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

✨🎄 ¡Wepa! Get ready for the magic of the season at Navi•Arts en el Barrio: Puerto Rican Artisan Market at the National Museum of Puerto Rican Arts and Culture! 🎶🇵🇷 📅 Mark your calendars: Saturdays: December 6 &amp; 13 | 11 AM – 5 PM Sundays: December 7 &amp; 14 | 11 AM – 4 PM Every weekend brings new Boricua artisans and vendors, so you’ll discover fresh treasures each time—perfect, one-of-a-kind handmade gifts straight from the corazón of our community. 🛍️🎁 Come celebrate our cultura and traditions with: ✨ Hands-on workshops ✨ Delicious comida ✨ A festive photo booth ✨ Gift for the first 50 people each day ✨ Visit inspiring exhibitions ✨ Live Parranda Music This isn’t just holiday shopping—it’s a full Puerto Rican holiday experience, en el corazón de Barrio Borikén. Bring your familia, bring your alegría, and let’s make this season unforgettable together! For more info: <a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="mailto:info@nmprac.org ?subject=Ornament%20Rsvp%20CGN" target="_blank">info@nmprac.org</a> or visit <a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://nmprac.org/event/" target="_blank">nmprac.org/event</a>

Navi Arts Holiday Market

Offered several times a year, Editions &amp; Works on Paper celebrates the possibilities of the multiple, showcasing editioned works by some of the 20th century's most significant artists. This auction features artists' books, prints, portfolios, sculpture, and more, offered at a variety of price points accessible to every collector. Interested in selling in this auction? Our specialists will be glad to provide a complimentary evaluation.

Editions & Works on Paper

Work alongside IAM educators to make your own holiday gifts inspired by artists in our&nbsp;collection.&nbsp;&nbsp;Create&nbsp;Polaroid and&nbsp;colored-pencil&nbsp;portraits inspired by&nbsp;<a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://qjxtjxbbb.cc.rs6.net/tn.jsp?f=001k15k-0_Na8Vpo_gjcW8EGycYeR81IBKdDDPoWKzAwQRsmp-pT63Yf3BCCbpI0Q1hQPNzkdb6dS50pQz77c8nTuTqV6UNBAWZxMdSzZxI_rQ1NgrOVmI_MzKogJwWJt82IQIJUKk29rIY1MWWewfSbXpqSiqYDHgb5_nlzGUXqnczVza661xQ4tQaasOAbGMh&amp;c=jTlOnrv1tdYqx44kTS88frVkDB57a4USZ20EUYr8PvLOlfot6H47uw==&amp;ch=AF6FzvIHS3-gn7fE1i2d7gnhYxjGweBIybglC7hseGFMWeNrUElReA==" target="_blank">Lee&nbsp;Godie</a>, paintbrush ornaments influenced by&nbsp;<a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://qjxtjxbbb.cc.rs6.net/tn.jsp?f=001k15k-0_Na8Vpo_gjcW8EGycYeR81IBKdDDPoWKzAwQRsmp-pT63Yf3BCCbpI0Q1hhWvwHsE21yUhWqj_zmKG-WgdSxcc0iL_JDA7Xmb6WwZ4-AukaHu1sblRWxTsw6ZXr3z98rx0eq96mIQRJ7NSVl2Li_w1XG5oqt1suceeJeiHs6Z7ZaxkFmzTqq13sB8Sw9fYJKxtbgyY9BOjszBlqQ==&amp;c=jTlOnrv1tdYqx44kTS88frVkDB57a4USZ20EUYr8PvLOlfot6H47uw==&amp;ch=AF6FzvIHS3-gn7fE1i2d7gnhYxjGweBIybglC7hseGFMWeNrUElReA==" target="_blank">Mr. Imagination</a>&nbsp;and mobile ornaments based on&nbsp;<a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://qjxtjxbbb.cc.rs6.net/tn.jsp?f=001k15k-0_Na8Vpo_gjcW8EGycYeR81IBKdDDPoWKzAwQRsmp-pT63Yf3BCCbpI0Q1hR9HdBC5pZbe8YN6eoCF85HkjsB2nMlqjCU_hP1oa782PhmspIJs9x_UR5IZ3wT4xMOmLEtZc3HvR9PqkwPY1I4h1uWuqEexSdMNKbKxp482HbsT-TtFeQi33GOqICY-OeG5xzFELjYAAFe_66Nolxg==&amp;c=jTlOnrv1tdYqx44kTS88frVkDB57a4USZ20EUYr8PvLOlfot6H47uw==&amp;ch=AF6FzvIHS3-gn7fE1i2d7gnhYxjGweBIybglC7hseGFMWeNrUElReA==" target="_blank">Emery Blagdon’s</a>&nbsp;Healing Machine. No experience&nbsp;needed.&nbsp;Join&nbsp;us to&nbsp;make&nbsp;something personal and learn more about the&nbsp;IAM&nbsp;collection.&nbsp;&nbsp;Free with Museum admission and for Members. Registration is&nbsp;required.&nbsp;<a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://qjxtjxbbb.cc.rs6.net/tn.jsp?f=001k15k-0_Na8Vpo_gjcW8EGycYeR81IBKdDDPoWKzAwQRsmp-pT63Yf3BCCbpI0Q1hCVSX_T2kQ_Fv0ZoESektA9yESb29GvpMrW_F6Z2mmEmsHjih2_TozL9T2LehxVby30R-qFsIjW5x_ANKW7zVmj-GbksKU-Kdii869FeU_vI=&amp;c=jTlOnrv1tdYqx44kTS88frVkDB57a4USZ20EUYr8PvLOlfot6H47uw==&amp;ch=AF6FzvIHS3-gn7fE1i2d7gnhYxjGweBIybglC7hseGFMWeNrUElReA==" target="_blank">Register</a>

