FOLDS
Cover Image: Nick Cave, Forge, 2018
FOLDS January 17 - March 22, 2025
Alexandra Barth Rachael Bos Robert Burnier Nick Cave Tim Doud Crystal Gregory Dan Gunn Harmony Hammond Cameron Harvey Mie Kongo Jo Sandman Alyson Shotz Malick Sidibé Samantha Thomas Letha Wilson
Photographs by Nathan Keay
FOLDS FOLDS was presented in conjunction with Diana Guerrero-Maciá's solo exhibition PAINTINGS FOR BIRDS at 1801 West Hubbard Street from January 17 through March 22, 2025.
The fold forms, informs, and deforms. … With the fold the material transforms itself to contain its subject, allowing access to its content. The fold articulates the art as an object while punctuating its dynamic subject-content. Most importantly, the fold moves us emotionally by the implied and real physicality of its active displacements. Jeff Perrone, ”Working Through, Fold by Fold,” Artforum, January 1979, pages 44-50.
SECRIST | BEACH is pleased to present our first survey exhibition of 2025, FOLDS. This exhibition brings together a group of artists that formally and conceptually incorporate “folds” into their artworks, highlighting the deceptively simple yet germane moment an inanimate object or thing is–or becomes–expressive. The exhibition includes an intergenerational roster of artists and was curated with the assistance of gallery artist Diana Guerrero-Maciá. The concept for FOLDS evolved from Guerrero-Maciá’s early art class experience with the ubiquitous exercise of drawing still lifes that include drapes and folds of fabric in the composition. The difficulty of rendering these elements eventually led to her decision to eliminate drawing altogether and instead use the fabric itself as a medium for drawing and painting. Building on this, FOLDS takes on this deceivingly natural everyday physical moment and inserts a wide range of dual metaphorical implications: hiding/revealing, deformation/reformation, compression/release, flexible/rigid, etcetera. The variety of approaches on view–from sartorial to semiotic–articulate complexities in ways that implore attention while amplifying the mundane into a gesture that evolves into something dynamic. When they appear in or as works of art, the form of the fold both produces and expects degrees of fidelity, resolution, and sentience. Compositionally, folds delineate and generate movement and energy, with a keen sense of suggested accuracy. This sense of volume then renders qualities of resolution, sharpening the image or object as it relates to the body, gravity and weight. The physicality of and by the fold seems to arrest a moment of intimacy somewhere between the depiction of the thing and how the thing is depicted, as if the folds are emotional repositories of narratives of becoming and creating. Where the fold expects a degree of fidelity, resolution, and sentience is the foundational necessity of specific qualities of a fold to represent and define. For the artists in FOLDS, where the form is investigated, interrogated, and appreciated, the symbolic and effective potential for the fold becomes expansive.
Alexandra Barth
Alexandra Barth Carpet Roll, 2023 Acrylic on canvas 63 x 47.25 inches Courtesy of the artist and Mrs., Queens, NY Photo by Olympia Shannon
Alyson Shotz
Alloys of Midnight #10, 2023 Paint on hand folded aluminum 72 x 48 x 7 inches Courtesy of the artist and Derek Eller Gallery
Recumbent Fold #7 (Vase), 2019 Unglazed porcelain 18 x 9 x 9 inches Courtesy of the artist and Derek Eller Gallery
Recumbent Cube #7, 2018 Unglazed porcelain 10 x 12 x 12 inches Courtesy of the artist and Derek Eller Gallery
Jo Sandman
Untitled [#35] (Folded linen, brown), 1973 (ca) Folded fabric, linen 44 x 39 inches Courtesy of the artist and Krakow Witkin Gallery
Untitled (Folded Linen), 1974 (ca) Folded fabric, linen 17.5 x 24 inches Courtesy of the artist and Krakow Witkin Gallery
Malick Sidibé
Vues de dos, 1999 / 2004 Chromogenic print, glass, paint, cardboard, tape, and string 8.5 x 6 inches, image | 14.1 x 11.38 x 1.1 inches, framed ©Malick Sidibé. Courtesy of the family of Malick Sidibé and Jack Shainman Gallery, New York.
Mr. Cissé le pharmacien, 1973 - 2001 Silver gelatin print 17.5 x 17.9 inches, image | 28.5 x 24.75 x 1.5 inches, framed ©Malick Sidibé. Courtesy of the family of Malick Sidibé and Jack Shainman Gallery, New York.
Vues de dos, 2001 - 2003 Vintage gelatin silver print, glass, paint, cardboard, tape, and string 4 x 2.9 inches, image | 7.06 x 5.06 x 0.38 inches, framed ©Malick Sidibé. Courtesy of the family of Malick Sidibé and Jack Shainman Gallery, New York.
