March 2024 / Sleepless Nights

SLEEPLESS NIGHTS

Marcelo Fontana
Pamela Hadley
Nicholas Moler-Gallardo
Hannah Newman
Jessie Rose Vala
Morgan Rosskopf
Katherine Spinella

March 07 - 30, 2024
Opening Reception / Thursday, March 07, 5–8pm

Winter Hours:
Friday–Sunday, 11am–4pm

Sleepless Nights explores the anxieties that keep us awake at night. In the transitional phase between wakefulness and sleep, the unconscious comes alive, quickening our thoughts to the realities and fears we suppress in waking hours. Doomscrolling, insomnia, and poor mental health are the results of carrying the uncertainties that litter our contemporary social, political, and physical landscapes.

To cope with our anxieties, we stay busy in our waking lives. Busyness in contemporary life is not simply a response to inflation or grind culture, but ultimately, a survival tactic. The moment we slow down, our worries catch up - we will be overcome by the weight of the unknown. Instead, we distract ourselves, focusing on consuming and creating beauty - the survival strategies of an artist. The anxiety waits, patiently anticipating our return to the twilight zone between waking and sleeping.

Recreating this liminal space, the exhibition Sleepless Nights unfolds in a dark room via blacklights, nightlights, phone screens, and projectors. The room is infused with a continuous stream of audio, a background score of current events, news updates, podcasts, and other data. The exhibition features work by artists working in a wide variety of media and methods, but connected by their anxieties, drive to create, and hope for the future. Including Marcelo Fontana, Pamela Hadley, Nicholas Moler-Gallardo, Hannah Newman, Jessie Rose Vala, Morgan Rosskopf, and Katherine Spinella, the artists display their work within an environment of the unease within which it is created. Each artwork becomes a talisman to hold our anxieties at bay.

Sleepless Nights is a space for reflection and introspection, where visitors can engage with their own cares and concerns as well as the uncertainties of the wider world. It is an invitation to look beyond the veil of busyness and productivity to confront the deeper fears that lie within us all.