Art After Work: IAM crafting

McCormick Gallery is pleased to present Melanie Pankau’s fourth solo exhibition, The Many Are One. The exhibition features a suite of paintings that is grounded in her daily meditation and automatic drawing practice. For over a decade she has studied a variety of meditation traditions and techniques and integrates this parallel practice into her paintings. Every morning, after a 30 minute meditation, she draws in her sketchbook. The drawings are an inner dictation where rough geometric sketches and patterns become the basis for the compositions in the paintings. Through the investigation of geometric forms and an emotive use of color, Pankau translates information from the meditations into images that are containers for quietude, stillness, and our multidimensional nature.&nbsp;The paintings in the exhibition center around the interlacing of repeated geometric patterns. Through the process of making, each shape is meticulously taped and layered with multiple colors creating a relief of lines and brush strokes on the surface of the panels. In their final stages, the woven iterative marks are sanded down to reveal the underlying patterns that sit just below the surface. The crux of this work centers around using the language of abstraction to counter a cultural narrative of separatism, destruction, and polarity. By creating non-hierarchical images, the paintings unveil lattice-like structures that symbolize our innate interconnectedness, reciprocity, and unity.

Melanie Pankau: The Many Are One

Western Exhibitions 6th show with Los Angeles-based artist Lilli Carré is a two-part exhibition: in Gallery 1 is Fallen Anvils, featuring ceramic sculpture and hand-painted acetate cels and in Gallery 2, the animated film Evacuations. The exhibition is anchored around the animated short film Evacuations (2025). Painted formless figures haunt recent photos of emptied-out public spaces. As cel-animated smear frames, they perform various repetitive acts in these settings, with movements expressing a helpless, frantic energy felt in our current moment. The film is a string of varied evacuations – earth and organs are emptied, situations are fled. The figures become displaced from their locations, as their environments dissolve and their printed record evaporates. Gallery 1 holds 20 individual cels chosen from the film out of over 1,000 hand-painted animation frames, certain frozen instants of transitional smear frame energy. Throughout the room sit ceramic mutations of classical anvil forms, inspired by the heavy, hammered cartoon object known for falling unexpectedly out of the sky. Hand-drawn lenticular elements are embedded into the anvils, adding unexpected life and motion into their weight. Evacuations was recently included in the Ottawa International Animation Festival, winning Best Sound Design. From the jury: “Sound creates the physical experience in film, moving from its source directly to the body. Our selection employs sound playfully juxtaposed with image and movement to create a whole stronger than its individual parts.” Fallen Anvils + Evacuations opened on Friday, November 7 and runs through December 20. Gallery hours are Tuesday through Saturday, 11am to 6pm. The gallery will be accessible by appointment during the holiday break.

Lilli Carré: Fallen Anvils // Evacuations

Oh, you’ve got to come back to the city, the place where you belongOh, you’ve got to come back to the city, the place where you were bornOh, you’ve got to come back to the city, the city of dreams&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;—Marvin Tate, “City Promenade” &nbsp;OH, YOU’VE GOT TO COME BACK TO THE CITY is a solo exhibition by Theaster Gates. The exhibition opens at GRAY Chicago with a public reception for the artist on October 16, and remains on view through December 20, 2025. This is Gates’s fourth solo exhibition with GRAY. In&nbsp;OH, YOU’VE GOT TO COME BACK TO THE CITY, Gates brings together a new series of tar paintings, sculpture, and installation to tell an allegory of the city in decay and the potential contained within its ruins. The exhibition’s title comes from a song by Chicago musician and poet Marvin Tate, in which the City, personified as a character, has cleaned up its act and attempts to lure its residents back from the suburbs.&nbsp; Gates’s artistic practice has engaged and reframed the cultural and material history of Chicago as material for the studio. His new installation explores the possibilities that lie within the city’s unattended corners. From his stone repository, Gates has selected a family of marble, granite, scholars’ rocks, and concrete forms that anchor a grid-like installation evoking both the planning logic of cities and the quiet order of memorials. Ceramic works and everyday artifacts rest atop each stone, suggesting the remnants left behind by former inhabitants. Surrounding the sculptural installation is a new series of tar paintings that extend Gates’s patching and bonding strategies. Both sculptural and painterly, these works represent a new direction in the series.&nbsp; In this body of work, Gates wrestles with the burden brought on by aging infrastructure to create new narratives that build on the rich metaphors embedded in his materials—as tools of resistance, signs of excess, and evidence of decline. Developed in conjunction with his exhibition&nbsp;Unto Thee, on view at the Smart Museum of Art through February 22, 2026,&nbsp;OH, YOU’VE GOT TO COME BACK TO THE CITY&nbsp;offers a profound reflection on Gate’s life as a craftsman, urban planner, and pedagogue. Theaster Gates:&nbsp;OH, YOU’VE GOT TO COME BACK TO THE CITY&nbsp;to the City opens at GRAY Chicago (2044 West Carroll Avenue) with a public reception on Thursday, October 16, from 5-7 PM, and will be on view through December 20, 2025.&nbsp;&nbsp;ABOUT&nbsp;THEASTER GATESTheaster Gates (b. 1973) currently lives and works in Chicago. Gates creates works that engage with space theory and land development, sculpture and performance. Drawing on his interest and training in urban planning and preservation, Gates redeems spaces that have been left behind. Known for his recirculation of art world capital, Gates’s practice focuses on the possibility of the “life within things.” His work contends with the notion of Black space as a formal exercise—one defined by collective desire, artistic agency, and the tactics of a pragmatist. Gates has received numerous awards, including the Guggenheim Fellowship (2025), Crystal Award (2020), Nasher Prize (2018), Kurt Schwitters Prize (2017), American Academy of Arts &amp; Sciences Award (2016), and the Smithsonian American Ingenuity Award for Social Progress (2015). His work can be found in public collections worldwide, including the Menil Collection, Houston, Texas; Brooklyn Museum of Art, New York; National Gallery of Canada, Ontario; Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, Illinois; Tate Gallery, London, England; and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, California. Gates is a professor at the University of Chicago in the Department of Visual Arts and the Harris School of Public Policy.

