Past Exhibitions

2024

Black & White Art Show by OMWP Studios

January 19th 7-10pm

January 20th 7-10pm

January 21st 10-2pm

Black & White Art Show by OMWP is a free art exhibition January 19-21 2024 at Parlour and Ramp displaying high ticket art pieces by Chicago’s most respected Artists.

Opening Night is Friday, January 19 featuring complimentary beverages and sounds by Ryan Mannebach of Righteous Sound

Black and White attire is requested

OMWP Studios proudly presents “Black & White,” an art exhibition aiming to explore the duality of existence and perception through the lens of black & white art. Is everything truly black and white?

This exhibition seeks to delve into the dichotomies, complexities, and contrasts inherent in the black & white spectrum, whether in artworks exclusively in black & white or those symbolically representing the concept of dualistic thought. Consider the two-valued system, the interplay between light and dark.

2023

No Weepholes, a solo show by Sonya Bogdanova

DATES: Sep 29th - Nov 3rd

OPENING RECEPTION: September 29th | 7-9PM

ARTISTS: Sonya Bogdanova

“A good product is underhanded. No pussyfooting, no room for doubt. Leave them doubting, but you stay on the level. Leave them with a tight-lipped smile, never letting on how deep you are. It does not matter what you leave behind; reward is the North Star. You only answer to the director. The director needs you bad, not for what you leave behind but for what you are. The director puts you places. No one understands how you ended up there. The director (and let’s face it, your will) put you between the brick and the drywall. It is rotting”. - Sonya Bogdanova

Sonya Bogdanova works in the space between sculpture and painting to understand the icon's afterlife. She connects icons from the natural world with those of the manufactured, to approach a deep vision of disputed human history. Bogdanova is interested in devices that conceal a system's workings. Her objects, made of common things like clay, pigment and refuse, serve as passageways to hidden transformative places. Skeptical of established political narratives, she makes sculptures and installations that transmit suppressed knowledge, feelings, and behaviors.

Bogdanova is a Russian-Jewish immigrant who came to the US after the collapse of the USSR. Based in Chicago, she has shown in the US, UK, and South Korea. Selected exhibitions include the Chicago Cultural Center, Mana Contemporary (Chicago), Ignition Projects (Chicago), Gallery 400 (Chicago), G-CADD (Granite City, IL), No Nation Tangential Unspace Art Lab (Chicago), Random Access Gallery (Syracuse, NY), and Czong Institute for Contemporary Art (Gimpo, South Korea). She was an artist-in-residence at Holly & the Neighbors in 2021 and at Jiwar Foundation in Barcelona in 2015. Bogdanova holds an MFA from the University of Illinois at Chicago and BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. She is a professor and educator at SAIC, Wright College, CAPE, and Marwen in Chicago.

Cemented - An Nu Panther Studio Group Show

DATES: September 24th | 3-6 PM

ARTISTS: Zare Bonds, Megan Ceballos, Graciela, Ollly J, and Underweathr

A group show put on by Parlour and Ramp artists in residence - Nu Panther Studio!

A Night Under The Stars - Nico Rafael Ramirez Solo Show

DATES: Aug 18th - Sep 8th

OPENING RECEPTION: August 18th | 7-9PM

ARTISTS: Nico Ramirez

I’m sitting in Nico’s bed, watching her paint while scrolling through Carrie (1976) forums, I came across one anonymous reviewer who said they enjoy now, in their later life, pausing the film once Carrie White wins prom queen. It’s better this way, they said. Carrie is smiling, and her dress is still clean. She gets to have a normal night.

It’s prom season in English class, Carrie is sitting a few desks behind her future date, Tommy Ross. The teacher reads aloud Tommy’s homework response:

What are you going to leave for us, you people in your cars, spewing pollution into the air? You people with heavy feet trampling down the wilderness. You people who peer into the back seats of our cars, hours after you come out of the back doors of your motels. Soon, all we will have is each other, and that could be enough. If you will let us have room enough, and air enough, and peace enough, to love each other as you never could.

The teacher calls for criticisms. Carrie, who has been writing down every word, calls Tommy’s poem “beautiful,” and the classroom snickers. Walking through the sticky desks, inspired by the others, the teacher aids in mocking her. “I’m afraid this is hardly a criticism, Carrie.” She is disappointed. She meant it.

