Established in 2016, Oliva Gallery is dedicated to showcasing exceptional works from established Midwest artists. Our collection includes paintings, sculptures, mixed-media installations, and other inspiring pieces that provide visitors with a diverse and engaging experience.
(is it) Enough?
Paul Wear and Andrea Jablonski
Opening: Friday, November 22, 5 – 9 pm
Through January 4, 2025(is it) Enough? brings together artists Paul Wear and Andrea Jablonski in a compelling exhibition at Oliva Gallery. Their works explore the convergence of form, culture, and innovative materials to question how we interpret beauty, tradition, and environment in contemporary art.
Paul Wear: A Midwest native, Wear’s abstract paintings pulse with Chicago's architectural energy. Known for his vibrant use of color against dark, textured surfaces, his work emerges through a unique technique of layering and intricate mark-making, channeling the city’s dynamism into each canvas.
Andrea Jablonski: Drawing from her Polish heritage and materials from her commercial work, Jablonski’s sculptures blend tradition and industrial remnants. Her RYA knot-tying technique brings heritage into modern art, using braiding and soft structures to create thought-provoking works that engage with identity, sustainability, and innovation.
Double GroundEleana Grace Daniel & Emily Schroeder Willis
Opening: Friday, October 11, 5 – 9 pm
Through November 16, 2024
Eleana Grace Daniel is an American oil painter whose work navigates the delicate balance between abstraction and representation, focusing on themes of landscape. A recent graduate of the School of the Art Institute of Chicago with an MFA earned in May 2024, Eleana’s paintings explore control and trust, using abstraction as a flexible medium to express the unnamable and ineffable.
Emily Schroeder Willis is renowned for her tactile ceramic vessels, which serve as metaphors for her personal experiences and reflections on the world. Through her artistic process, she captures mythical stories, questions, and the dualities of hope and fear. Emily’s work delves into the discord and tension generated by the peculiarities of singular objects.
Filtered Through TimeSa Schloff
Opening: Friday, September 6, 5 – 9 pm
Through October 5, 2024
Artist Talk: Saturday, September 21, 1 – 3 pm Misplaced mural whose integrity has been compromised by a poorly located radiator, pipe, door, and inauspiciously, a small piece of electrical tape and chewed gum stuck to the wall. The images are lonely, melancholic and hopeful at the same time. Schloff produces images that make the blurred memories of schoolrooms and hallways once animated by classmates, teachers, and the daily junior soap opera of primary school life crisp, recognizable and familiar. Yet the photographs do not catalogue or describe these places; rather, they quietly circle around them, and, at a remove, offer small glimpses back to those school day settings, recalling their character and an ambiance “Filtered Through Time”.
David Roth's sculptures, crafted from wood, rubber, paint, and intriguing found objects, evoke a sense of mystery and enchantment. Each piece tells a unique story, inviting viewers to interpret their own meanings and discover hidden wonders within the textures and patterns.
Stanley Dean Edwards, renowned for his abstract paintings, presents a series that embodies geometric abstraction with streamlined forms and vibrant colors. With roots in the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Edwards' works are celebrated in both public and private collections, offering a visual feast of precision and creativity.
Bethany Cordero delves into the depths of identity, memory, and the fleeting nature of the self. Through her sculptural assemblages, she explores the remnants of thoughts and memories, crafting symbolic bridges between the self of today and the liminal spaces of tomorrow. Each piece is a fusion of ancient materials, serving as containers for the congruency and contradictions of past and present.
Deborah Newmark's work is a contemplation of the boundaries between thoughts, the beauty found in the unspoken, and the significance of fleeting moments. Through collage, drawing, and mixed media, she layers materials and gestures, discovering unexpected beauty in the intersections of form and concept, often through improvised or accidental means.
Witness the convergence of these two unique artistic perspectives, where beauty is found in the connections between the past and the present, the known and the unknown.
This Long Pursuit reflects the intertwined lives of Kelly McKaig and Bruce Riley. Partners for 38 years, artists for longer, their visions have taken the form of a double helix with its two strands oriented in opposite directions bound together by time and love. Although visually different, it would be hard to deny the common familial ground that has nurtured their art practices.