Theaster Gates: OH, YOU'VE GOT TO COME BACK TO THE CITY

In the North Gallery, Corbett vs. Dempsey is delighted to announce&nbsp;Shape Acts, an exhibition of new ceramic sculptures and drawings by Magalie Guérin. This is Guérin's fourth solo show at the gallery and her first presentation primarily focused on ceramics. In the domain of linguistics known as speech act theory, language is considered more than just a conveyor of information, it is an action. Speech not only&nbsp;says, it&nbsp;does. So, too, with the forms and textures and colors of Guérin's work. Known initially as a painter, the Marfa, Texas-based artist has been making 3-D work avidly since the start of the pandemic, and this fresh group of tabletop sculptures finds her pushing the limits on morphological invention, introducing new shapes into her vast vocabulary. These pieces are segmented, often with a totemic composition – juxtaposed parts are stacked together and resolve in impossible seeming ways, all within the space of a 12-inch tower. Varying textures are emphasized with different glazes, applied with a painter's hand and eye. Passing references to figures or vessels or creatures or landscapes may appear, but these are equally offset by an overall sense of abstract delight, the surfaces a joy and a mystery, the flashes of bright color intimating something possibly naughty, the crevices and buttes a juicy question mark. Guérin's formal ingenuity allows these talismans a kind of transformative mojo that might spur us to coin "shape act theory" as a new art historical domain. As a 2-D point of comparison with her ceramics, Guérin has chosen to show a suite of drawings made during a 2021 summer ceramic residency at the University of Arkansas.These drawings for Guérin were a playful daily practice done as a way to discover shapes without the pressure of gravity, resulting in vividly colored marker works, hovering like a paper flock of imagined kinfolk for the dimensional works.

Magalie Guérin: Shape Acts

DOCUMENT is delighted to present&nbsp;Things change quickly, Luísa Jacinto’s first solo exhibition in the US. Jacinto’s artistic practice engages with the protocols of the image, narrative fragmentation, and the tension between excess evidence and obscuration. Working with materials such as rubber membrane, thread, fabric, metal, spray, watercolor, loose pigments, she creates works that establish an increasingly fluid boundary between painting, sculpture and installation. For her inaugural exhibition at DOCUMENT Chicago, Luísa Jacinto modifies the viewer’s perception of light and space through an installation of works from two recent series,&nbsp;Strangers&nbsp;and&nbsp;Work in Space. Together, these bodies of work imbue the gallery with layers of colors, bleeding into one another and influencing their surroundings.Suspended from the ceiling, taking over the middle of the space and set against the surrounding walls, several works from the&nbsp;Strangers&nbsp;series—made up of synthetic rubber membranes, folded and draped over suspended LED tubes that act as both support and light source—sway as visitors approach and walk between them.&nbsp;Work in Space&nbsp;is a series that bridges the gaps between drawing, sculpture and installation: colored threads, arranged in a grid-like composition, run across the gallery wall, as if tracing lines with colored pencils.In&nbsp;Things change quickly,&nbsp;Jacinto’s works form a polychromatic cloud where transparency, layering, and spatial relationships are interdependent of the viewer’s trajectory and attention, constantly shifting. Luísa Jacinto (b. 1984, Lisbon, Portugal) lives and works in Lisbon. Her artistic practice engages with the protocols of the image, narratives, fragmentation, and simulation, as well as the tension between excess evidence and obscuration. Jacinto uses different materials – rubber membrane, thread, fabric, metal, spray, watercolor, loose pigments – and supports, which establish an increasingly fluid boundary between painting, sculpture, and installation.

Luísa Jacinto: Things change quickly

Volume Gallery is pleased to announce&nbsp;What we knew before knowing, a meditation on memory by OOIEE after RO/LU w/ Matt Olson, an exhibition of design to be experienced not as a fixed object but as a transitory state, opening November 7, 2025, from 5 to 8 p.m. There are moments when perception softens and we can sense an object is more than itself.&nbsp;What we knew before knowing&nbsp;is an invitation to perceive in the direction of post-judgement. Here, design can behave more like memory itself: unstable, flickering, and alive in transition. Something is developing. Matt Olson has an “open practice” in which making is thinking, where objects are not invented but found through a sort of inverted dialogue, recognizing, extracting, and recontextualizing—linking and joining concepts, problems, theories, and forms that remain unassuming yet unmistakably charged. Rather than proposing definitive forms, the exhibition assembles an atmosphere of objects in flux. Materials typically associated with utility—stacked cribbing blocks, parking stops, lighting, Plexiglas, and aluminum—behave as memory conductors. Found photographs appear decontextualized, while seating hovers between invitation and apparition. The exhibition seeks relational attention. Each form leans toward the next, resonating with and accompanying one another, which together create a “WE”. Certain motifs emerge from memory, quotations from experience not to be interpreted, but to be felt. A reproduction of a found, signed photograph of Laura Dern from the 1985 film Mask is a gesture of true perception. In the film, her blind character falls in love with a boy who is suffering from a disfiguring genetic condition—not by overlooking his difference, but by perceiving him more clearly than those with sight.&nbsp;More simulacra, a print of a PDF of the books&nbsp;Bunker Archaeology&nbsp;by Paul Virilio and&nbsp;The Forgetting of Air in Martin Heidegger&nbsp;by Luce Irigaray appears—not to be read, but as a living material and conceptual presence. Virilio’s study of wartime bunkers becomes a lens for thinking about how design, function, and strategy differ from experience. These texts resonate with the exhibition’s attention to objects as carriers of memory and thought, existing between use and perception, presence and imagination.&nbsp;After Scott Burton Chair&nbsp;w/ Eric Timothy Carlson and RO/LU is almost 15 years old and has never been shown publicly.&nbsp;Fleabane (Erigeron annuus), a wildflower often dismissed as a weed, helped shape the ideas here. Though cast aside in most landscapes, it holds medicinal value in its stems, revealing usefulness where none was assumed. Like fleabane, the materials in the exhibition—stacked lumber, found images, provisional structures—are invited not to prove themselves, but to be encountered anew.&nbsp;These objects are in a state of becoming—layered and alive. A network rather than a statement, a fog of associations thick enough to move through, but never fully grasp. What emerges is not a collection of things, but a rehearsal of perception itself.&nbsp;This will be the artist’s third exhibition with Volume Gallery, having previously exhibited with various collaborators and under different names.&nbsp;What we knew before knowing&nbsp;will be on view through December 20, 2025&nbsp;OOIEE (Office Of Interior Establishing Exterior)&nbsp;was founded in 2016 by Matt Olson to work on a wide array of projects involving contemporary art and design ranging from furniture, gardens and sculpture and extending to teaching, writing and research. It is a cross-disciplinary, open practice. Previous to founding OOIEE and OOIEE Landscape Office, he was co-founder of RO/LU from 2002-2015 during which time he oversaw work ranging from residential landscape design to residencies in museums. His work has been shown internationally and is in the permanent collection at the Walker Art Center and many esteemed private collections. He was artist-in-residence at the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation in Captiva FL and has been a visiting artist/lecturer at SCI-Arc, the School of the Art Institute Chicago, the Cranbrook Academy of Art and others. He’s also an on and off Professor in Practice, Architecture at the College of Design at the University of Minnesota.