What is left when someone is not given room enough, air enough, peace enough, or love enough to love in return? To love as the rest never could? When a dress is torn, and gone to waste, for example, it sits decaying, hung up in a closet, still soft, light, shiny, and pink, but torn nonetheless. When a girl is othered, or put to bed, she lays on herself, falling and catching and holding the extravagant rapture that she is, all alone. But the flame produced by Carrie is hot and made up of the most beautiful colors, so many they produce a fervid white. Her quick hands cannot stand to hold it any longer. Anyway, why should she keep beauty, locked away, quiet? What follows the release is an explosion in a highschool gymnasium; vision going kaleidoscopic, telekinetic and loud, paint flung onto canvas, emotions perfectly unkempt. The English teacher electrocuted and bullies hosed to the floor. Her rhapsody even gets a split screen. If the film was paused before this, as recommended, the night would have been nice, normal indeed. But it wouldn’t have been true. Special girls like Carrie are not prom queens. In these seven paintings, Nico has decided to give Carrie room, space and air enough to be, and to be exactly. To preserve her beauty, her emotion, and to translate the flatness of her image in film to a thunderstorm of artist and hand is an impressionist gesture. To put terror and awe to paint, to deem them beautiful, no matter the dress ruined, soaked in blood, is a gesture at truth.

(Text by Taylor Payton)

Soft Telling

Dates: June 9th - July 7th

Opening Reception: June 9th | 7-9PM

Closing Reception: July 7th | 7-9PM

Artist: Quentin Yang

Kailun Yang is a Chicago-based interdisciplinary artist who creates contemporary drawings and sculptures that explore themes of fear, loss, connection, and growth in intimate and social interactions. His works embrace conceptual strategies and abstract visions using natural materials and colors that exude feelings.

Kailun’s current drawings narrate safety and comfort in uncertainty. Through his drawings, he explores the

coexistence of security and insecurity and uses playfulness

to bring harmony and balance to incongruency.

Kailun earned his 2020 MFA at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago in Fiber and Material Studies. Kailun has shown his work in China, Japan, and the United States. 

THE PILSEN OPEN

DATES: May 6th - June 2nd

OPENING RECEPTION: May 6th 7-9PM

CLOSING RECEPTION: June 2nd 7-9PM

ARTISTS:

[jef]Frey Michael Austin, Michael Chambers, Meg Eastwood, Grace Gebhard, Lauren Grudzien, Mariel Harari, Lee Kathryn Hodge, Greg " Vito" Johnson, Michael Kendall, Millicent Kennedy, Kaius Kirby, Naomi Lares, Sally Traxler-Lavengood, Cebe Loomis, Agustina Mendez, Ryan Michel, Maclovio Orozco, Heriberto Quiroz, Nico Rafael Ramirez, Liv Sciford, Anika Steppe, Nicolas Tovar, Francis Zaander

This show is a collection of works from over 20 Pilsen based artists. The works include paintings, photography, sculpture, and mixed media pieces. This is a juried show, judged by Ramiro Huizar.

JURY RESULTS

BEST IN SHOW: 

Heriberto Quiroz! for "Juan’s Barber Shop September 18, 2018"

Scoring 19/20 

"This photo really captures the heart of Pilsen, and other Mexican American communities. A loving couple posing in front of their business with pride, while a busy neighbourhood keeps on the move around them".

HONORABLE MENTION:

Nicolas Tovar! for "American Vernacular"

Scoring 18/20

"Simple design yet incredibly appealing to the eye with a strong message. Would love to see this done on bigger pieces".

HONORABLE MENTION:

Kaius Kirby! for "Purple Lace Decanter"

Scoring 17/20

"Eye capturing design with a unique shape. Showing high levels of craftsmanship".