Kate Roth curated this exhibition for Oliva Gallery.
A conjecture is a dalliance with guessing; an ongoing relationship with an ever-present perhaps.
Mitch Clark creates ephemeral sculptures from found, organic, and composed materials such as wire, paper and thread. Many are so delicate, that the tiniest wisps of air could result in them falling apart. Clark photographs these sculptures in the studio.
In these wildly imaginative works, Clark devises dreamlike landscapes by arranging and rearranging paper in such a way as to create worlds with hovering forms and unexpected reflections.
John Upchurch’s sculptural objects are created from discarded materials, industrial relics, parts of old tools and all kinds of interesting looking hardware. The conjecture in this work is the hopeful notion that almost anything can become something else, something new, something beautiful, hilarious or both. There is joy and poetry in perceiving anew, in reconfiguring and recombining. Easily anthropomorphized, the sculptures transmit possibility; many seem in the midst of something dynamic, active and alive and Upchurch’s titles tell us what: They Billow, Mingle, Comment and Reckon.
In "Go Figure," Melanie P. Brown and Nancy Pirri come together to present a lively exhibition that showcases the interplay between 2D and 3D mediums. Witness their artistic brilliance as they ingeniously explore representations of the human body. Through their art, both artists playfully engage with the concept of the body, resulting in a visually stunning and intellectually stimulating display.
Finding My Way in the Dark by Beth Herman Adler.
Division Street by David Rubman
Curated by Kate Roth.
Parallel Play brings together Adler’s prints and Rubman’s wood constructions,
some created individually, some collaboratively--and some through “Parallel
Play”.
Northern Ice by Tamara Wasserman
Curated by Tamara Wasserman
The exhibition highlights the idea of extreme kinships between artists separated by time and space. The showing artists found cultural phenomena from different corners of the world, that feel to them like home. They re-use, morph, reinvent concepts and ideas, created, heard, tasted, and sung somewhere else or during some other time. Stitched Time aims to convey the fact that culture and time are not always linear, and that artists may identify with other than their immediate surroundings.
Through their artwork, the artists demonstrate their ability to “stitch time”, creating connections between past and present, as well as between different cultures and communities. The exhibition invites the viewers to reflect on the power of art to transcend boundaries, thus connecting us to one another and to our shared human experiences.
Niagara 6 by Curtis Anthony Bozif
The Niagara paintings, rooted in observation and in place, assay tone and the prismatic color spectrum. They disrupt the idea that landscape, as such, is static, even material. Indeed, the supposed permanence of landscape here becomes an opalescent memorial to a world continually undone by geologic forces: plate tectonics, volcanism, earthquakes, glaciation, erosion, sedimentation, and in just the last two hundred years, the anthropogenic increase of atmospheric carbon dioxide. In these processes of decrease and increase, of dissipation and concentration, and transformations by repeated subtraction and addition, Bozif sees an analogue to the act of painting itself. As he embraces the challenge of interpreting what was once seen as the quintessential subject of American landscape painting, his diaphanous curtains of pigment and light test the very limits of the genre and its conventions.
Curtis Anthony Bozif in front of “Niagara, Number 6” Photo: Frank Geiser
Culture Flow by Kathryn Hempel
An international flow of art as a means of Universal communication and collective spirit across cultural and social boundaries.
Artist: Janet Trierweiler, Beate Axmann, Timm Ulrichs, Bishal Manandhar, Kathryn Hempel, Adriana Poterash, Colette Wright Adams, Sherree Blakemore, Kao Ra Zen, Franz Betz, Marianna Buchwald, Cem Koc, and Majid Tabe.
Left: A1 [BODY:BODY Section] by Corinne D. Peterson. Right: Lunatic I by Pinar Aral
Truth Be Told is a sculpture show of ceramic studio mates—Pinar Aral and Corinne D. Peterson—about attempts to discover their personal truth, and their reactions and contributions to the collective truth about motherhood, womanhood, and aging.
