Picturing the American Experience

Gilman Contemporary presents a striking introduction to the work of Alia Ali, an artist whose multicultural background spanning Yemen, Bosnia, and the United States deeply informs her visual language. Her photographs, rich in pattern and color, navigate the complex terrain of identity, migration, and belonging. Rather than offering conventional portraiture, Ali envelops her subjects in boldly patterned textiles, allowing fabric itself to become both veil and voice. These coverings obscure familiar markers of identity, inviting viewers to question how much of what we think we know about a person is shaped by what we see—or what we assume. Each photograph extends beyond its frame through a unique presentation: hand-upholstered borders covered in the same fabric featured in the image. This tactile continuity draws the viewer into an immersive experience, dissolving the boundaries between image, object, and space. The result is a body of work that feels simultaneously intimate and enigmatic, offering a layered meditation on how culture, memory, and movement shape personal and collective histories. For Ali, cloth is more than material; it is a universal marker of life’s passage. From early swaddling to ceremonial garments and final shrouds, textiles accompany humanity through every threshold. Her work highlights these transitions, embracing the fabric’s power to protect and conceal, to signal tradition, and to challenge expectations. Through each piece, Ali encourages viewers to consider the ways textiles inform how we recognize ourselves and others, and how cultural narratives are woven—literally and metaphorically—into daily existence. Her practice is driven by a profound sense of empathy and recognition. As Ali states, her work honors those “hidden in plain sight,” especially migrants whose stories are too often overlooked. She emphasizes the dignity, beauty, and enduring strength embedded in their experiences. In this spirit, her art becomes an act of acknowledgment—an offering dedicated not only to others, but also to all of us navigating identity and place. Image: Red Blossom, Archival pigment print on French produced Canson Baryta Photographique Matte Paper 310gr. with anti-reflective UV protection mounted on aluminum Dibond in custom-built wooden frame, hand upholstered by artist with muslin and Rajasthani hand-printed cotton using traditional wood block printing methods 63 x 39 x 3 inches© Alia Ali

if a butterfly ever saw an owl presents an intricate exploration of perception, language, and the nature of photographic representation. Through interconnected series such as “The Anonymous Shapes of Words,” “I Want to Believe Sea Cucumbers Are Happy,” and “Is the Eye I Am Seen As Is the Eye I See Myself Through,” Assaf Evron interrogates how images communicate and how meaning is constructed. These works navigate the tension between abstraction and objecthood, revealing the limits of representation while remaining deeply anchored in the materiality of photography itself. Evron’s practice engages both philosophical and literary inquiries, reflecting on cameras as tools of language and architecture—both modern and ancient—as a framework for understanding human perception. Each image carries a subtle awareness of its construction, highlighting the mechanics and constraints inherent in photographic processes. Through careful formal experimentation, Evron reveals the illusion of representation while making the camera’s own language the central narrative, asking viewers to question not only what they see but how they interpret it. Rooted in a study of vision and the interplay between culture and nature, Evron’s work often reflects on the Anthropocene, using photography to capture a sense of loss, melancholy, and the fragility of our world. His investigations extend across two- and three-dimensional media, collapsing boundaries between perception, experience, and material reality. The works invite audiences to contemplate how socially constructed systems—whether linguistic, architectural, or environmental—shape our understanding of both the seen and the unseen. Born in Israel in 1977 and based in Chicago, Evron combines rigorous academic study with an inventive artistic practice. He holds an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and an MA from The Cohn Institute for the History and Philosophy of Science and Ideas at Tel Aviv University. His work has been exhibited internationally, including at The Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago, Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, and The Israel Museum in Jerusalem. if a butterfly ever saw an owl invites reflection on vision, meaning, and the poetic intersections of human perception and photographic form. Image: Parallax No. 6, 2020-2021 20 x 40 in © Rose Marasco