Oh, the terms of ambiguity

Dates: March 24th - April 20th

Opening Reception: March 24th | 7-9PM

Artist: Carisa Mitchell

Maybe Carisa Mitchell’s work presents radical potential in the failure, inability, and flat-out refusal to describe class and gender dynamics in any satisfactory manner. While living in Switzerland and receiving her Master’s Degree at Geneva School of Art and Design circa 2016, the culture shock prompted Mitchell to develop conceptual works of art, based almost entirely on miscommunication. In her oblique text works, Mitchell weaponizes empty signifiers against micro-aggression and subjugation. Sometimes Mitchell’s work takes casual sexist and classist statements made to her—more often than not by aloof, male peers—as inspiration for these works. 

Mitchell’s repertoire involves: collecting and displaying tchotchkes and souvenirs from Disneyland, other thrift and random shops; doing text-based works in neon and LED displays that frequently transform misspellings, double-entendres, and mistranslations into luminous concrete poems; intervening, minimally, into store-bought felt by writing single words like “Congrats,” and “More.”

 Some of her poems are little watercolor statements on index cards, “A BRIEF PAUSE FOR UTOPIA, ” painted in black, reads like a clever tweet. “If they meow, they must see a pussy,” reads like a bot. She also arranges her spam email, seemingly written by bots and scammers, into concrete poems. The types of emails that prey on the reader’s desires with statements like “I want to give you $3M right now” or, “You would like to go on a date with a pretty girl like me because I have a nice character as well.” Like any good scam, the skill is in tightening up the vagaries, leaving enough tidy, empty, space for the reader to fill in.

Those won’t make it into the show; however, in a similar series, the artist prints empty statements in black ink onto black paper. Mitchell did these works in response to a male colleague who told her, “you should paint.” Her black-on-black prints emulate the crude seductive qualities of the aforementioned spam emails, drawing the reader closer, to read phrases like “Bob hoped for a good cry,” which confront them with this fact: you really don’t need to read everything. Not all names point to real people–who is Bob, anyway? Who cares? The work evokes comically misspelled “Yard Sale” signs, hastily mistranslated to “Yard Sard.” Maybe there’s some subversive potential in a poster so silly that it momentarily liberates you from desire.

- Max Guy

Detritus Maximus

Dates: February 24th - March 17th

Opening Reception: February 24th | 7PM - 9PM

Closing Reception: March 17th | 7PM - 9PM

Artists: Lindsay Rhyner, Kyle Riley and Francis Zaander

An exploration of the common threads in these three artists’ portrayal of

different aspects of the developed human world.

This would be the first show attempting to unify these artist’s view of our strange,

twisted and miraculous world. The decay of the anthropocene features prominently

throughout the work of Lindsay Rhyner, Kyle Riley and Francis Zaander. Their

artwork focuses on finding the sublime in the discarded and overlooked through

each of their own unique, and often humorous, visions of the world. The use of found

and discarded materials plays a major role in the practice of all three midwestern

artists.

MOVEMENT LANGUAGE: 

Lens Stories Part II

Dates: Jan 13th - Feb 10th

Reception: January 13th | 7PM - 9PM

Closing Reception: February 10th | 7PM - 9PM

Artist: Ren Freeman

A solo photography show by Ren Freeman

Ren Picco-Freeman is a Chicago-based dance, movement, and portraiture photographer who collaborates with movement artists and dance companies across the city. 

"My work focuses on dancers and movement artists, capturing their beautiful feats of athleticism. I prefer black and white photography because it dramatically highlights the physical form. I often include fantasy elements with recurring themes of flight, strength, and surrender"

This exhibition highlights images from different series taken during the pandemic. They explore the themes of determination, grace, hope, judgement, and resilience all connected by the thread of movement.

Ren was the photographer for cocodaco dance project, and the in-house photographer for Foster Dance Studios. She's collaborated with David Maurice, Echo Modern Dance, Evanston Dance Ensemble, Little Fire Artist Collective, Moonwater Dance Project, Purus Motus, Savannah Dunn, Trifecta Dance Collective, and Winifred Hann & Dancers among others.

Her work has been shown at The Living Gallery in Brooklyn, NY, on The Dance Enthusiast, at Take Up Space Dance Festival, Unearth Festival’s Efflorescence and in-person show Regenerate, Evanston Made Group Shows, Evanston Made Pop-up, and the 1100 Florence Gallery. Movement artist Mo Naughton as The Dark Angel was included in Filter Photo’s Photo Dock. Her capture of dancer Emily Brand from the Fall Series was reproduced as a painting by artist Michael Goldzweig, and a shot of dancer Amara Barnes was reproduced in a series of sketches by Dutch artist, Hebe Boerhout. 

