RECAP // A look back at the gallery in 2024
As we look back on 2024, we’re filled with warmth while revisiting the incredible exhibitions that have graced our gallery this year. From bold new works to thought-provoking collections that have taken the artists years to create, each show sparked conversation and invited our community to see the world in fresh ways.
In this recap, we’re sharing some of the highlights, celebrating the artists and ideas that have made this year truly memorable. Enjoy!
Artwork by Yaismel Alba Garib
Far from Cuba. Always on the edge. Expecting. Surviving. A catfish on the shore. I no longer feel the entrance to my hometown, nor the nights with those who stayed. Self exile. Exhaust. To play every day in a BDSM room. Everything passes, and only the painting remains. The walls, on which murals and photos of the murderers once stood, are now torn down. On the surfaces, there are paintings. Affirmations. Cuba before the disaster. Future. Paradiso by Jose Lezama Lima. Everything comes together in Chicago. Comfort Station welcomes me. The space is a bedroom. Sex. Pain. Calm. Where distance produces innocence. Where false identity is assumed to see images that excite you. And the WOW and the YEAH blend together as the paint settles and the cum shoots out.
Yaismel Alba Garib, born 1990 in Matanzas, Cuba, holds an MFA in Performance from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and a BFA in Theater Studies from the University of Arts (ISA) in Havana, Cuba. His art navigates the dualities of completeness and emptiness, exploring the ever-changing spaces within the world and the transitional nature of artistic expression.
@_yaismel
Artwork by Sangwoo Yoo
Sangwoo Yoo creates art with the intention of reawakening the dulled senses of contemporary subjects. While working as an archaeologist, he was drawn to objects imbued with static temporal weight. However, the social reality around him seemed simultaneously oversaturated and depleted, marked by rapid and chaotic changes. Yoo believes that this aggressive society can lead people to lose their cool-headedness and be numbed, which is why they aim to reconnect their lost senses through their art. For instance, in ‘Portrait of Loss’, Sangwoo transformed a discarded Christmas tree into dust with its natural pine scent, creating an olfactory experience that demonstrates the feeling of loss.
In terms of material use, Yoo explores how material can have an ecological cycle, focusing on embracing ephemerality and leaving behind a minimal environmental footprint. Moving forward, he aims to create art that makes a practical contribution to society and the environment and sparks a reaction. Sangwoo views his art as a tool to inspire change and help people regain their senses and connect with their environment.
Sangwoo Yoo (born in Seoul, 1994) is an interdisciplinary artist specializing in sculpture and installation. His practice is driven by the intention to reawaken modern senses, creates art that engages multiple senses, challenges societal numbness, and aims to make a practical contribution to society and the environment through material ecological cycles.
@ sangwooyoo_
Artwork by Sayeda Misa Sourour
Photos by Mengjun Duan
A place of gathering, now left folded and still.
I was no longer tripping on piles of shib shibs in the doorway
Or smothered with hugs, kisses and cheek pinches.
An abundance of simultaneous laughter, yelling, children crying, and Al Jazeera reports
Now replaced with the subtle whispers of leftover tinsel from Ramadan past off the balcony.
As prayer calls echo, it occurred to me that the revolution would mark my last taste of molokhia.
"Al-Atlal الأطلال”, which translates to “The Ruins”, is an exhibition that features redefined prayer rugs and various iterations referencing the monobloc chair. The work is a reflection of the material relationship of the interior and exterior domestic spaces of Sourour's upbringing in Cairo, Egypt. Grappling with themes of loss, both personal and the collective grief felt throughout the Middle East due to occupation, genocide and colonial imperialism. The viewer is invited into a space that accents ordinary characteristics of Arab lifestyle. Yet, despite the dehumanization and trauma that is imposed with being Arab there's a resilience rooted in the heart that endures an unyielding resistance.
Sayeda Misa Sourour is an Egyptian interdisciplinary artist from New Jersey, based in Chicago, Illinois. Sourour is currently pursuing a Bachelors of Fine Arts at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in the United States.
@spaghettilegz_
Artwork by Sheldon Till–Campbell and Zulkhairi Zulkiflee
In negotiating a sense of place, Zulkhairi and Sheldon navigate imaginary terrains through the interface of the formal and pictorial, where landscapes are in constant motion.
Sheldon’s analysis of the Midwest oscillates between attentive presence and abstract detachment. Often his formal explorations resonate with the Regionalist tradition in American art, where he attempts to complicate and expand the existing visual shorthand for the region. His work calibrates a vision that grows out of his Midwestern upbringing, an approach that is simultaneously invested, critical, and uncertain. Through attention and slowness, Sheldon’s explorations generate a quiet space that hovers between desire and dislocation.
