, Josh Mason, Danny Reed, Dan Santoro, Adam Shrewsbury, Leo Zulueta.Image by Dianne MansfieldOpening alongside&nbsp;KLAUBA,&nbsp;Beyond the Needle&nbsp;is an exhibition featuring ten tattoo artists from across the United States. Also curated by Teresa Hofheimer, each artist works in a variety of media—from ink drawings to photography—representing the wide world of body art.

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