Her work with movement artist Savannah Dunn and a recent 2022 solo exhibition were reviewed by MUSÉE Magazine. 

2022

Thick Skin

A Parlour and Ramp Group Show

Dates: November 18th - December 31st 2022

Reception: November 18th 2022

Artists: Philip Berezney,

Millicent Kennedy,

Sally Traxler-Lavengood,

Diane Soubly,

Lily Szymanski,

Ryan Michel

Thick Skin

With media lush in membranes and matrices this group exhibition considers the shroud as well as its contents. The connotations of “skin deep” suggest depravity, but Thick Skin sees dichotomy as dynamic. Donated objects are quilted into fabric and fossilized. Painted images of figures crawling and diving, duck behind the stretcher bars of a canvas. Flat polished images cover three dimensional simulacra of the form photographed. Skins of fabric cover form and transform them into something new. Cumulatively these works address the tension of materials and the imagined. 

Dates: August 6th-August 25th

Reception: August 6th

Artist: Sally Traxler-Lavengood

Artist Info:

Website: https://sallytraxlerlavengood.com

Instagram: @salmakingstuff

"mostest", a maximalist color show by resident artist, Sally Traxler-Lavengood. An oil painter working in very large and very small scale, Sally's work focuses around representational depictions of the human form and the human experience. Her paintings often depict objects of unexplained personal meaning which makes each individual's interpretations of the paintings unique to their life experiences.

This show is an accumulation of a year's worth of experimentation, focusing on mostly monochromatic paintings in an attempt to slow down and build stronger bonds with each color.

Kidney - Shaped Ear by Daniel Luedtke

Opening Reception : March 11th, 2022 7pm

Exhibition Dates : March 11th - April 2nd, 2022

In the practice acupuncture, the ear holds within it a system of the entire body. The terrain of the ear becomes a google map. Placed pins from a small and isolated vantage point expand awareness of the orientation of the organs. To hear. To feel. To heal.

In Hebrew tradition, the kidney was associated with the innermost emotions and secret thoughts. Used as an omen metaphor, god could easily discern the moral standing and true character of any individual. Later, as medicine advanced and the kidney became known to filter waste from the blood, its status within a hierarchy of bodily significance lowered. The locus of the soul inverted.

This exhibition shows instances of isolated organs and plays with metaphors of their related hierarchies. Ceramic surfaces, with their associations with bodily maintenance (cooking, cleaning, bathing) are very important here. In some works, foamcore and tinted resin recreate the surface quality of real tile. A kind of ceramics in drag. In other instances, ceramic wall works are hydrodipped into screen printed images, merging glazed stoneware with images of bodily spaces. The work uses liquidity to distort images and fuse process-based craft traditions together. Wetness abounds! and the kidney, ruler of the Water Element in Chinese medicine, regulates it all.

2021

For the Living, To the Dead

An Exhibition of Collective Mourning

Parlour and Ramp Gallery

2130 W. 21st Street, Chicago, IL

Exhibition Dates: December 3rd – January 6th             

Opening Reception: December 3rd,  7:00pm  – 10:00pm

Evening of Comedy and Storytelling: December 17th, 7:30pm doors 8:00pm showtime

Potluck: December 28th, 6:00pm  – 9:00pm

Artists

Selva Aparicio                                                  https://www.selvaaparicio.com/

Vin Caponigro                                                   https://vincaponigro.com

Michael Chambers                                          https://www.instagram.com/chambersofire/?hl=en

April Dauscha                                                   https://aprildauscha.com/home.html

Millicent Kennedy                                          https://www.millicentkennedy.com

Salvador Jiménez-Flores                             http://www.salvadorjimenezflores.com/

Melanie Wiksell                                               https://mwiksell.com/Home

Parlour and Ramp is pleased to present For the Living, To the Dead, a group exhibition about the practice of grieving, both individual and collective. The physicality of clothing from those lost, textiles with weighty histories and the isolating materials that built the industrial age emphasize the presence of the mourned in this exhibition. Each artist’s practice surrounds loss and looks at it from distinct angles. Reminding us that our vulnerability unites us, from family and community, to workforce and civilization.