Curated by Kate Roth
A series of black and white photographs that explore the hidden-in-plain-sight poetry of neighborhood plants.
Alone Against It All by Bryana Bibbs. Created thanks to The Lunder Institute for American Art.
Numb is a solo exhibition highlights the fast and slow navigation of past and current experiences through the use of intricacy, color, and form.
Telling stories of trauma and mental health is not always easy, based on the stigmas in our society, which is how it became a central motivation in Bibbs’s practice. While working between traditional and experimental processes, Bibbs’s large-scale pieces navigate past experiences in what Bibbs considers to be "chapters."
In earlier work, the urgency for Bibbs to understand her personal experiences translated into the fast processes of mark-making in painting. But as time progresses in Bibbs's most recent work, there are parallels between the slow navigation of personal experiences and the rhythmic textile techniques of hand-carding, hand-spinning, and hand-weaving, both of which are a form of transformative repetition.
While the exhibition shows the progression of time and process through Bibbs's perspective, it also allows viewers to navigate through their own physical or conceptual experience with the work.
"Numb is how I felt during these traumatic experiences I had gone through for nearly a decade. With this exhibition, I hope to continue to move forward in ending the stigma and encouraging others to share their stories of trauma in a way that is healthiest for them."
–Bryana Bibbs
Left: Ti02 by Jesus Monsivais. Right: tt-54-17-14 by Darren Oberto
Curated by Kate Roth
Starzy by Andrea Jablonski
Andrea Jablonski Solo Exhibition
Polish-born, Chicago-bred.
“Like loving a woman with a broken nose, you may well find lovelier lovelies. But never a lovely so real.”
–Nelson Algren
The extremes of seasons, especially winter, in the Midwest influence color and aesthetic.
Jablonski explores tactile, approachable wall pieces inspired by tapestries common to Eastern European homes.
Handy work that takes time, forces the individual to focus and sit still.
This series explores creativity as approachable, not precious. Everyday materials are elevated and mixed/matched in new ways.
Triptych part 1 by Marina Rheault Post
Grounded in the metaphors inherent in working with felt, fibers, and clay I explore inner, remembered, or felt landscapes, revisiting places which are healing alongside experiences of loss and trauma, cultivating a balanced sense of self. When I am in nature I feel at peace; ultimately it’s all about finding home.
Untitled by Mitch Clark
In the 60s I shared a studio with Charlie Pearson who was a jazz musician and composer. His upright piano, double bass, and guitars took up very little space in the studio. He paid half the rent. This was all to my advantage. Charlie was a great friend and good company. When composing he would tap out on the piano a short musical phrase – a riff. Sometimes he would say, “Imagine this a little faster.” Then he would ask me what I thought. I was able to see a relationship between what he was doing with music and time, and what I was attempting to do with paint. Later I began to work with shapes – visual rifts, a catch. Thanks Charlie, this exhibit is for you.
City Reflection by Azadeh Hussaini
The Landscape of Entanglement, amid a series of drawings, along with paper and cardboard installations, is an exhibit culminating from the artist's experiences through both visual study and the years of necessary nomadic migration within both urban and non-urban environments. This collection focuses on various human living spaces examining concepts of home as shelter and safe place.
Black and Indigenous Futures by Indio
WITH THE TRUTHS AND WISDOM OF THE LAND, WE WILL BE THE ONES TO LIBERATE THE WORLD FROM THE POWER OF COLONIALITY.
The future of black and indigenous people is one of healing
This photo exhibition of environment reflects the great awakening of our spiritual connection to the land and our ancestors. Depicting the healing energy of the land, alongside images of the rebellion spirit among black and indigenous youth.
Black and Indigenous Futures seeks to create a narrative of hope and love for ourselves and the land that nourishes us and that one day we will all be free.
The Potter by Kevin Byrne (Left) Plywood by Anthony Adcock (Right)
Anthony Adcock blends his unique experiences working as a Local #1 Ironworker and as an artist to create works that explore the relationship between labor and value. He received a Master of Fine Arts degree from the University of Chicago and a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from the American Academy of Art, specializing in oil painting.