OOIEE after RO/LU w/ Matt Olson: What We Knew Before Knowing

Marshall Allen, 99, Astronaut&nbsp;is centered around Marshall Allen, world renowned free and avant-garde jazz musician and current leader of the legendary&nbsp;Sun Ra Arkestra, of which he has been a continual member since 1958. Ari Benjamin Meyers composed two original scores for Allen to interpret, inviting him to engage, through music, in an intimate conversation about the spontaneity of music-making, the rigors of rehearsal, and the potentiality of collaboration. On the brink of his one hundredth birthday, he interprets Meyers’ composition on the alto saxophone, and turns the occasional memory lapse into prompts for improvisation, exposing both his frail age and his brilliant virtuosity. Telling a musical and visual story of transformation from the earthly to the otherworldly, the work transcends temporality and place and pays homage both to Allen’s century-long life lived through music and to Sun Ra’s revolutionary musical vision and utopian politics, which saw in the unknown of sonic experimentation and the vastness of the universe the possibility of a transformed present and radically different future. –Text courtesy&nbsp;Esther Schipper Berlin and&nbsp;Fondazione In Between Art Film&nbsp;

Ari Benjamin Myers Marshall Allen, 99, Astronaut

In the North Gallery, Corbett vs. Dempsey is delighted to announce&nbsp;Shape Acts, an exhibition of new ceramic sculptures and drawings by Magalie Guérin. This is Guérin's fourth solo show at the gallery and her first presentation primarily focused on ceramics.\In the domain of linguistics known as speech act theory, language is considered more than just a conveyor of information, it is an action. Speech not only&nbsp;says, it&nbsp;does. So, too, with the forms and textures and colors of Guérin's work. Known initially as a painter, the Marfa, Texas-based artist has been making 3-D work avidly since the start of the pandemic, and this fresh group of tabletop sculptures finds her pushing the limits on morphological invention, introducing new shapes into her vast vocabulary. These pieces are segmented, often with a totemic composition – juxtaposed parts are stacked together and resolve in impossible seeming ways, all within the space of a 12-inch tower. Varying textures are emphasized with different glazes, applied with a painter's hand and eye. Passing references to figures or vessels or creatures or landscapes may appear, but these are equally offset by an overall sense of abstract delight, the surfaces a joy and a mystery, the flashes of bright color intimating something possibly naughty, the crevices and buttes a juicy question mark. Guérin's formal ingenuity allows these talismans a kind of transformative mojo that might spur us to coin "shape act theory" as a new art historical domain. As a 2-D point of comparison with her ceramics, Guérin has chosen to show a suite of drawings made during a 2021 summer ceramic residency at the University of Arkansas.These drawings for Guérin were a playful daily practice done as a way to discover shapes without the pressure of gravity, resulting in vividly colored marker works, hovering like a paper flock of imagined kinfolk for the dimensional works. <a style="background-color: rgb(67, 67, 67); color: rgb(255, 255, 255);" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="mailto:sophie@corbettvsdempsey.com?subject=Preview%20Request%3A%20Magalie%20Gu%C3%A9rin%2C%20Shape%20Acts" target="_blank">PREVIEW REQUEST</a>