Several artworks are rooted in tradition and alchemy and extend the scope of mourning beyond the family unit. These acts of rebellious grieving are performed for lost loved ones, but also for those wronged by industrialization and systematic abuse. In the shadow of a pandemic, under a history of oppression, the United States and Chicago carry palpable weight. Artists addressing these heavy and tenuous topics offer the viewer the chance to engage with these narratives that we all know, all too well.

The venue of this exhibition, Parlour and Ramp Gallery, had a previous life as a neighborhood funeral parlour in the Pilsen neighborhood of Chicago, and in this exhibition looks to connect the space to its history.

Burning In Heaven

Giovanna Pizzoferrato Ribeiro

Burning In Heaven addresses frustrations with communication and broken relationships, the impulses and temporality of passion, and the search for safe spaces and sanity amidst chaos.

I am fatigued of the necessary resilience of Woman and Femme. It is required because of the disrespect and violence towards her being and her body. Witches and Saints alike are burned and beheaded by small angry men. However, simply resenting the need for constant self-defense is not enough. Pepper spray, pocket knives, and witnesses are not enough. 

So I find comfort and healing by turning trauma and heartbreak into intimate vignettes and clever jokes. I carve a ceramic comic strip about being groped by a stranger in the midst of a pandemic where I can’t see my friends or hug my family. I make relentlessly tender portraits of unrequited crushes and ghosting FWB’s. 

Burning in Heaven delights in the power of destruction, calculated responses to strong emotions, and acceptance of mistakes. Like magic, I rearrange harsh words into poetry, I transform mud into stone, and I forgive my own sadness into many glowing stars. I will not cut off my ear, and I would sooner paint my anger than resort to arson. I do confess to smashing dishware in the alley, and ripping up pictures and paintings of ex-friends and ex-lovers. 

My artwork also utilizes humor to deal with chauvinism, whether it be through a delightfully yonic chess set, or making the objectively powerful Queen the tallest piece in the game. Text messages dripping with toxic masculinity are painstakingly copied, decorated with eggshells, shards of glass, and my dusty footprints. 

Burning in Heaven sends prayers for protection, and asks you to let me know when you get home safe. This work acknowledges the trappings of mainstream and binary expectations of gender, monogamy and “correctness”, but still speaks its own truth. We recognize strength in vulnerability, and welcome warmth and softness. An invitation to silliness, familiar teasing, and a loving embrace, when you’re ready - and if you want to. 

Assemble - June, 2021

Parlour and Ramp is pleased to present Assemble, an exhibition of Vic Barquin’s most recent collages alongside the screenprints produced through her collaborative publishing program, Halftone Projects. The collages on display feature screenprinted halftone dots, neon poster board, and torn up fragments of older prints. Using editioned images, she creates unique pieces that originate from duplicates. Her commitment to collage started during the pandemic as a way to limit material expenses and reassess the value of her own work. The simplicity of this new series operates as a distillation of her past prints, offering a sense of clarity through isolated gesture. 

Halftone Projects was born in 2019 when she converted her second bedroom into a fully functioning screenprinting studio where she could collaborate with friends and artists on limited edition screenprints. Since then, she’s produced thirteen editions with nine artists. The editions vary widely in complexity and imagery, resulting in an exciting survey of artists working today. In August, Barquin will leave Chicago to pursue an MFA at the University of Arkansas. This exhibition aligns with the release of a final edition by Elise Guillen, an Oregon based Illustrator.

Site-Specific Memories - March, 2021

Parlour and Ramp is pleased to present Site-Specific Memories, a solo exhibition of Haerim Lee's most recent work that questions the social-political implications of white-washing through abstract paintings, photographs, and artist's books. As an artist with a research-based practice, she investigates the history of the mural All of Mankind (1972) by Bill Walker. By working with archives, community storytelling, and her own memories of the site, she explores the concept of authority when it comes to preserving or destroying history and its implications on local symbols.