Kevin Byrne The show is called Honest Work. However, I could easily have called it Respect, as that is what I have for anyone who does a hard day’s work. I have had many jobs if my life, dishwasher, shepherd, short-order cook, bar manager for the Oscars, picked avocados, a tour driver for an English Ska band, and a bike messenger.
Flowers Grow by Tamara Wasserman
In Wasserman's work, complexity is the key. She aims to achieve a strange balance using a mix of diverse and contradicting elements
She aims to touch on senses and emotions and to create worlds for a viewer to long for.
Whispering Winds by Annette Baksinskas
My intention as an artist is not to take the storytelling approach, but to use the expressive power of basic geometric shapes of circles, squares, and lines in my paintings and drawings.
The process begins by observing outside spaces around me. City landscapes of shadows on buildings or painted covered patches on concrete walls forming unintentional shapes inspire something new.
I use a limited range of colors, and texture plays an important part in my work, giving it an organic, subtle feeling of the concrete landscape. I want the viewer to move in for a closer connection.
Life experiences will keep evolving, and so will my work.
I Bet You Wonder How I Knew (I and II) by Layne Jackson
Curated by Pauline Kochanski
Pinar Aral Ruby Barnes Sharon Bladholm Curtis Anthony Bozif Monica J. Brown Anne Farley Gaines Bill Friedman Layne Jackson Makeba Kedem-DuBose Pauline Kochanski Deborah Newmark Corinne D. Peterson Catherine Schwalbe Casey Sills Ginny Sykes William Clay
Authors Aron Packer and Bill Swislow will be discussing their book: "Lakefront Anonymous" on March 19th. Please attend for discussion, purchase, and signing.
Photo by Daphne Walsh
Ann-Marie Greenberg Aron Packer Beth Adler Cathi Schwalbe Danny Mansmith Daphne Walsh David Criner Elizabeth Burke-Dain Ginny Sykes Jim Redd John T Upchurch Kate Roth Margie Criner Marvin Tate Michael Gallagher Michael Thompson Nancy Pirri Nancy VanKanegan Nathan Mason Scott Mossman Tony Fitzpatrick Tracy Ostmann-Haschke Yvette Kaiser-Smith
Oliva Gallery is excited to present "3rd-Arc" a solo show by Pauline Kochanski.
"3rd-Arc explores my personal experience with the pain and suffering created by the reckless destruction of life during the Holocaust in Europe and other holocausts around the world and my creativity in the last years, including the isolation of the pandemic.
My exploration of life and loss continues in an arc and the exhibition represents the third arc of my discovery process. As my exploration continues, this arc will close into a circle with my remaining show tentatively titled, Roots."
Dedicated to my parents Helene L. and Henry N. Kochanski
Verdant by Lauralynn White
Please join us at Oliva Gallery for the opening reception of "Journey," a solo show by Lauralynn White.
From her first melding of landscape with the human form in 2005 to works fresh from the studio, the exhibition Journey... is an overview of Lauralynn White's work.
We follow her course as she explores multiple mediums to realize her voice. By juxtaposing early figurescapes on canvas with works on wood and stone where figures appear to emerge from the surface, and interlocking forms of the "Connections" series born of the pandemic, a rhythmic and unified vision forms.
The message has grown over time from a quiet whisper to an urgent plea for everyone to wake up and really see the sacred in each other and in all aspects of our living breathing planet.
See the wonderful new article by Ginny Van Alyea on ALMA and Kimberly at Chicago Gallery News.
Left, Hands Make Flowers by Lisa Marie Barber. Right, Subterranean Hum by Sarah Dupré
Slow or quick, direct or indirect, gestural marks have an immediate response to the surface that they associate themselves with. These marks celebrate materiality and highlight passages of the body’s movement through space.
Gestures not only accentuate time, but they have the potential to organize or disrupt a composition. In the works of Lisa Marie Barber and Sarah Dupré there is a clear embracement of line, color via paint or glaze, and play upon surface texture. Simultaneously, these two artists awaken a sense of touch by their performance with color that vacillates between matte and gloss finishes.
