The Smile Behind the Mask: A Exhibition of Chicago Painters

The Smile Behind the Mask is about the fantasy in everyday. The process of manipulating appearance is common place in how we dress, act, and construct personal avatars on social media. The painters in this show who engineer a space through real life moments, color, shapes, and people, are no different. They employ bathroom humor, sexuality, body building culture, and drunken shenanigans- all while referencing visual tropes from art history. The works range from tender to unapologetically bragging and hope to champion individuals necessity to reconstruct reality.

The Smile Behind the Mask includes eleven painters all working in Chicago:

Caleb Beck
Chris Capoyianes 
Hyegyeong Choi
Katie Hammond
Ellen Hanson 
Roland Miller 
Amadeo Morelos 
Kailyn Perry
Tk Suh
Patrick Wilkins
Bryant Worley

Curated by Kenneth Heyne of Rover and Kailyn Perry
May 18 - June 24