Corbett vs. Dempsey is delighted to present&nbsp;Daily Forecasts: July 19th-October 14th, 2020, an exhibition of new works by Sadie Benning. This is the artist's first show at CvsD and debut gallery exhibition in Chicago.Benning presented&nbsp;Shared Eye&nbsp;at the Renaissance Society in 2016, and they lived in Chicago for an extensive period, during which their work as a video artist gained international recognition. This show introduces a new body of work in watercolor made daily during the pandemic, each painting based on Benning's preparatory collages. This routine image-making practice grew into a series of chronologically sequenced works, all of them modest in scale but packing an immense amount of emotion and visual complexity into its diminutive frame. The title work of the show consists of 31 of these miraculous Covid microcosms. SADIE BENNING:I started making watercolors during the Covid lockdown in July of 2020. What first began as experiments became Daily Forecasts. The idea was to make a portrait of the day—to take the temperature of that particular moment,&nbsp;and have a record. The process involved clearing my mind—trying to get a psychic read of the day I was inhabiting—and writing down words that came to me—words I wasn’t logically thinking—language that came from somewhere else. And then I would search online using those words—creating a database of found digital images, the source material being anything from a family snapshot to a news photograph to a press image.I made mock ups—many trial collages from these photographic images before settling on one, then painting the image using watercolors on paper. All works are intimate, postcard or paperback book sized, appealing to analogue senses while being informed by technology and the internet.I used my intuition to create these works—but I’m also invoking the intuition of the viewer—I’m inviting that. I think it’s political to have an intuition—to listen to yourself—and also to listen to others—what others are feeling or thinking—and what’s happening around you—and what might happen in the future if you don't pay attention, if you don't listen.All images and all art contains a subconscious space—and you can alwaysinuit it and feel it and interpret it. But what I’m doing is bringing that concept to the surface—visually. The words which prompted each painting disappear into the work but they do also persist in some way—wordlessly, the ghost of them remains legible.There’s honestly a little bit of irony in the idea of trying to capture a day. A day is porous, its liquid, it’s slipping away. And if you think about the whole planet—the “day” has multiple time zones and it’s inhabited by so many experiences. I can't capture that. And the day is based on a calendar which is centered around work and capitalism—and not about a subconscious time space. And so I’m not attempting to depict the day for the whole world, it's fragments within fragments—it's trippy and it's one read. It's a portion—even the scale of these paintings reflect that—they are small and cognitive and cropped. They suggest a piece of something much more vast.<a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="mailto:sophie@corbettvsdempsey.com?subject=Preview%20Request%3A%20Sadie%20Benning%2C%20Daily%20Forecasts" target="_blank">PREVIEW REQUEST</a> Image: Sadie Benning,&nbsp;Daily Forecasts: July 19th - October 14th, 2020,&nbsp;2020,&nbsp;watercolor on paper,&nbsp;31 individual works, 6 3/4 x 4 1/4 inches each,&nbsp;signed and dated on verso.&nbsp;

Sadie Benning Daily Forecasts: July 19th - October 14th, 2020

Arts of Life is pleased to announce our next exhibition&nbsp;Hail Mary,&nbsp;guest curated by&nbsp;<a style="color: rgb(0, 112, 168);" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://margaretcrowley.com/" target="_blank">Margaret Crowley</a>&nbsp;and&nbsp;<a style="color: rgb(0, 112, 168);" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.instagram.com/brozgold/?hl=en" target="_blank">Tim Callahan</a>.Hail Mary&nbsp;is an exhibition about sport. It examines the complexity and inherent spirituality of participating, watching and being a fan of any sport. James Naismith’s Guiding Principles of Basket-Ball, 1891(Glossed by Dave Hickey)1)&nbsp;&nbsp;There must be a ball; it should be large.(This in prescient expectation of Connie Hawkins and Julius Erving, whose hands would reinvent basketball as profoundly as Jimi Hendrix’s hands reinvented rock-and-roll.)2)&nbsp;There shall be no running with the ball.&nbsp;(Thus mitigating the privileges of owning portable property. Extended ownership of the ball is a virtue in football. Possession of the ball in basketball is never ownership; it is always temporary and contingent upon your doing something with it.)3)&nbsp;No man on either team shall be restricted from getting the ball at any time that it is in play.(Thus eliminating the job specialization that exists in football, by whose rules only those players in “skill positions” may touch the ball. The rest just help. In basketball there are skills peculiar to each position, but everyone must run, jump, catch, shoot, pass, and defend.)4)&nbsp;Both teams are to occupy the same area, yet there is to be no personal contact.(Thus no rigorous territoriality, nor any rewards for violently invading your opponents’ territory unless you score. The model for football is the drama of adjacent nations at war. The model for basketball is the polyglot choreography of urban sidewalks.)5)&nbsp;The goal shall be horizontal and elevated.(The most Jeffersonian principle of all: Labor must be matched by aspiration. To score, you must work your way down court, but you must also elevate! Ad astra.)&nbsp;Margaret Crowley&nbsp;(b. Ottawa, IL) is an artist&nbsp;living and working in Chicago. Crowley founded Produce Model Gallery in 2016.Timothy Callahan&nbsp;(b. Chicago, IL) co-organized Produce&nbsp;Model Gallery with Crowley from 2020 to 2024.