Copyright Newcity Communications, Inc. © 2021
Sept 10th through Oct 2nd
The work of Stanley Dean Edwards
The paintings presented meet at the nexus of spontaneity and control.
Aug 13 through Sept 4
The work of Daniel Flood and Marc Benja
This exhibition is a play on hard edge lines in contrast to soft renderings.
The work of Daniel Flood and Marc Benja
June 18th through July 10th
The artwork of Beth Herman Adler
Curated by Kate Roth
Life Boat - © Beth Herman Adler 2021
May 14th through June 12th
The artwork of Jason Kriegler
Hand Embroidered Contemporary Works on Paper and Linen.
Curated by Kate Roth
“This body of work is a contemporary interpretation and influence from textiles from the past, using dark and light organic, biological forms as well as abstract exteriors, but can also be experienced purely as combinations of shapes, line, and texture.” -Jason Kriegler
#1 UNTITLED -Jason Kriegler
Hand-embroidered, mixed media, acrylic paint on paper.
Please click on the image to read the interview
Didaar Art Collective: Group Show
The work of Margie and David Criner
-David Criner
Souvenir 2 -Margie Criner
Souvenir 2 (Interior Detail) -Margie Criner
Louise Pappageorge & Curtis Anthony Bozif
Oliva Gallery is pleased to present Objects and Environs by two leading Midwest artists developing bodies of work relating to erosion, sustainability, and the shoreline of the third coast.
Pappageorge’s porcelain sculptures mimic the windswept dunes while Bozif launches his new “Dune” series for a special unveiling on December 11th as well as revisiting his "Great Lakes" series of his textural, evocative paintings.
(Left) Bloom by Louise Pappageorge Photo by Tom Van Eyende Photography. (Right) Dune 3 by Curtis Anthony Bozif
Helen Jones-Mayer Solo Exhibition
The exhibition features 2 dimensional and 3-dimensional work that chronicle the past 10 years of her life.
Group show curated by Sara Renae Holloway
Distorting realism, proportions, and angles while skewing objective reality, this selection of artworks from uniquely different artists concentrates on highly stylized figures with symbolic and disorienting elements. Taking liberties with form through a variety of styles and mediums, these artists share a similar fascination with mutating line and color while emphasizing mood.
Phantom Limbs by Amalia Kouvalis
Jamie Tubbs and Macus Alonso
In our first ever textiles exhibition, Alonso and Tubbs interweave their past lives into “RESURFACING” – an interactive installation saturated with color and texture.
Liturgy of Refusal by Jamie Tubbs
Solo Show
Join us for the solo exhibition of Frederick Nitsch on Friday August 7th 5-8 PM. Masks required. Chairs will be set up outside for social distancing and we will live stream the event.
There will be an interactive component in-person and online! Frederick will not be providing titles for any of his pieces; instead, he is asking you to title them - literal or abstract, funny or serious, one word or much more. For online participants, a secret page on his website will appear on Aug. 7th: www.fwnitsch.wix.com/home
Bio:
Frederick has a BA in philosophy (Boston University, 2006) and pursued graduate study of the same at Loyola University before leaving his combined MA/PhD program for mental health reasons in 2011. He now works part-time for a mental health nonprofit, doing outreach and education at high schools around Chicago and assisting with trainings for the city’s first responders. Frederick lives and paints in Rogers Park, where he has been for 13 years. Frederick is also an active member of Chicago’s improv comedy community.
Statement:
I have always been fascinated by Rorschach Tests. Not that I believe they hold some literal truth-telling power about their interpreters, but rather because they provide us with an opportunity to reflect upon ourselves and occasionally reorient us toward or around reference points that we forgot we had within us. Accordingly, I was thrilled early in my painting career when I was told that one of my paintings reminded somebody of a colorful Rorschach Test. I suppose it was the lack of delineated shapes, and the way I made my colors blur in a way that could be ultimately suggestive but never singularly deciphered.
