Four Stories

The artist’s story is a complex one – a personal metaphor, told through objects, about how one encounters the world with all its tenuous layers, fragility, and complicated histories. The setting begins in the fleshy mounds of the palms that hold threaded needles, wooden handles, wet plaster, and pressed clay. It is from this small space of the body where mighty images are willed into being.

This group exhibition brings together the diverse practices of four artists Gina Adams (Vancouver), Megan Pahmier (Brooklyn), Nirmal Raja (Milwaukee), and James Stephens (Chicago). 

Adams cuts and severs antique beddings then meticulously reassembles them to reconcile and heal a brutal history. Pahmier squeezes and pinches clay, embedding her hand print and coating her grip in brass to soothe the confronting gesture of the body. Raja memorializes and casts her grandmother’s cooking and serving wares by interjecting colorful sarees that once wrapped the body. Stephens invents and builds enigmatic worlds with visceral accretions of color that teeter between the imagined and tangible.