In Zulkhairi’s current exploration, he attempts to make sense of relocation and negotiate a new sense of place. Through the search for familiarity, he seeks company in historical knowledge like the Java Village from the World Columbian Exposition. In this process, Zulkhairi introduces pavilion-shelters as a conceptual conduit to notions of rest and storytelling, in particular, the concept of 'world' — a confabulatory framework devised by the artist and derived from a Singaporean-Malay slang used in bilingual speech of World English variety.
Zulkhairi Zulkiflee is an artist-curator committed to exploring Malay identity and its social ontology. His lens-based artworks unpack such structures in relation to local and global contexts, particularly through the racialized body as a conduit.
@llzhzg
Sheldon Till-Campbell is a Chicago-based artist whose work uses landscape, conversation, and drawing-based drift as tools to question how we inhabit. Sheldon grew up homeschooled in Kansas City, MO, and has a particular interest in the American Midwest as a regional identity and context.
@sheldontillcampbell
Artwork by Jonathan Michael Castillo
Flags, Food and Faith is a collection of photographs made primarily in Chicago’s South and Westside neighborhoods that focuses on small businesses owned by Black and Latino residents. Utilizing environmental portraits and photographs of interior spaces, my images highlight the economic and social contributions of small businesses in our underserved neighborhoods. Based on data collected by the city of Chicago for the new Citywide Plan, a clear disparity in business ownership exists across racial groups. Black residents are 29% of the population yet own only 4% of businesses. Latinos are 30% of the population and own just 9% of the businesses across the city.
During my time making this work it became clear to me through conversations with business owners that building ownership was an important ingredient in creating more permanent establishments. The kinds of shops that become integrally woven into the fabric of the surrounding community very often do so because building ownership creates stability and longevity. This is how a donut shop in Roseland that opened in 1972 becomes so beloved that it still sells out its donuts every day or a soul food restaurant in Austin is a required campaign stop for almost every city, state and national politician.
This project seeks to honor the businesses that do exist, their owners and the people who keep them running while also creating a social contract with the city of Chicago. Data has been collected, disparities have been identified, and communities have been consulted. Now work needs to be done.Project funding provided by the Chicago Departments of Cultural Affairs & Special Events and Planning & Development as part of the Citywide Plan.
Jonathan Michael Castillo is a visual artist, photographer and educator based in Chicago whose projects focus on people, place and social issues.
@joncastillophoto
Artwork by olivier
Bibliographical, nonsense #3: Paratextual Messages of the (UF)Os
work by olivier
August 3 – September 1, 2024
S(H)ELF; {Neither;
—|
—| Index away— Write me off—
—| The exhausted object: Grants me, now!,
—| this contemplation pure of a language of the dawn. Rise, now!
—|
—|
^Previously in nonsense #2^ Started with the acceptance of a close encounter(...)ended in an encounter of self—a lack(-nessless) of self, but selves. (uh, oh)
—|
Here comes nonsense #3. > Genette: “...Paradoxically, paratexts without texts do exist…” (Hmm…)
What is it to have a Borgesian way of navigating the originless shelves of Os in a UFO archive…all that are left are paratexts…where to next? how does the self move on? should one go on? The bookshelves have collapsed and the flying saucers will never land: We are living off from the (im)balance of pleasure and jouissance— Can this be a loss of a self among selves? Are selves scattered in the instant of ekstasis (1)?
—|
Genette, again: (in an imaginary interview) “...the text interests me (only) in its textual transcendence— namely, everything that brings it into relation (manifest or hidden) with other texts.
I call that transtextuality…”v
trans(t)exuality…?
S( H )ELF; Nor}
1. (from Ancient Greek ἔκστασις) to stand outside of or transcend [oneself].
Mysticism > Existentialism …. displacement…sourceless….
… (?self-annihilation?)
olivier (b. British-Hong Kong) is a research-based artist+writer and archives worker whose practice is rooted in the ephemerality and the anarchival in queer and trans theory, and ufology. They live in a time-machine, toy with poetics and semiotics, caressing languaging and linguistics.
@xoliiviierx
Artwork by Maddie May
Photos by Mikey Mosher
still, still is an exhibition amplifying the residues of life and the permanence of loss through multimedia works by Chicago-based artist Maddie May. Delving into intimate narratives embedded in everyday Midwestern household items, May explores themes of death, touch, time, and the quiet persistence of grief.
Central to the exhibition is May’s "Grief Towels" series, featuring hand-woven textiles that depict worn hand and dish towels that evoke touch, privacy, and intimacy, speaking of tenderness and the traces of life left behind after death. Also featured is May's newest project, "Memorial," an ongoing documentary publication cataloging items from Chicago-based community members related to those they have lost.