Inspired by this response, I decided to pursue the painting technique that had led me to that piece. In this show are purely abstract pieces, the titles of which I have removed. Both in person and online (a secret page on my website www.fwnitsch.wix.com/home will appear on August. 7th), I am asking viewers of this show to take the Rorschach Test and provide their own titles to my paintings - titles that can be short or long, literal or abstract, silly or serious. I enjoy that my abstract paintings have led to both fun and poetic responses over the years, and I thought that this would be a neat way to do an interactive show during these strange times.
Title? Frederick is asking you to title them at the opening.
Noir Photography is a spin-off of film noir, a genre of Hollywood thriller or crime movies that were popular in the 1940’s and 1950’s. The genre is marked by its cynicism and dark atmosphere, reflecting the anxiety of American society after World War II.
In this climatic time in our history, 6 Chicago photographers have collaborated for a group exhibition at Oliva Gallery, with the opening slated for Friday, July 10th from 5–8 PM. Masks required. The artists are Akira, Doug Boehm, Kevin Byrne, Pauline Kochanski, Jon Randolph and Daphne Walsh.
Kevin Byrne
Opening Reception:
Called Hello World, the project is an international art exchange project whose aim is meant to be a gesture of solidarity, a greeting to/from our colleagues around the world during this moment of isolation. Oliva Gallery is proud to promote Hello World along with participating artist Jane Barthès.
Jane Barthès "Molecular Star"
http://www.transculturalexchange.org/activities/hw/overview.html
More details to follow as they become available.
Kimberly Oliva, gallerist and curator (left) and Pinar Aral, art handler and installer (right).
Chicago Gallery News • APR 21, 2020
Kimberly Oliva is interviewed by CGN. Full interview available at the link below.
https://www.chicagogallerynews.com/news/2020/4/art-dealer-q-a-kimberly-oliva
hOMe – Solo Show
Never has a show title been more fitting! Follow the details in our next exhibition: hOMe with @vankanegan.
An exhibition of art by Nancy VanKanegan. hOMe is defined as: A place where something flourishes, is most typically found, or from which it originates. (https://www.lexico.com/definition/home) whatever else hOMe is—and however it entered our consciousness—it’s a way of organizing space in our minds. (Verlyn Klinkenborg)
The primary home is the body itself. The work of the body is to observe, sustain, protect, rebuild when necessary, and most important to create: and then to share.
The word OM represents the creation of sound from deep within the body, the sound echoing in the chamber of the physical self-transmittal of the interior to the outside–and a return to silence. The silence of the home deep within.
Opening Reception:
Nordic by Mia Capodilupo
Group Sculpture Show
Mary Ellen Croteau was an artist whose work directly addresses the absurdities of social norms, and lays bare the underlying bias and sexist assumptions on which our culture is constructed. She worked with non-recycled plastic waste, to demonstrate the huge amounts of trash we are consuming and sent into the environment.
Opening Reception:
Epitaph for the Unburied by Nicholas Nadja
Nicholas Nadja Solo Exhibition
Incongruous Eden is a collection of several studied works by contemporary artist Nicholas Nadja. The series shows the incongruences in the time we are living and juxtaposes a new type of understanding to what makes a garden of Earthly delights. The body of work in this exhibition reveals the alchemy of turning the grotesque and unacknowledged into beauty and divinity. Through incongruous combinations, bountiful fruits of the imagination reveal the subjects of Nadja’s paintings, and a haunting beauty echoes throughout each work.
Opening Reception:
I like Polish Bikes (1974) by Witold Janowski
Cosmology of the Soul by Beatriz Ledesma
Beatriz Ledesma Solo Exhibition
Navy Pier, the location of SOFA 2019
Oliva Gallery was chosen to show at SOFA 2019! We are excited to share our artist and we look forward to seeing you there!
Opening Night Preview
General Admission
Location
Landscape Interiors III by Kate Roth
Fulvous /ˈfʊlvəs/ is a colour, sometimes described as dull orange, brownish-yellow or tawny, it can also be likened to a variation of buff, beige or butterscotch.
ARTIST: Elizabeth Burke-Dain, Carie Lassman, Abbey Muza, Tricia Rumbolz, Kate Roth
Curated by Kate Roth
by Hrayr Attarian
Photography by Hrayr Attarian