PDNB Gallery marks the holiday season with a lively group exhibition designed to celebrate the joy of giving art. Now nestled in the basement level of the Wells Fargo Building on Denton’s historic Downtown Square, the gallery embraces its new location with an event that blends accessibility, curiosity, and a spirit of discovery. This year’s presentation brings together an eclectic mix of works thoughtfully priced to encourage visitors to share the gift of creativity. The exhibition features a wide selection of photographs, paintings, and vernacular images, all offered at approachable price points ranging from $150 to $2,500. Alongside these pieces, the gallery showcases works by artists represented by PDNB, offering both seasoned collectors and newcomers a chance to explore meaningful artworks without the intimidation often associated with traditional art markets. Complementing the exhibition is a large book sale, an annual favorite for those seeking artist monographs, rare publications, and museum catalogs. Each title invites viewers deeper into photographic history, technique, and artistic vision, making the book table a draw for enthusiasts who appreciate the pleasure of holding art in printed form. Adding an extra layer of charm, PDNB presents a selection of objets d’art sourced by owners Burt and Missy Finger. These treasures — from colored glass vases to folk art, clocks, and other collected curiosities — echo the spirited atmosphere of the gallery’s earlier FUN SHOWs in 2011 and 2013. Their inclusion underscores PDNB’s long-standing commitment to playful exploration and the delight of the unexpected. Visitors are invited to join the opening reception and Holiday Party on Saturday, December 13, from 2 to 5 PM. With refreshments, good company, and a warm, welcoming environment, the event promises a festive afternoon that celebrates creativity in all its forms. Admission, as always, is free. Image: Karl Blossfeldt, Centaurea ruthenica, c. 1920's

ROSEGALLERY presents Fantômes, a new body of work by photographer Diana Markosian, a series that drifts between memory and movement, presence and disappearance. Drawing inspiration from Victor Hugo’s meditations on shadow and spirit, Markosian turns her lens toward the Cuban National Ballet’s interpretation of Giselle, a work long cherished for its blend of passion, tragedy, and transformation. In her hands, the ballet becomes a living echo—an art form both luminous and fading, rooted in tradition yet marked by fragility. Rather than freezing dancers mid-gesture, Markosian allows their motion to unravel across the frame. Limbs blur, outlines tremble, and bodies seem to float in a space where time stretches thin. The images pulse with the dancers’ shifting identities, capturing them at the threshold between the physical world and the spectral realm that Giselle inhabits. Through soft dissolves and trembling silhouettes, the photographs whisper of a cultural inheritance that once stood firmly at the center of Cuban artistic pride but now flickers under the weight of changing circumstances. Markosian’s background as a ballet dancer lends the series an intimate sensitivity. Her compositions recall the quiet observation of a painter, attentive to light, gesture, and emotional resonance. In Fantômes, the dancers seem suspended in a state of becoming, as though negotiating who they are and what they represent in an evolving cultural landscape. The images hover gently between melancholy and grace, suggesting not only the story of Giselle but also the delicate endurance of an artistic tradition navigating an uncertain future. Known for weaving photography with cinematic sensibilities, Markosian continues to explore themes of belonging and memory through works that feel both personal and universal. Fantômes stands as a meditation on transience—of bodies, art forms, and collective dreams—offering viewers a poignant reflection on what lingers even as it fades. Image: Warming up, 2024 © Diana Markosian

Casting a Glance: Dancing with Smithson brings together eighteen contemporary artists in conversation with the visionary mind of Robert Smithson, whose radical rethinking of art’s relationship with the Earth continues to shape generations. Taking its title from Smithson’s declaration that “a great artist can make art by simply casting a glance,” the exhibition invites artists to move alongside his legacy—resisting, improvising, and extending his restless rhythm. From his early drawings that questioned the ideals of European Modernism to his later meditations on entropy and geology, Smithson remains a pivotal figure whose ideas transcend time and form. Anchored by Mirror Displacement Indoors (1969)—an uprooted tree intertwined with mirrors that reflects both decay and endurance—the exhibition underscores Smithson’s enduring fascination with transformation. Around this central work orbit pieces that echo, counter, and expand his vision. Leonor Antunes and Álvaro Urbano explore the mirrored lives of trees; Delcy Morelos and An-My Lê engage with earth and landscape as living memory; and Ana Mendieta’s ephemeral earthworks resonate with Smithson’s Hypothetical Continents. Giuseppe Penone, Tony Cragg, Pierre Huyghe, and James Welling each reimagine the natural and the artificial in dialogue with Smithson’s sculptural poetics. Further exchanges unfold between Nairy Baghramian’s suspended forms and Smithson’s hand-built minimalism, between Daniel Boyd’s layered imagery and Smithson’s explorations of myth and body. Works by Julie Mehretu and Steve McQueen deepen the meditation on time, matter, and memory, while Tacita Dean’s salt studies echo the crystalline landscapes of Spiral Jetty. Three film collaborations between Smithson and Nancy Holt—East/Coast West Coast, Swamp, and Spiral Jetty—enrich this dialogue, offering a moving reflection on process, place, and perception. In Casting a Glance, Smithson’s inquiries into entropy, permanence, and the poetics of decay unfold as a living conversation—an ever-evolving dance between artist, earth, and time. Image: Robert Smithson gathering material for Nonsite “Line of Wreckage” Bayonne, New Jersey (1968) Photograph: Nancy Holt © Nancy Holt