In still, still, works explore grieving processes, memory, legacy, and love through everyday objects.
Works in this exhibition were funded by the Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events (DCASE) Individual Artists Program.
Maddie May is a Chicago-based interdisciplinary artist. Their multi-sensory artworks investigate Midwestern class and turbulent histories, spanning textiles, sculpture, print, scent, and sound processes. May holds an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and a BFA from Kendall College of Art and Design.
@maddiemay.studio
Artwork by Ray Madrigal
Photos by Mikey Mosher
It becomes easy to forget how much we need each other.
Intercepted by the market, needs previously met through collaboration have now warped into an endless pursuit of independent preparedness. The dominant ethos is this: take care of your own. You don’t owe anyone anything. Protect your peace. We place our faith in a constant warding off of loss, traceable in the stuff of our surroundings. Abundance is guarded as stockpile.
Then there exists, alongside the kind of safety-making that decays social bonds, a softer method of survival that reinforces them. A sense – in certain queer and nonwhite and broke groups – of mutually generated security. An unpredictable, yet insistent, flow of crowdsourced rent relief; shared meals; clumsy good intentions; homemade air purifiers; the same $20 venmoed back and forth; herbal remedies; moving assistance; living room acupuncture; tenant unions; shared passwords; skin to skin contact… on and on.
Not the ostensibly eternal stability of a house in your name, but a safety conjured up moment to moment, spell-like. A space you might step inside and learn to recreate.
Fear of Losing, Love of Having probes our daily attempts at safety-making, dysfunctional and humane alike. The show is a material hypothesis of noticing as resistance, of slowness and widened eyes as crucial tools in the creation of gentler futures.
Rather than positing an answer, the works within hold up objects, moments, and efforts like flash cards, images connected to questions: How did this way of life come to be? Who decided it so? And how might we nudge our collective reality towards more humane, more loving methods of safety-making?
Ray Madrigal (b.1999) is a chicanx lesbian and maker in many mediums. They currently live, work, and play in Chicago, IL.
@raymadrigalmakes
Artwork by D Rosen
Photos by Levi Shand
VAMP features works from the series Queer Deity IV. Crucial to this work was Joan Roughgarden's research in Evolution's Rainbow, which describes queer kinship behaviors within Vampire Bats, including feeding, grooming, and same-sex pair bonding. According to Bat biologist Dr. Merlin Tuttle, human fear is the most significant conservation issue facing Bats. Queer and trans people also struggle with the harms of being feared and misunderstood.
Using this research and more, Rosen created a body of work focused on Vampire Bats as a part of their ongoing Queer Deity series, which celebrates queer and trans life in more-than-human worlds. The show includes glass Bats, a Bat house for local communities, and iron paintings. BiG SiSSY, a Tiohtià:ke/Montréal-based drag musician, will perform at night on November 15th. VAMP sheds light on the ubiquity of queerness within natural worlds and celebrates the beauty of kinship in queer and trans communities.
D Rosen is a sculptor and writer. They operate from the position that questions of animality are not binary but rather a tangle of ecologies and richly complicated identities framed by culture.
Artwork by E. Saffronia Downing and Rosemary Holliday Hall
Photos by Mikey Mosher
Tracing Ways
work by E. Saffronia Downing and Rosemary Holliday Hall
December 7, 2024 – January 5, 2025
“Walking is how the body measures itself against the earth.”– Rebecca Solnit, Wanderlust
Traces of movement, join and disperse– sneakers sink in soft soil, paw prints scamper across the sidewalk, paths of wood-boring beetles embroider a fallen tree. We mark our cohabitation as we criss-cross the continent.
Tracing Ways, is a site-specific installation that draws attention to the tracks and traces of human and more-than-human cohabitants. Living on parallel coasts, collaborators Rosemary Holliday Hall and E. Saffronia Downing, convene at Comfort Station to weave together a collection of tracks gathered from their disparate environments.
For these transient artists, Tracing Ways becomes a stopover, referencing Comfort Station’s history as a space for travelers to pause as they moved through the city. Using clay as a recording device, Downing and Hall capture and suspend the ever-flowing motion of beings against the earth.
E. Saffronia Downing is an artist and educator invested in craft processes, embodied research, and ecological thought. Downing forages local materials to create site-specific installations and sculptures.
Rosemary Holliday Hall is an interdisciplinary artist and educator whose work engages visual arts and natural sciences. Her current projects focus on insects, transformation, and the history of materials to explore ecological entanglements.
@rosemaryhhall