Hail Mary

Image: The Grey Point, 2025, oil on canvas, 52 x 34 inches

Michael Cuadrado Gonzalez: Entangled Forces

Maia Cruz Palileo&nbsp;(they/them) is a multidisciplinary artist whose paintings, installations, sculptures, and drawings navigate themes of migration and the permeable concept of home. Influenced by the oral history of their family’s arrival in the United States from the Philippines, as well as the history between the two countries, Palileo infuses these narratives using both memory and imagination. They produce paintings of dream-like quality that hover between fact and fiction. Investigating the malleable language of the medium, Palileo’s works offer a panoramic lens through which to investigate the larger questions&nbsp;pertaining to&nbsp;forgotten histories and how best to honor these stories in perpetuity. Sourcing subject matter through various photographic archives, their paintings recontextualize the stories, portraits, and images to resuscitate these figures from the exploitative gaze of the ethnographic image.&nbsp; Palileo (b.1979, Chicago, IL) received an MFA in sculpture from Brooklyn College, City University of New York, Brooklyn, NY (2008) and BA in Studio Art at Mount Holyoke College, South Hadley, MA (2001). Palileo has had solo exhibitions at&nbsp;David&nbsp;Kordansky&nbsp;Gallery, Los Angeles, CA (2025);&nbsp;moniquemeloche, Chicago, IL (2023, 2021, 2019);&nbsp;The Cummer Museum, Jacksonville, FL (2023);&nbsp;Kimball Arts Center, Park City, UT (2022); the CCA Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts, San Francisco, CA (2021); the&nbsp;Katzen&nbsp;Arts Center, Washington D.C. (2019);&nbsp;Pioneer Works, Brooklyn, NY (2018); Taymour&nbsp;Grahne&nbsp;Gallery, New York, NY (2017); and&nbsp;Cuchifritos&nbsp;Gallery + Project Space, curated by Jordan&nbsp;Buschur, New York, NY (2015).&nbsp;Palileo has been featured in recent group exhibitions at&nbsp;the Pérez Art Museum, Miami, FL (2024);&nbsp;Cantor Arts Center at Stanford University, Stanford, CA (2024); Sargent’s Daughters, Los Angeles, LA (2024);&nbsp;Moderna Museet, Stockholm, Sweden (2023);&nbsp;Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts, Omaha, NE (2023); The Nasher Museum, Durham, NC (2023);&nbsp;National Portrait Gallery, Washington D.C. (2022); Seattle Art Museum, Seattle, WA (2022); San Jose Museum of Art, San Jose, CA (2022); Jeffrey Deitch Gallery, Los Angeles, CA (2022); The Rubin Museum of Art, New York, NY (2018); and the Bureau of General Services Queer Division, New York, NY.&nbsp;Palileo will present&nbsp;a&nbsp;solo show&nbsp;at&nbsp;moniquemeloche, Chicago, IL&nbsp;(2025).&nbsp;&nbsp;Their work is in the collections of The Baltimore Museum of Art, Baltimore, MD;&nbsp;The San Jose Museum of Art, San Jose, CA;&nbsp;Cummer Museum of Art &amp; Gardens. Jacksonville, FL; The Library of Congress, Washington, D.C;&nbsp;The Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University, Durham, NC;&nbsp;The Speed Museum, Louisville, KY;&nbsp;and The&nbsp;Fredriksen&nbsp;Collection at the National Museum of Oslo, Norway.&nbsp;Palileo is a recipient of the Sharpe-Walentas&nbsp;Studio Program Award, NY (2022); NYFA Painting Fellowship (2021); Jerome Foundation Travel and Study Program Grant (2017); Rema&nbsp;Hort&nbsp;Mann Foundation Emerging Artist Grant (2014); Astraea Visual Arts Fund Award (2009); Joan Mitchell Foundation Painters &amp; Sculptors Grant (2008); and Joan Mitchell Foundation MFA Award (2018).&nbsp;Palileo has&nbsp;participated&nbsp;in residencies at Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, Madison, ME; Lower East Side Print Shop, NY; Millay Colony, Austerlitz, New York; and the Joan Mitchell Center, New Orleans. They currently live and work in Brooklyn, NY.&nbsp; Image: Maia Cruz Palileo,&nbsp;I Am Well, How Are You?, 2025, oil on linen, 72 x 68 in

Maia Cruz Palileo: Branch Dance

Pedro Montilla is a Colombian artist whose practice unfolds through painting as a way to understand the experience of being alive and surrounded by life. His work stems from the understanding of painting as a mystical being, voracious and capable of imbuing objects with life. Through this lens, his practice becomes a space for transformation, reflection, and attentive presence. Pedro works primarily on fique fabric, a fiber cultivated, dried, and woven in the Colombian Andes, traditionally used to transport coffee beans and harvests. This surface mirrors both belonging to a place while also holding a sense of dislocation and memory for what it touches. On it, he creates hybrid objects that exist between painting and tapestry, holding an imagery of landscapes, scenes, and abstractions that reflect an amalgam of internal states and lived experience.&nbsp;Montilla (b.1997, Bogotá, Colombia) holds an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (2025) and a BFA from Universidad de los Andes, Bogotá (2020). He has presented solo exhibitions at Policroma Galería, Medellín (2023; 2021), and participated in group exhibitions at the Epiphany Center for the Arts, Chicago, IL (2025); Chili Art Projects, London, UK (2024); National Museum of Mexican Art, Chicago, IL (2024); Galería El Museo, Bogotá (2024); SGR Galería, Bogotá (2021); among others. He was a Fellow at Ox-Bow School of Art, Saugatuck, MI (2025) and is currently a resident at the Chicago Artists Coalition, Chicago, IL. Montilla lives and works in Chicago, IL and is currently a Lecturer at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Image: Pedro Montilla, Primero&nbsp;está la soledad / First there is loneliness, 2025, oil and tempera on fique, 57 x 78 in