By recollecting her own memories and those from the community, this body of work is a form of invention. Creating from the margin, she explores the relationship between location and cultural identity to question inclusivity and exclusivity, racial diversity, resistance, and positionality. Through Site-Specific Memories, she creates a narration of the events from recollected memories surrounding the white-washing of All of Mankind. This new narration serves to hold space for the voices from a community in the margins.

20/20 Colour Theory and The State of Geometry - September, 2020

Parlour and Ramp presents 20/20 Colour Theory and The State of Geometry . Curated by Russell Dammers, this exhibition showcases five Chicago based artists: Ori Hamburg, Cole Pierce, Noah Kashiani, Salvador Campos, and Russell Dammers. 

These five Chicago artists are using the language of Op Art to explore diverging themes. From the fast fashion employed in Kashiani’s sculptures, to the calculated abstractions in Pierce’s work, each of these artists are using an established school of expression to explore materiality in a formal presentation. Whether it’s the locally sourced materials of Campos’ assemblages, the geometric landscapes of Dammer’s canvases, or the kinetic visual quality of Hamburg’s installations, each of these artists offers their audience a means to question visual perception. 

The exhibition opens September 5th and will run until November 6th. 
* Please know that we will be limiting the number of people that can be in the gallery at the same time and face coverings are required to enter. We have ample outdoor space for people to congregate either before you enter the gallery or after you come out.

An Unusable Archive - March, 2020

An Unusable Archive is the most recent installation by collaborative duo N/A (Neeraja D and Ahmed Ozsever). The duo works across continents, Neeraja is based in Bangalore, India, Ahmed in Bloomington, IN and Chicago, IL. Their practice is rooted in conversation and locates subjectivity in linguistic communication, relative to the geographical and physical space one occupies. 

An Unusable Archive channels this process through found materials and blurs the distinction between a fictional and an archetypal archive. The artists simultaneously assume the roles of an archivist and interpreter. They compile material and appear to ascertain meaning from remnant documents. 

An archetypal archive specifically locates history and functions as a memory. It becomes a system of complex relationships if one is able to locate, understand, and interpret the material as part of a larger framework. Works in An Unusable Archive appear to be whole, complete, and absolute in terms of this vision: to record the evidence. However, in order to be useful, an archive must achieve the status of a catalogue. At the very least, it must be able to function on the principle of some discerning classification. Yet, N/A particularly ask: is it possible to look at found material beyond the randomness of its discovery, and towards its potential as a mutable history?

 An archive conjures up notions of objectivity: here is the record, the witness, the evidence of time, motion, action and existence. Yet, it can never escape the limits of its generative impulse: what, why, and whose archive? 

An Unusable Archive opens on March 14th 6-9pm.

Time Stamp - January, 2020

Parlour and Ramp is excited to present Time Stamp, featuring the multimedia works of Chicago based artists; Skye Tanai, Gyae Kim, Logan Kruidenier and Cain Baum. Four artists whose practices diverge and engage with one another through ruminations on time, site, memory, and rigorous material invention. Through video, installation, sculpture and painting these artists challenge the fixed nature of objects in time to project the viewer into a perceptual space that welcomes progress, movement and meditation.

We Make Great Pets - November, 2019

Parlour and Ramp gallery presents We Make Great Pets, an examination into the relationships between humans and their Pets. Pets aren't just innocent friends, they can be extensions of their owners’ identities, fetish objects, or an extension of projection and codependency. This group exhibition features four Chicago based artists Kelly Reaves, Robert J. Soller, Logan Kruidenier, and Caroline Jacobson who explore these types of relationships. We Make Great Pets will run from November 9th - December 1st, 2019, with an opening reception Saturday, November 9th from 6:00 - 10:00 pm. 

Logan Kruidenier (B. 1993, California) is a multimedia artist, currently based in Chicago.  He received his BFA from Chico State, and spent his final year studying abroad at the Kunsthochschule Mainz, in Mainz, Germany. In 2019 he received an MFA in Printmedia from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Logan’s work has been displayed throughout the US, Canada and Germany.  He has produced a number of pop-up exhibitions in Chicago. He is also the creator and host of the “Doodle Jam!”, a free, ongoing drawing workshop, which has been featured in a variety of venues, such as the Chicago Publishers Resource Center, the Twin Cities Zine Fest, and the Chicago Alternative Comics Festival.  He loves drawing animals.

