Jack Schneider

Jack Schneider is an artist and curator living in Chicago, Illinois. Schneider is a curatorial assistant at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago where he has organized numerous exhibitions including Water After All, Chicago Works: Deborah Stratman, and Dan Peterman: Sulfur Cycle 2.0. Schneider is also co-director of Prairie, an independent exhibition space focused on critically engaged emerging artists. His own artwork has recently been exhibited at Murmurs Gallery (Los Angeles), Gas Gallery (Los Angeles), The Franklin (Chicago), Horse & Pony Fine Art (Berlin), Bass & Reiner (San Francisco), 1.5 Rooms (Brooklyn), Adds Donna (Chicago), Born Nude (Chicago), and Lodos (Mexico City).

Ozan Atalan

Born 1985 in Gelibolu, Turkey. Lives and works in İstanbul, Turkey. 2016 MFA, Syracuse University, Syracuse, New York.

"Ozan Atalan asks his viewers to consider their relationship to anthropocentrism; that paradoxical perspective wherein humans regard themselves as both separate from and of central importance to nature. Through a variety of mediums—including sculpture, video, and digital media—Atalan addresses both the cultural origins and effects of anthropocentric thinking, such as Immanuel Kant’s philosophy and the destruction of Water Buffalo habitats around Istanbul. By moving beyond false oppositions between nature and culture, human and animal, and ultimately self and other, Atalan’s work encourages a less hierarchical and more interspecific worldview."

Artwork Image: Monochrome, 2019. Soil, Concrete, Water buffalo skeleton, video.

Edra Soto

Born in Puerto Rico. Lives and works in Chicago, Illinois. 2000 MFA, School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

"Edra Soto’s artistic practice engages communities within and between her native Puerto Rico and adopted home of Chicago. Mixing materials and motifs endemic to each environment—from discarded liquor bottles to decorative rejas screens—Soto creates installations, participatory performances, and architectural interventions which, in her words, “prompt the viewer to reconsider post-colonial visual culture.” Indeed, Soto advocates for a more nuanced understanding of colonialism, particularly how the United States’s colonial history and ongoing exploitation of its subnational territories manifests in the landscapes of contemporary Chicago and Puerto Rico."

Artwork Image: Screenhouse, 2017. Sintra, pvc, metal. 144 x 120 x 96 in.

Assaf Evron

Born in 1977. Lives and works in Chicago, Illinois. 2015 MA, Tel Aviv University, Israel. 2013 MFA, School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

"Assaf Evron investigates the cultural and material geneses of cityscapes through his expanded photographic practice. Evron’s images, sculptures, and installations invite close consideration of seemingly simple architectures, showing how they emerge from complex interactions between peoples, ideas, and landscapes. In one project, Evron showed how naturally occurring crystalline structures relate to the rational geometries of modernist architecture, and how these patterns mutate into new variants as they cross cultural contexts. Of particular interest to Evron are the expressions of modernism that have taken root in Tel Aviv and Chicago, two cities he has called home."

Artwork Image: Collage for the McCormick House, 2019.