Corita Kent: The Sorcery of Images offers a vivid immersion into the restless, generous imagination of an artist who believed that seeing was an act of faith and attention. On view from September 26, 2025 to January 24, 2026, the exhibition reveals how Corita Kent transformed the everyday world into a living archive of possibility, where street signs, gestures, celebrations, and accidents became raw material for meaning. Best known for her radiant serigraphs that fused pop culture, spirituality, and political conviction, Corita Kent occupied a singular place in American art. As a nun, educator, and activist in mid-century Los Angeles, she cultivated a practice rooted in curiosity and empathy. Her classrooms at Immaculate Heart College became laboratories of freedom, where rules were bent and visual language was constantly reimagined. Typography, color, and quotation were not decorative tools but ethical ones, capable of carrying hope, dissent, and compassion. This exhibition turns attention to a lesser-known but essential aspect of Corita’s work: her vast photographic slide archive. Comprising thousands of images captured between 1955 and 1968, these photographs reveal how attentively she observed her surroundings. Billboards, storefronts, handmade signs, flowers, puppets, and moments of communal ritual all appear as fragments awaiting transformation. Photography functioned not as an end point, but as a gathering practice, a way of collecting visual syllables to be recomposed later into new statements. Presented as a multi-screen digital projection, the installation echoes Corita’s legendary slide-lecture performances, where images were layered, shuffled, and reconnected in real time. Meaning emerges through juxtaposition rather than hierarchy, reflecting her belief that art is an act of relating rather than isolating. The experience is rhythmic, playful, and deeply human, inviting viewers to follow her associative logic. Corita Kent: The Sorcery of Images ultimately celebrates a way of seeing that resists cynicism. It reminds us that attention can be radical, that joy can be serious, and that the world—looked at closely enough—offers endless material for care, connection, and change. Image: © Corita Kent

Richard Gardner: Animas-Animus presents a contemplative body of work that draws viewers into the quiet, often unseen terrain of the psyche. On view from December 31, 2025 through January 25, 2026, the exhibition unfolds as a visual meditation on Carl Jung’s concept of the Anima and Animus—the inner forces that shape how individuals relate to themselves and the world. Gardner approaches these ideas not through grand symbolism, but by carefully arranging familiar, everyday objects, inviting reflection through recognition rather than spectacle. In this series, ordinary materials are transformed into psychological stand-ins, each composition functioning as a portrait of inner life. The feminine principle of Eros, associated with connection, intuition, and feeling, appears in subtle tensions with the masculine principle of Logos, linked to order, logic, and structure. Rather than presenting these forces as opposites locked in conflict, Gardner treats them as interdependent energies, constantly negotiating balance. The resulting images carry a quiet intensity, encouraging slow looking and introspection. Light and shadow play a crucial role throughout the work, echoing Jung’s belief that self-understanding requires acknowledgment of both conscious and unconscious aspects of the personality. Some images suggest harmony and integration, while others expose friction, imbalance, or unresolved tension. This oscillation mirrors the ongoing psychological process of individuation, where wholeness is not achieved through dominance of one side, but through acceptance of complexity. Gardner’s use of still-life traditions grounds the work in a long photographic and artistic lineage, yet his conceptual framework situates the series firmly in contemporary discourse around identity and inner life. By stripping away narrative excess, he leaves space for viewers to project their own experiences, memories, and emotional responses onto the images. Animas-Animus ultimately invites a personal reckoning. Through quiet compositions and symbolic restraint, the exhibition asks viewers to consider how opposing impulses coexist within them, and how recognizing both shadow and light can serve as a bridge toward a more integrated sense of self. Image: © Richard Gardner