Untitled, 1983 Vintage silver gelatin print 11 x 7 inches, image | 15.1 x 12.75 x 1.5 inches, framed ©Malick Sidibé. Courtesy of the family of Malick Sidibé and Jack Shainman Gallery, New York.
Vues de dos, 2003 Silver gelatin print, glass, paint, cardboard, tape, string 13 x 17 inches, framed ©Malick Sidibé. Courtesy of the family of Malick Sidibé and Jack Shainman Gallery, New York.
En Droussa Keita, un Milicien, Faux comme de la BKO, c. 1970 - 2008 Gelatin silver print 11 x 7 inches, image | 11.75 x 9 inches, paper | 20.5 x 18 x 1.5 inches, framed ©Malick Sidibé. Courtesy of the family of Malick Sidibé and Jack Shainman Gallery, New York.
Nick Cave
Forge, 2018 Mixed media including a bronze arm and an array of white hankerchiefs 21.25 x 71.25 x 16.75 inches ©Nick Cave. Courtesy of the artist and Jack Shainman Gallery, New York
Cameron Harvey
Figure 1: Cor (Rhus Integrifolia), 2021 Acrylic on canvas 120 x 54 inches Courtesy of the artist
Robert Burnier
Nebulaj Ćeloj (Soyinka IV), 2023 Acrylic on aluminum 11.5 x 7.75 x 4.5 inches Courtesy of the artist and ANDREW RAFACZ Gallery
Sen Iam Forlasi la Teron, 2022 Acrylic on aluminum 17 x 15 x 7 inches Courtesy of the artist and ANDREW RAFACZ Gallery
Ushabti I (Gren Fajenco), 2023 Acrylic on aluminum 12 x 8 x 3.5 inches Courtesy of the artist and ANDREW RAFACZ Gallery
Dan Gunn
Nocturne Scenery, 2023 Acrylic, milk paint, light stable metalized acid dye, and water-based polyurethane on birch plywood and poplar, with nylon cord 75 x 63 x 3 inches Courtesy of the artist and Monique Meloche Gallery
Letha Wilson
Craters of the Moon Fold Back, 2021 UV prints on steel 28.5 x 20 x 13.5 inches Courtesy of the artist and GRIMM Gallery
Death Valley Mosaic Canyon, 2020 UV prints on reclaimed steel 22 x 18 x 18 inches Courtesy of the artist and GRIMM Gallery
Green Leaves Tuck Steel, 2023 UV prints on steel, steel frame 30.25 x 24.25 x 3.25 inches Courtesy of the artist and GRIMM Gallery
A. Pavlova (Petit Sauvage), 2024 Oil on linen 14 x 11 inches Courtesy of the artist
Rachael Bos
Samantha Thomas
Gardenia, 2024 Acrylic on canvas over panel 36.5 x 36 inches Courtesy of the artist and Anat Ebgi
Harmony Hammond
Chenille #1, 2016-2017 Oil and mixed media on canvas 88.5 x 72.5 inches Courtesy of the artist and Alexander Gray Associates
Quarter circle floret, 2024 porcelain, wood, wood stain, and oil paint 30.5 x 41 x 7.5 inches Courtesy of the artist
Mie Kongo
Tim Doud
PSCW (M) 4, 2024 Acrylic and fabric on panel 25 x 21 inches 33.75 x 28 inches, framed Courtesy of the artist and Hemphill Artworks
PSCW (M) 2, 2024 Acrylic and fabric on panel 25 x 21 inches 33.75 x 28 inches, framed Courtesy of the artist and Hemphill Artworks
PSCW (M) 3, 2024 Acrylic and fabric on panel 25 x 21 inches 33.75 x 28 inches, framed Courtesy of the artist and Hemphill Artworks
PSCW (M) 1, 2024 Acrylic and fabric on panel 25 x 21 inches 33.75 x 28 inches, framed Courtesy of the artist and Hemphill Artworks
Movement in Form 2, 2024, Handwoven cast in concrete 30 x 24 x 2 inches Courtesy of the artist
Movement in Form 1, 2024 Handwoven cast in concrete 30 x 24 x 2 inches Courtesy of the artist
Soft Logic 2, 2024 Handwoven cast in concrete 30 x 24 x 2 inches Courtesy of the artist
Soft Logic 1, 2024 Handwoven cast in concrete 30 x 24 x 2 inches Courtesy of the artist
Artists Alexandra Barth Alexandra Barth’s paintings exhibit a subtle but poignant visual struggle of the distinction between space and place. She accentuates a dynamic interplay of light, shadow, and texture in private interiors. Uninhabited, these images evoke a mysterious past that subtly merges with the sensibility of memory in a beautiful dance between the tangible and ephemeral. Alexandra Barth received her degree from the Academy of Fine Arts and Design in Bratislava, Slovakia, in 2013. She has held solo exhibitions at Photoport and Hotdock Project Space, Bratislava, Slovakia; Loom, Milan; A SUD, Pescara, Italy; Stone Projects, Prague, Czech Republic; Chris Sharp, Los Angeles, CA; Mrs., Maspeth, NY; and The Armory Show, New York, NY. Recent group exhibitions include presentations at Medium and DKP, Bratislava; MiArt, Milan, Italy; Document, Chicago, IL; Felix Art Fair, Los Angeles, CA; The Salon by NADA; Carole Lambert Presente, Paris, France and Huxley-Parlour, London. She has been represented by Mrs. since 2025.