Pedro Montilla: Mirar abajo

OPENING RECEPTION: Friday, November 7, 2025 |&nbsp;<a style="color: rgb(110, 6, 16);" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.eventbrite.com/e/ten-by-ten-opening-reception-tickets-1854549440299?aff=oddtdtcreator" target="_blank">RSVP</a> ﻿TEN by TEN is a yearly celebration of diversity and passion found within the Chicago arts community. With each piece being 10” x 10”, the result is a dazzling grid of artwork, in all styles and mediums. Being open submission, the exhibition is a chance for artists of all levels to contribute and gives an unfiltered look at what is going on today in the Chicago arts scene and beyond. Gallery Director,&nbsp;<a style="color: rgb(110, 6, 16);" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://j2gallery.com/about/staff/kaitlyn-miller/" target="_blank">Kaitlyn Miller</a>&nbsp;reflects, “After the first year of TEN by TEN, we recognized the need for an open submission exhibition. Finding your footing in the art world is not an easy task, it is competitive and often disheartening and our goal has always been to support emerging artists. We had such an overwhelming response to the first year, so we thought let’s expand and accept every artist that applies. The exhibit has grown and become a way for Jackson Junge Gallery to give back and celebrate Chicago’s incredible arts community.”Featured in TEN by TEN are works by Jackson Junge’s in-house artists, whose work the gallery exhibits year-round. Featured artist,&nbsp;<a style="color: rgb(110, 6, 16);" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://j2gallery.com/about/artists/laura-lee-junge/" target="_blank">Laura Lee Junge</a>, created an eye-catching mixed media painting, “<a style="color: rgb(110, 6, 16);" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://j2gallery.com/store/artists/laura-lee-junge/originals-laura-lee-junge/mixed-media-originals-laura-lee-junge/inward/" target="_blank">Inward</a>”. The painting is done in a 3D style seen in her solo exhibition “CUCKOO: I’M NOT CRAZY, YOU ARE”, earlier this year. This series explores elements of freedom, movement and time. The focus of “Inward” is handmade clay and metal dragonflies, a departure from Junge’s usual butterfly subjects in this series. The background has impressions of clock gears imprinted in thick acrylic paint, an element used in Junge’s mixed media collection.&nbsp;<a style="color: rgb(110, 6, 16);" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://j2gallery.com/about/artists/kate-hoyer/" target="_blank">Kate Hoyer</a>’s “<a style="color: rgb(110, 6, 16);" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://j2gallery.com/store/mediums/painting/rainbow-kitty-2/" target="_blank">Rainbow Kitty</a>” is painted in her signature bold and colorful style, utilizing stripes and blocks of color to define the forms of her animal subjects.&nbsp;<a style="color: rgb(110, 6, 16);" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://j2gallery.com/about/artists/autum-justine-miller/" target="_blank">Autumn Justine Miller</a>&nbsp;has gone with a less cuddly character for her humorous painting, “<a style="color: rgb(110, 6, 16);" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://j2gallery.com/store/mediums/painting/duck-doctor/" target="_blank">Duck Doctor</a>”, which features a rubber ducky with a plague mask and a skull tattoo. Miller is known for her creepy-cute subjects, and this painting is no exception.Stand-out pieces in TEN by TEN are often using unexpected materials. Jonathan Pruc’s shining piece “<a style="color: rgb(110, 6, 16);" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://j2gallery.com/store/special-exhibit/too-much-on-my-mind/" target="_blank">Too Much on My Mind</a>” utilizes many colored mirrors to reflect light and draw the viewer in. The mirrored surface gives it a slightly different appearance and color with a change of position or lighting, giving a unique optical effect. Another notable piece this year is Josh Brickman’s “<a style="color: rgb(110, 6, 16);" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://j2gallery.com/store/special-exhibit/el-oh-el/" target="_blank">El Oh El</a>”, a map of the Loop made entirely of Legos. Brickman’s piece is both playful and well executed; you could almost use it to navigate downtown!Michael Bever’s painting also brings us to the El. His acrylic painting “<a style="color: rgb(110, 6, 16);" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://j2gallery.com/store/special-exhibit/parked-under-the-el/" target="_blank">Parked Under the El</a>” finds the beauty in a rainy evening beneath the train tracks, focusing on the warm reflections of light from surrounding streetlamps. A car idles in the center of the painting, perhaps waiting for someone to hurry up so they can get home before the weather turns once again.When viewed all together as one large wall of artwork, TEN by TEN becomes an installation representing a year of creation and exploration from hundreds of emerging and established artists. The exhibition is an opportunity for all these creatives to come together and celebrate the hard work and progress that they have made this year.TEN by TEN will be on display November 3rd, 2025, through January 11th, 2026, at Jackson Junge Gallery. Join us in celebrating the wide range of work that Chicago’s artists have to offer!TEN by TEN is curated by Gallery Owner&nbsp;<a style="color: rgb(110, 6, 16);" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://j2gallery.com/about/staff/chris-jackson/" target="_blank">Chris Jackson</a>, Gallery Director&nbsp;<a style="color: rgb(110, 6, 16);" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://j2gallery.com/about/staff/kaitlyn-miller/" target="_blank">Kaitlyn Miller</a>, Assistant Gallery Director&nbsp;<a style="color: rgb(110, 6, 16);" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://j2gallery.com/about/staff/kristen-arcus/" target="_blank">Kristen Arcus</a>, Gallery Assistants&nbsp;<a style="color: rgb(110, 6, 16);" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://j2gallery.com/about/staff/marisa-taravella/" target="_blank">Marisa Taravella</a>&nbsp;and&nbsp;<a style="color: rgb(110, 6, 16);" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://j2gallery.com/about/staff/maddie-kirmse/" target="_blank">Madeline Kirmse</a>&nbsp;and Gallery Intern Sadie Walden.

Ten by Ten

We are pleased to present Once upon a midnight dreary, a solo exhibition of new works by French-artist Djabril Boukhenaïssi. This show marks the artist's first solo presentation in the United States, and the first with the gallery. This presentation of engravings and paintings meditates on the Night as a space of contemplation and connection where darkness dissolves the boundaries between self and the world. Drawing from literary and philosophical references including Baudelaire, Novalis, Rilke, and Max Milner, Boukhenaïssi’s palette of deep blues and mauves activates abstraction through opacity and illumination. His canvases transform the shadows of night into a site of memory and imagination, asking what emerges under the moonlight when the visible gives way to the unseen. The exhibition will run from November 14, 2025, to January 17, 2026, with an opening reception on Friday, November 14, 2025, from 6 - 8 PM.

Once upon a midnight dreary

PATRON is proud to present Long, Shore, Drift, our first solo exhibition with New York–based artist Simon Benjamin. Through a multidisciplinary practice spanning painting, sculpture, installation, printmaking, and video, Benjamin posits the sea and coastal zones as sites of a perennially entangled network of geology and culture. For Benjamin, who is originally from Jamaica, the ecology of the Caribbean becomes a site at which to examine the historical and current relationships between afro-diasporic people and the sea. Emergent from his work to capture his own experiences as an avid surfer and swimmer, Benjamin’s recent work incorporates the physical materials of coastal zones, alongside and in juxtaposition to the visual lexicon of stylized ephemera of tourism produced by an ongoing colonial, commercial economy. Long, Shore, Drift refers to the geological term longshore drift, a natural process that moves sediment along a coastline resulting from the waves’ repetitive actions. Within the context of the exhibition, the pattern becomes a metaphor for examining how coastlines evolve, a concept Barbadian poet Kamau Brathwaite’s refers to as tidalectics—a framework that conceives of Caribbean identity as cyclical and fluid, shaped not by fixed geography but by movement and exchange. Continually unfolding and falling back upon itself, Long, Shore, Drift offers a repetitive, rhythmic reminder of the series of extractions that continue to shape the world and our perception of it.

