Tala is thrilled to announce 𝗧𝗛𝗥𝗢𝗔𝗧, a solo exhibition by KC Crow Maddux, opening on Saturday December 13, 6–9PM

This exhibition marks the artist’s first return to Chicago in nearly twenty years: first exhibiting at the Renaissance Society as part of 𝘈𝘭𝘭 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘗𝘳𝘦𝘵𝘵𝘺 𝘊𝘰𝘳𝘱𝘴𝘦𝘴 (2006), Maddux went on to present his inaugural solo exhibition at gescheidle (2007). Curated once again by Susan Gescheidle, KC Maddux’s newest series of dioramic paintings commemorates his decades-long conceptualization of symbolisms and visual architectures that inhabit the spaces where binary language fails and dissolves.

Maddux constructs handmade frames to surround his recessed airbrush painted collages, which allows the work to be seen only through the opening of a silhouette. Inside, his paintings are built by layering images of architectural and bodily glyphs, rendering them indeterminate yet charged with a somatic, visceral disintegration. By abstracting the figure through a lexicon of voids, frames, and shadows, Maddux erodes the historically limited nomenclature of identity and instigates a new visual vernaculars that more accurately articulate the complexities of the physical and social body. Here, he conceptualizes the orifice as the beginning of semiotic production - an open maw where the internal, digestive process of language-making is revealed and new meaning can emerge.

Tala is excited to host 𝘏𝘰𝘸 𝘊𝘭𝘰𝘴𝘦 𝘊𝘢𝘯 𝘠𝘰𝘶 𝘎𝘦𝘵 𝘵𝘰 𝘢 𝘚𝘵𝘳𝘢𝘯𝘨𝘦𝘳, a book launch and exhibition by Steven Piper opening on Friday November 14, 6-9PM

𝘏𝘰𝘸 𝘊𝘭𝘰𝘴𝘦 𝘊𝘢𝘯 𝘠𝘰𝘶 𝘎𝘦𝘵 𝘵𝘰 𝘢 𝘚𝘵𝘳𝘢𝘯𝘨𝘦𝘳 is an ongoing, evolving photographic series featuring a selection of images from a larger body of more than 2,000 photographs taken by Piper between 2018 and 2024 across Paris, Étretat, Bordeaux, Arcachon, and Biarritz. For this iteration, 𝘏𝘰𝘸 𝘊𝘭𝘰𝘴𝘦 𝘊𝘢𝘯 𝘠𝘰𝘶 𝘎𝘦𝘵 𝘵𝘰 𝘢 𝘚𝘵𝘳𝘢𝘯𝘨𝘦𝘳 will manifest as an exhibition of Piper’s most recent pallatinum palladium prints alongside taking publication form for the first time. Printed by Nocault, a limited edition photography book of 500 will accompany the show. Available for purchase opening night.

𝘏𝘰𝘸 𝘊𝘭𝘰𝘴𝘦 𝘊𝘢𝘯 𝘠𝘰𝘶 𝘎𝘦𝘵 𝘵𝘰 𝘢 𝘚𝘵𝘳𝘢𝘯𝘨𝘦𝘳 is an continuous exploration of Piper’s recurring subject of choice - the stranger. To him, this proximity to the subject is an extension of his fascination with scales of intimacy. Arranged along a progressing gradient of proximity, far away landscapes sequentially become detailed portraits. Piper invites the viewer to perceive themselves through the eyes of a stranger, as if meeting for the first time - suspending the moment of first recognition as a practice of releasing judgements and an affirmation of an eternal gaze.

“𝘛𝘰 𝘮𝘺 𝘴𝘶𝘣𝘫𝘦𝘤𝘵𝘴, 𝘺𝘰𝘶 𝘸𝘦𝘳𝘦 𝘰𝘯𝘤𝘦 𝘢 𝘱𝘢𝘴𝘴𝘦𝘳𝘣𝘺 𝘪𝘯 𝘮𝘺 𝘭𝘪𝘧𝘦, 𝘺𝘦𝘵 𝘯𝘰𝘸 𝘐 𝘭𝘰𝘰𝘬 𝘢𝘵 𝘺𝘰𝘶, 𝘴𝘰 𝘪𝘯𝘵𝘦𝘯𝘵𝘭𝘺”

The classical pianist Glenn Gould once claimed that live performance was a lie: that the myth of a singular climax or resolution betrayed music’s real potential to exist in fragments, repetitions, and variations without end. In 1962, before a Carnegie Hall audience, conductor Leonard Bernstein famously disavowed Gould’s interpretation of Brahms’ First Piano Concerto, announcing his disagreement even as he went on to conduct it with Gould at the keys. Soon after, Gould abandoned live performance for the recording studio, refusing the teleological “end” of performance-as-event in favor of endless rehearsal, revision, and loop. He displaced resolution, shifting it from the arc of live performance into the artificial layering of fragments.

This refusal resonates beyond music. In modernist aesthetics, teleology structured assumptions of progress: that art evolved linearly from realism to abstraction, or from medium specificity to dematerialization. Postmodern and contemporary theory have since revealed these trajectories as constructed, ideological, and often Eurocentric. What remains instead are practices that stall, divert, or parody resolution. Structures falter at their intended ends, fragments substitute or defer, and objects linger as residues of teleological promise undone.

The works of Laila Majid, Joseph J. Greer, and Anastasia Sif Karkazis each stage this condition differently. Majid’s Chasers, suspended on delicately pliant piano wire, carry an embodied nervousness, their vibrating forms oscillating between lure and refusal. They evoke touch yet withhold it, marking thresholds where presence flickers and slips away. Greer’s sculptures pursue a mode of disassemblage and reconstitution of mechanical purpose, where use gives way to misalignment and recognition gives way to semblance. His appropriated vehicle parts double as lures, fragments that parody design memory, staging frustrated encounters with function. Karkazis composes soundscapes where the familiar becomes estranged: a film score warped with field recordings, insect rhythms made uncanny, personal notes spoken by her digitally decomposing vocal, voice clones caught between presence and absence. Confessions emerge from indiscernible speakers only to dissolve before they can be verified. Her loops fold intimacy into distance, refracting recognition into misrecognition and making listening itself a suspended act, where meaning hovers without resolution.

Together, these works do not offer resolution but orbit one another in suspension. Desire flickers into refusal, utility into parody, intimacy into absence. What results is not dysfunction alone but a melancholic satire of systems undone, where meaning remains speculative, fragmentary, and everything strains toward relation.

Exhibition text written by Misael José Oquendo, writer and visual artist.

Photo by Bob. (Robert Heishman)

‘If something happens to me and you can’t tell me by my face, you can know me by this mark.’

Toni Morrison, Beloved 
(New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1987), 6