Surface Sounds of the Sun

November 7th, 2025 through December 21st, 2025 Brooks Cashbaugh, Kate Hefferan, Jane Leipold, and Dallas Spears curated by Marina Ross

On a cold Winter night in March, I woke up in the night and realized I had turned the heat down earlier that day. I approached the thermostat in the dark, raised the temperature and went back to bed. As I fell asleep, it occurred to me how immediate our ability to harness energy is. I imagined someone walking in the cold, chopping down a tree and burning the wood for heat. We have evolved to produce heat at the literal touch of a finger— what primitive societies would consider magic. Modern conveniences make our energy sources invisible— but the materials necessary to power our homes, cars, phones, warfare, and our increasing desire for AI are tangible. The works in this show all point toward an environment shaped (and threatened) by our powerful potential for cultivating energy. 

Nefarious sources of power literally radiate through the paintings/sculptures in the work by four artists with connections to Chicago. The artists attempt to harness an intangible and volatile energy suggesting images generated by technological advancements and natural disasters. Man-made energy has positively changed our lives and our worlds, but has also exposed existential threats and fears— our continued confrontation with climate change— the dragging war between Russia and Ukraine— resurfacing the trauma of the atomic bomb, not to mention the history of Chernobyl and violent fallout of nuclear disaster. -Marina Ross

Ari Norris: Fully Filtered

April 19th, 2025 through June 14th, 2025

 As we move through this world we leave a whisper trail of hair, skin, dust and oil that collects in the spaces we inhabit. In the same way film collects and traps light in the accumulation of emulsion, we deposit imperceptible traces that build and record our presence. Ari Norris (b. 1995) elevates this shadow record by creating oversize filters that capture and arrest the offcut gestures of his practice. At the exaggerated scale of 48x48 inches, the drips and scuffs caught on Norris’ studio dropcloths wriggle like a party of amoebas under a microscope, inviting the viewer to examine the secondary product of the artist's hand. It is an unintentional vocabulary of marks, incoherent but lyrical. An echo that impels us to reach for meaning. -Esther Espino

 sea salt//stone air

February 28th, 2025 through April 11th, 2025 works by Sophia Karina English, Thom Romero, bex ya yolk, Jules Koreman, ESO MALFLOR, Kate Humphrey, & Fengzee Yang curated by micah dillman

These artists are connected through their ability to manipulate materials from the earth to produce precisely crafted objects. Each included artwork perfectly holds the artist’s lived experiences. The works allow the audience to enter into that experience and take something with them--changing a small part of themself through viewing.

micah met each one of these makers in the wild---whether that be the literal wilderness, through happenstance, or cosmic timing, therefore tying the group through a spiritual (or otherwise) connection. sea salt // stone air presents a grouping of sculptural, textile, and print based works engaging an overlap of personal experiences and nature (god)--given materials. The show explores the manipulation of form to tell an emotional tale and the weight of a subtle gesture.

In the Spaces that Remain is a solo exhibition by Thương Hoài Trần, exploring the complexities of the Vietnamese American immigrant experience through personal photographic archives. Examining the physical and emotional spaces between past and present, memory and reality, the exhibition highlights the challenges of finding a place within them. Hoài Trần unravels their family’s history, inviting viewers to reflect on the ephemeral nature of

memories. This impermanence creates a delicate balance between preserving the past and moving forward, capturing the transient nature of time and identity. Through literal translations of their archive into weaving, print media, and video, Hoài Trần aims to recover unspoken histories embedded in their family lineage while celebrating and paying tribute to family members. The act of remembering and honoring becomes a nuanced balance between preservation and excavation of familial history.