Simon Benjamin: Long, Shore, Drift

The exhibition showcases Lustig's multifaceted creative force spanning from childhood to the present day. The showcase includes drawing, painting, sculpture, and more. Highlights include her&nbsp;Surreal Tree Paintings, oil works revealing anthropomorphic qualities in nature; Abstract Illusion Paintings, spontaneous landscapes evoking music and motion; and&nbsp;Zofscape, a multimedia installation combining LED light sculptures, animated video, and original music composition.A graduate of California College of the Arts in Oakland, Lustig has built a remarkable career as a caricature artist, ceramic sculptor, mural painter, and puppet maker. Her work reflects the influence of Bay Area underground comics culture and the Chicago Imagist movement, blending whimsy with deeper commentary on contemporary life. Her signature Pop Surrealism style transforms ordinary subjects into dreamlike scenarios that are simultaneously playful and profound. About the artist:&nbsp;Ellen Lustig is a multi-faceted artist and composer working in variousmedia to create her dynamic installations. Ellen’s light sculptures are a fabrication of acrylic etchings enhanced by LEDs and music, producing what feels like an all-immersive voluminous 3d space. Her animation series includes digitally rendered passages that mimic the designs seen in her sculptures and also have the effect of an other-worldly landscape. A graduate of California College of the Arts in Oakland, California, Lustig has spent decades as a caricature artist, ceramic sculptor, mural painter, and puppet maker, creating unique pieces that are sought after nationwide. In addition to numerous one woman and group shows with her sculptures and paintings, she dedicates time by regularly teaching art to cancer patients and their families in hospitals and wellness centers such as Gilda’s Club of Chicago. Ellen can also be found playing blues keyboards at open mic nights in Chicago and the suburbs.Ellen Lustig's paintings are a collection of Pop Surrealism art. Her subject matter is forever transforming as she delves into toys, nature, and abstraction. The imagery in Ellen's paintings is a combination of whimsy, pop and realism. The subjects in her paintings also vary between baby boomer toys in uncanny situations, anthropomorphic trees, or quirky abstractions.Throughout Ellen's paintings including her early work, tree paintings, toy paintings or abstractions, Lustig creates a variety of subjects and styles. Her continuous theme is Pop Surrealism Art.The Pop Surrealism/Lowbrow art movement originated in the 1960's with hot rod culture and underground comics. It has evolved into a vilified, vital, and exciting art movement.Having been schooled in the Bay area for College, Ellen was definitely influenced by the comical area surrounding her. She then moved to Chicago where the Hairy Who and Imagists were prevalent in the art world which also had an effect on her subject matter. Lustig still resides in Chicago where she has made a lifelong career as a multimedia artist. Her work has been shown nationally in galleries and museums along with private collections. About the Ukrainian Institute of Modern Art:&nbsp;The Ukrainian Institute of Modern Art (UIMA) preserves and promotes contemporary art as a shared expression of the Ukrainian and American experience. UIMA develops, utilizes and encourages artistic talent through exhibitions, concerts, readings, lectures and films to serve the cultural needs of our community and city, and thereby strengthen cultural understanding and diversity. <ul><li>Artist Talk: Saturday, January 17, 1–2 pm</li></ul>

Ellen Lustig: Transformations

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

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

Catalyst: Im/migration and Self-taught Art in Chicago,&nbsp;the first exhibition to open in Intuit’s newly-renovated museum, is part of Art Design Chicago, a citywide collaboration initiated by the Terra Foundation for American Art that highlights the city’s artistic heritage and creative communities.&nbsp; Catalyst: Im/migration and Self-taught Art in Chicago&nbsp;is the first major exhibition to focus on the importance of immigration and migration in the genre of self-taught art. The exhibition underscores the creative contributions of migrants and immigrants,&nbsp;broadening the scope to include artists deserving of greater attention, while posing questions about access to the art world and how art comes to be defined and valued. Considering artists in the context of their migration experience, cultural backgrounds and communities invites new insights into their work. Chicago, a city with a significant and ongoing history of immigration and migration, is fertile ground for investigating the rich array of academic and nonacademic influences—cultural, communal and familial—that enrich artistic production.&nbsp;The exhibition aims to be inclusive of the experiences of immigrants and migrants while acknowledging social and legal differences.&nbsp;&nbsp;Catalyst: Im/migration and Self-taught Art in Chicago&nbsp;explores catalysts for leaving home, for coming to Chicago and for pursuing an art practice.&nbsp;The range of personal and political subject matter and artistic styles reflects artists processing distinct cultural traditions, memories and experiences of living far from one’s homeland. Themes in the artworks range from belonging and longing for homeland, to labor and individual expression, to bearing witness to history, to assimilation.&nbsp; The narrative centers on the rise of self-taught art in Chicago during the second half of the 20th century, opportunities for artists leading up to this time, and the continued importance of im/migration and self-taught art to Chicago today. Image credit: Derek Webster, American, born Puerto Castilla (Republic of Honduras), raised in Belize City (British Honduras, now Belize), 1934-2009. Untitled (Turtle with up-turned head), 1990. Paint on found wood and found materials, 12 x 19 x 30 in. Collection of Intuit Art Museum, gift of Madeline Murphy Rabb, 2021.6

Catalyst: Im/migration and Self-taught Art in Chicago

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. More about the exhibition&nbsp;<a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://ymlps3.com/2f31amjheaoaeqmbsatauuhbarajmjew/click.php" target="_blank">here.</a>&nbsp;

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