Teri Figliuzzi: Gathering unfolds as a quiet, tactile meditation on the intimate bond between human touch and the natural world. On view from December 31, 2025 to January 25, 2026, the exhibition reflects Figliuzzi’s lifelong impulse to collect, observe, and preserve organic forms encountered in fields, gardens, forests, and along the edges of water. These landscapes are not backdrops but collaborators—places of refuge that offer stillness, color, and a sense of continuity beyond the rhythms of daily life. At the heart of this body of work is the act of gathering itself. Figliuzzi works directly with fragments of living matter—petals, leaves, seeds, stems—assembling them by hand into delicate phytograms. This slow, intentional process allows each element to retain its individuality while becoming part of a larger composition. The resulting images feel both carefully composed and quietly instinctive, balancing structure with the organic unpredictability of nature. Themes of growth, decay, and renewal move gently through the work. Figliuzzi does not shy away from fragility; instead, she embraces it as an essential stage of life. Wilted edges, translucent veins, and subtle discolorations become markers of time rather than imperfections. In this way, the work honors nature’s cycles, reminding viewers that resilience is inseparable from vulnerability, and that rebirth often follows moments of loss or stillness. The process of preserving these botanical encounters becomes an act of memory. Each composition holds the trace of a specific place and moment, transforming fleeting experiences into lasting visual records. There is a quiet reverence in this preservation, a recognition of nature’s capacity to heal, steady, and restore. The images invite close looking, rewarding patience with layers of texture and nuance. Gathering ultimately speaks to connection—between hand and earth, observation and presence, transience and continuity. Figliuzzi’s work offers a gentle reminder that beauty often resides in what is overlooked, and that attentiveness to the natural world can foster both reflection and renewal in our own lives. Image: Duet © Teri Figliuzzi

Sheida Soleimani’s exhibition offers a striking encounter with memory, resistance, and visual storytelling. Bringing together the entirety of her Ghostwriter series, the presentation reveals how photography, sculpture, and video can rebuild a past marked by upheaval. Through carefully constructed sets and symbolic gestures, she reimagines the path her parents took as they fled Iran’s oppressive regime. Each piece becomes a tribute to endurance, transforming fragments of lived experience into a broader reflection on identity, exile, and the echoes of political trauma. This exhibition also marks the first time Soleimani’s moving-image work is featured in a museum setting, adding a new layer to her narrative practice. Raised in the Loveland neighborhood of Cincinnati, Soleimani is an Iranian-American artist whose work consistently investigates the aftershocks of authoritarian power. She draws from media archives and contemporary digital sources, reshaping them into scenes that feel both theatrical and intimate. By merging photography with sculpture, collage, and film, she invites viewers to consider how personal histories often mirror geopolitical realities. Her installations stand as meditations on displacement and the lingering weight carried by those forced to leave their homelands. Her work is included in several major public collections, among them the Guggenheim Museum, the Museum of Fine Arts Boston, the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, MIT’s List Visual Arts Center, and Kadist Paris. Throughout her career, she has garnered attention from publications such as The New York Times, Financial Times, Art in America, and Interview Magazine, which have highlighted the urgency and originality of her vision. Now based in Providence, Rhode Island, Soleimani serves as an associate professor of Studio Art at Brandeis University. She is also the founder and executive director of Congress of the Birds and works as the state’s only federally licensed wildlife rehabilitator. For Wave Pool’s ninth Welcome Edition, she created one hundred cast-aluminum tulips to honor protestors killed after the death of Mahsa Amini in 2022—an artwork first unveiled at the 2023 Armory Show. The project continues to support both CAC and Wave Pool and remains available through the CAC gift shop. Image: Sheida Soleimani, Deliverance, 2024, Archival pigment print, 72 x 90 inches. Image courtesy of the artist, Harlan Levey Projects, Brussels & Edel Assanti, London. © Sheida Soleimani