Caroline Jacobson is an interdisciplinary artist living and working in Chicago. She received her BA from Loyola University Chicago in 2014 and an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in May of 2019. She had a recent solo exhibition at Woman Made Gallery and has participated in group exhibitions at Club Nutz, Chicago Artist Coalition, the Elmhurst Art Museum, and Western exhibitions.

Kelly Reaves  (b. 1985, FL) lives and works in Chicago as a visual and sound artist, writer, art handler, etc. Her work is intended to appeal to our most basic human emotions through lurid visual cues and a visceral manipulation of materials — an attempt to capture the sloppy, melancholy feelings between love and dread.

Robert J. Soller Chicago born artist Robert J. Soller completed course work at SAIC before graduating from The Ringling School of Art and Design with a degree in illustration. Soller currently resides and works in Humboldt Park. 

Bittersweet Sinthome - September, 2019

Three Seed Gallery presents Bittersweet Sinthome, a two-person exhibition of paintings by artists Dell Martinez and Sophie Wallace. Sinthome, the turn in Jacque Lacan’s writing on the symptome in psychoanalysis from a symbolic message to be deciphered, to a phenomenon presented by the subject as a kernel of the subject’s jouissance. Martinez’ and Wallace’s figurative works reject direct analysis in favor of the process of self-investigation through which their images manifest. The depiction of the body shifts, disintegrates, and reemerges from the artists’ intuitive practices.

Dell Martinez - lives and works in San Francisco, CA.

I utilize visual combinations and subconscious decision making to explore the subjective experience of pre-nuclear Armageddon. My actions are an attempt to refine and develop my vision of the world amid the millennium sprawl, urban decay and knowledge of impending disaster. While the clock counts down I will continue to define what it means to be an over-sentient mammal.

Sophie Wallace - lives and works in Chicago, IL.

It’s funny how easily we identify with the body. When given a slice of the figure, our minds innately fill in what’s missing. No matter how distorted the image may be, we manage to depict these familiar shapes and claim them as our own. The pieces in which my psyche are most prevalent are the ones embedded with absent minded emotion. The process isn’t always about some kind of release for me. Most of it is about what I am learning from both myself and the world I live in.

CHROMATIC PLANE - august 2019

three bodies of works by painters; Russell Dammers Zack G. Goulet and Kubota Fumikazu.  Chromatic Plane explores Dammers, Goulet and Fumikazu’s shared interest in the phenomenological, metaphysical and psychosocial potentials of formal abstraction.  The works function as personal reflections and investigations into systems of optic reception through the physical presence of painting.  Ultimately Dammers, Goulet and Fumikazu provide alternative perspectives and positive solutions in practices rooted in color, form and process.

PAREIDOLIA LOST, SALVADOR CAMPOS - june 2019

In their scarred, bent, broken and crushed condition these pieces tell stories of the city. They represent cycles of life in the city. Each piece contains not only a unique history but potential for aesthetic function. I strive for that moment of recognition when the viewer not only sees the individual parts but†the whole thing at the same time.

fragments of dissociation, Ramiro silva-cortes - june 2019

This new body of work explores the relation between depression, social anxiety, and human interactions. Such as the desire to belong while operating as a fragment of a whole, and simultaneously being incapable of dealing with the self in order to re-connect with the real world.

The use of geometrical shapes and dreamy color palette aim to dehumanize the subject matter and enhance the fantasy of an extremely positive society. Similar to the approach of a documentarian witnessing how society keeps moving though many are stuck in an internal fight, the work attempts to simplify dealing with these emotions and failure. In doing so, it challenges the viewers to consider this concept and create their own conclusion. While the artworks optimistically imply that healing may one day be a possibility, it also suggests that not wanting to re-connect with the real world may result in a life of perfection.

EXIST - APRIL 2019

Bodies of work from three contemporary Chicago photographers exploring what it means to be humanized, and therefore vulnerable, in a world in which existence is fleeting. Scientists claim that our cells regenerate at a rate that causes our entire body to replace itself within 7 years. How do we as humans conceive of existence from the lens of a fragmented conglomerate? How does the impermanence of the nature of reality reflect in our limited understandings of ourselves and others?