Rachael Bos Rachael Bos’s portraiture captures the dynamic beauty of athleticism, drawing from her fascination with organized sports. Through precise composition and technique in oil painting, she emphasizes the harmony and structure that exists both in nature and the human form. Bos received her BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Her work has been shown at De Boer, Los Angeles, CA; Nathalie Karg Gallery, New York City, NY; No Gallery, New York City, NY; The Hole, New York City, NY; Sulk Chicago, Chicago, IL; Mickey Gallery, Chicago, IL; Apparatus Projects, Chicago, IL; and Galerie Rolando Anselmi, Rome, Italy.
Robert Burnier Robert Burnier creates acrylic-on-aluminum wall sculptures, with each piece reflecting his deep engagement with process and transformation. The evolving folds and compressions in the material carry the traces of their own development, capturing the ongoing and irreversible flow of change. Burnier received his MFA from the School of the Art Institute and his BS in Computer Science from Shippensburg University of Pennsylvania. Residencies include Ragdale Foundation (Lake Forest, IL). Recent and upcoming solo exhibitions include Corvi-Mora (London, UK), ANDREW RAFACZ (Chicago, IL), blank projects (Cape Town, SA), Massey Klein Gallery (New York, NY), David B. Smith Gallery (Denver, CO), and The Arts Club of Chicago (Chicago, IL). Group exhibitions include Schneider Museum of Art (Ashland, OR), and Astrup Fearnley Museum of Modern Art (Oslo, Norway),ANDREW RAFACZ (Chicago, IL), CorviMora (London, UK), Vacation (New York, NY), Korn Gallery at Drew University (Madison, NJ), Mana Contemporary (Chicago, IL), The Art Institute of Chicago (Chicago, IL), and Elmhurst Art Museum (Elmhurst, IL). Burnier’s large-scale installation Black Tiberinus was on view on Chicago’s riverfront 2018-2019.
Nick Cave Nick Cave's work asks us to reposition ourselves in relation to critical issues of identity, gun violence, and race. Often visually masked, those critical issues assume an unexpected physical form in his work. The unseen figure runs throughout Cave’s creations, where adorned in fabric or beading, lost in texture, or alluded to in empty space. By its absence and presence, Cave explores the protection of the body and spirit amidst grave loss and trauma. Nick Cave received an MFA from the Cranbrook Academy of Art, Bloomfield, MI and a BFA from the Kansas City Art Institute, MO. Cave is the recipient of awards such as the Joan Mitchell Foundation Award (2008) and the Artadia Award (2006). His major solo exhibitions include Nick Cave: Forothermore (2022) at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago; Nick Cave: Until (2016) at MASS MoCA, North Adams, Massachusetts; and Nick Cave (2014) at Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston.
Tim Doud Through the agglomeration of these abstract forms, Doud detaches symbols from their original contexts, both neutralizing and transforming their cultural significance, leaving them the possibility of becoming something entirely different. Doud graduated from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago with an M.F.A in Painting and Drawing. He also attended the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture. Doud has exhibited his work at Hemphill Artworks, Washington, DC; Curator's Office, Washington, DC; Galerie Brusberg, Berlin, Germany; Art Basel, Basel, Switzerland; MC Magma, Milan, Italy; Priska Juschka Fine Art, NYC; RAYGUN, Toowoomba, South Queensland, Australia; Mono Practice in Baltimore, MD; and the New Bedford Museum of Art, New Bedford, MA. He has received grants from the National Endowment for the Arts (Arts Midwest), the Pollock Krasner Art Foundation, and the DC Commission for the Arts and Humanities and has participated in residencies at the Banff Centre, Alberta, Canada, the Sharpe/ Walentas Studio Program, NYC and the Golden Foundation, New Berlin, NY.