The collection of Ken and Jacki Widder, now shared with The San Diego Museum of Art, offers a remarkable journey through the central movements of mid-twentieth-century American photography. As pioneers in biotechnology and passionate collectors, the Widders assembled a body of work that captures the diversity and vitality of an era defined by experimentation, social change, and artistic inquiry. Their collection spans a broad spectrum—from documentary realism and portraiture to architectural studies and compositions that edge toward abstraction—revealing how photography evolved as both a craft and a language of modern life. The exhibition highlights how photographers across generations explored the shifting contours of urban experience. Images of cities, buildings, and streets become meditations on geometry and human presence, often blurring the line between representation and abstraction. Alongside these works, selections from the golden age of the illustrated press—roughly the 1930s through the 1980s—demonstrate how photography shaped public understanding, from news coverage to visual storytelling. Through the lens of these photojournalists, one can trace how photography served as both document and interpretation, turning moments of daily life into enduring symbols of their time. Equally compelling are the environmental portraits that situate their subjects within the flow of the world around them. Rather than isolating sitters in the studio, these photographs embrace the textures of place—street corners, interiors, landscapes—revealing how identity and setting intertwine. Across the exhibition, a shared impulse emerges: to challenge perception, to expand what photography could show, and to invite viewers into new ways of seeing. Presented at the Museum of Photographic Arts at The San Diego Museum of Art’s Nash Gallery, this exhibition celebrates not only the Widders’ vision as collectors but also the enduring power of photography to mirror, question, and reimagine the modern world. Image: Ray Metzker, 80 H-Y5, 1980. Gelatin silver print. Collection of Ken and Jacki Widder. © Estate of Ray K. Metzker, Courtesy of Howard Greenberg Gallery.

The Addison Gallery of American Art presents Other Things Uttered, the first museum solo exhibition by Tommy Kha, recipient of the Bartlett H. Hayes JR. Prize. Through his distinctive approach to photography, Kha explores how identity, belonging, and difference are shaped and perceived. His work questions the conventions of self-portraiture, responding to the long history of exclusion and invisibility within the photographic medium. Describing photography as a form of language, Kha constructs his own visual grammar—one that speaks to the complexities of representation, translation, and selfhood. The exhibition’s title pays homage to Theresa Hak Kyung Cha’s 1978 performance Other Things Seen, Other Things Heard, acknowledging a shared artistic engagement with language, memory, and fragmented identity. For Kha, the act of photographing becomes a means of navigating his multiple inheritances and the spaces in between. Born in Memphis’s Whitehaven neighborhood to a family whose journey spanned China, Vietnam, and the American South, Kha brings together these cultural threads in a body of work that is both personal and political. His images reveal the tension between visibility and invisibility, intimacy and distance, humor and melancholy. Kha’s photographs frequently feature masks, cutouts, or surrogates of his own face and body, creating tableaux that blur the line between self and other. These visual doubles inhabit domestic and public spaces, evoking the feeling of being present yet detached—a reflection on what it means to see and be seen. The effect is at once uncanny and tender, a meditation on the porous boundaries of identity. Awarded every two years, the Bartlett H. Hayes Jr. Prize continues the Addison’s legacy of supporting contemporary artists. In honoring Tommy Kha, the museum extends its tradition of fostering new voices who challenge, reinterpret, and expand the language of American art. Image: Tommy Kha, Constellations XVIII, Whitehaven, Memphis, 2019. Archival pigment print. © Tommy Kha

On view at the Fred and Laura Ruth Bidwell Gallery from August 9, 2025, through January 25, 2026, this exhibition honors both the history and the evolving landscape of Cuyahoga Valley National Park. For more than 12,000 years, humans have inhabited the lands that now form the park, leaving traces of shifting relationships between people, land, and time. Today, the park’s boundaries encompass not only preserved wilderness but also small towns, farms, and industries that reflect the complexity of shared stewardship. Through large-format color photographs captured across changing seasons, Robert Glenn Ketchum reveals this intersection of natural beauty and human intervention—where gas wells punctuate farmlands, graffiti marks the remains of industry, and wild growth reclaims what was once shaped by labor. Ketchum’s work has long stood at the crossroads of art and environmental activism. Using his camera as both instrument and conscience, he documents the realities of landscape management and the moral dimensions of preservation. In his book Overlooked in America: The Success and Failure of Federal Land Management, Ketchum reflects on the ways photographic culture has elevated the spectacular while neglecting the ordinary. He warns of a collective blindness: a society that travels great distances in search of untouched beauty yet overlooks the natural vitality just beyond its highways. His photographs challenge that hierarchy, urging viewers to reconsider what it means to value the land. Presented as part of the fiftieth-anniversary celebrations of Cuyahoga Valley National Park, this exhibition calls for renewed attention to the everyday environments that sustain life and memory. Through Ketchum’s lens, the park becomes not merely a scenic preserve but a living archive—a record of resilience, responsibility, and the enduring dialogue between people and place. Image: Robert Glenn Ketchum CVNRA #705 from the Federal Land Series, 1988. Cibachrome print. 30 x 40 in. (76.2 x 101.6 cm). Purchased with funds from Stephen and Celeste Myers 1989.7 © Robert Glenn Ketchum