Crystal Gregory Crystal Gregory's work is informed by her background in textile structure, beginning with the soft, flexible foundation of woven cloth. She then challenges traditional material distinctions by incorporating rigid elements such as concrete, metal, and glass, creating an interplay between the pliable and the unyielding. Through this inversion of material expectations, Gregory questions the separation between the collapsible state of textiles and the permanence of architectural forms, suggesting that these opposites are more intertwined than typically perceived. Gregory received her BFA from the University of Oregon and her MFA from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago. In 2013 she was awarded The Leonore Annenberg Fellowship for the Performing and Visual Arts. With this grant, she moved to Amsterdam NL where she took a role
as Guest Artist at The Gerrit Rietveld Academie of Art. Her work has been exhibited in museums and galleries nationally including Through the Thread at the Rockwell Museum of Art, Devotion/Destruction: Craft Inheritance at Dorsky Gallery Curatorial Projects, Load Barring: The Art of Construction at The Hunterdon Art Museum and Crossover at Black and White Project Space.
Dan Gunn Dan Gunn’s carved draperies interrogate how the Midwestern artistic identity, often associated with 'folk' traditions like quilting, pottery, and woodworking, serves as a foundation for constructing notions of authenticity as tied to region––intimately blending collective cultural identity with individual experiences. Gunn received an MFA in Painting from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Recent solo exhibitions include moniquemeloche, Chicago, IL; Geary, New York, NY; KMAC Contemporary Art Museum, Louisville, KY; Flyweight Projects, New York, NY; and The University Club of Chicago, Chicago, IL. Gunn has also participated in group presentations at Contemporary Arts Center, Cincinnati, OH; Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art, Kansas City, MO; Elmhurst Art Museum, Elmhurst, IL; and Western Exhibitions, Chicago, IL. Gunn was awarded residencies at the Wassaic Project, University of Arkansas, Anderson Ranch Art Center; Vermont Studio Center; and The Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, ME.
Harmony Hammond Hammond incorporates found and repurposed materials such as rags, straw, burnt wood, and hair into her work. These everyday objects, with historical and cultural associations, are wrapped, ripped, bound, and layered by Hammond at the intersection of social struggle and the postminimal focus on materials and process. In addition to being an artist and curator, Hammond is a writer, publishing on feminist and queer theory in art. A leading figure in the development of the feminist art movement in New York in the early 1970s, she attended the University of Minnesota from 1963–67 before moving to New York in 1969. She was a co-founder of A.I.R., the first women’s cooperative art gallery in New York (1972) and Heresies: A Feminist Publication on Art & Politics (1976). Her work was included in the 2024 Whitney Biennial: Even Better Than the Real Thing and is included in Woven Histories: Textiles and Modern Abstraction organized by the National Gallery of Art, traveling to the Museum of Modern Art, NYC (April 20 – September 13, 2025) and Unravel: The Power and Politics of Textiles in Art originating at the Barbican Art Gallery, London, traveling to the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam (September 14, 2024 – January 5, 2025). Hammond’s work was also included in major exhibitions such as Women in Abstraction: Another History of Abstraction (2021 – 2022); Wack! Art and Feminist Revolution (2007); and High Times/Hard Times, New York Painting 1967-1975 (2006-2007).
Cameron Harvey Cameron Harvey takes the midline in the human form as the starting point for her large paintings. Using her body parts to physically push paint around the unstretched canvases, pigment fades with randomness and a sense of the organic, though not losing a foundational commitment to bilateral symmetry as holds the human body. Once completed, Harvey drapes the canvas, compounding the illusionistic space her limbs generated, creating a visceral echo in the viewer’s own body. Cameron received her MFA from the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, CA, a PostBaccalaureate Certificate in Painting from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and her BA in Studio Art from Wellesley College. Cameron has participated in artist residencies at the Vermont Studio Center, the Lijiang Studio, the Chicago Artists Coalition, and the Ucross Foundation. She presented her first solo museum exhibition at the Frederick R. Weisman Museum of Art at Pepperdine University in the fall of 2024.
Mie Kongo Invested in the histories of material and craft, Kongo engages process and product as coevolving, making visible the stages of construction and alluding to architecture and landscape’s foundational forms. Kongo’s abstract, geometric creations embrace opposition within material, space, and form to provoke theoretical questions of structure. Mie Kongo received a BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and an MFA in Ceramics from Cranbrook Academy of Art. Kongo’s multidisciplinary work has been shown at two solo exhibitions at 65Grand in Chicago, IL, a recent two-person Exposure booth represented by 65Grand at EXPO Chicago, and participation in group exhibitions at NADA Miami represented by The Landing Gallery in Los Angeles, CA. Her other solo and group exhibitions were held at Left field gallery, Los osos, CA; Tri-star Arts, Knoxville, TN; and Charlotte Street Foundation, Kansas City, MO. She has completed residencies at Shigaraki Ceramics Cultural Park in Shiga, Japan, and the European Keramic Work Center in ‘s- Hertogenbosch, Netherlands.
Jo Sandman After attending the prestigious Black Mountain College, after years of working with abstract painting, in the early 1970s, Jo Sandman made a dramatic shift away from traditional brushes, turning instead to her collection of painter’s linen. In this body of work, she experiments with pressing and creasing the material, initially using a handheld iron. With a monochrome visual cadence, the folds, their density, their frequency, and their pattern tell a narrative of the piece’s development. A student of both Hans Hofmann and Robert Motherwell, Jo Sandman was in residence at Black Mountain College with Robert Rauschenberg and Cy Twombly. Sandman’s innovative drawings, photography, experimental sculpture and installation works, which were exhibited widely and are now in permanent museum collections, including the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Awards include fellowships from the Massachusetts Arts Council and the Bunting
Institute at Harvard, as well as grants from the NEA and the Rockefeller Foundation. She has exhibited widely, including in exhibition Jo Sandman: Traces at the Black Mountain College Museum in Asheville, NC; in a two person exhibition Helen Frankenthaler and Jo Sandman/Without Limits at the Bowdoin College Museum of Art in Brunswick, ME; a solo exhibition at the Provincetown Art Association and Museum, Provincetown, MA in 2023/24; and most recently a solo exhibition at Krakow Witkin Gallery in 2024.
Alyson Shotz Alyson Shotz’s large-scale sculptures manipulate their own physicality to explore the phenomenological experience of space, light, and gravity. Using materials like plastic, glass, steel, and beads, her works interact with light and shadows, altering the viewer’s perception of both the sculpture and its environment, shaping the experience of their surroundings. Alyson Shotz received a BFA in painting from the Rhode Island School of Design and an MFA from the University of Washington. In both 1999 and 2010, Shotz was awarded a Pollock-Krasner Foundation grant; in 2004, she was the recipient of the New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship in painting. Her sculptures have been installed in solo presentations at: Madison Museum of Contemporary Art, Wisconsin (2006); Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, D.C. (2008, 2009); Wexner Center for the Arts, Columbus (2010); Nasher Sculpture Center, Dallas (2010); Derek Eller Gallery, New York (2011), and the Phillips Collection, Washington, D.C. (2012). Group exhibitions include The Shapes of Space, Guggenheim Museum, New York (2007); San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (2008); and Storm King Arts Center, Mountainville, New York (2010).
Malick Sidibé Malick Sidibé began his career by learning to develop and print negatives while working in a photo supply store in Bamako, Mali. His work went on to capture the spirit of Mali's independence, documenting the joy, energy, and optimism of youth culture in a newly liberated nation. Through dynamic scenes of celebration and studio portraits that juxtapose fashionable subjects with bold, patterned backdrops, Sidibé showcased the cultural vibrancy and selfexpression flourishing in post-independence Bamako during the 1960s onwards. Since the initial world premiere of his work in 1997, Sidibé has received the the Venice Biennale's Lifetime Achievement Award (2007), Hasselblad Award for Photography (2003) and the International Center of Photography's Infinity Award for Lifetime Achievement (2008). His work has been exhibited at the National Portrait Gallery (London), Fondation Cartier (Paris), Philadelphia Museum of Art, Corcoran Museum of Art, Museum of Contemporary Art (Chicago), the Armand Hammer Museum (Los Angeles) among others and can be found in the permanent collections of The Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York), Museum of Modern Art (New York), SFMoMA (San Francisco), Birmingham Museum of Art, Studio Museum of Harlem, High Museum of Art (Atlanta), International Center of Photography (New York) and Moderna Museet (Stockholm).
Samantha Thomas Samantha Thomas's work explores the interplay of structure, form, and depth through undulating projections, folded junctures, and dynamically interlaced textures. Influenced by the experimentation of earlier abstract expressionists, she works intentionally with the building blocks of form, generating vibrant topographies that oscillate between sharp forms and voluminous, flowing lines, blurring the boundaries between the optical and the tactile. Samantha Thomas received her BFA from the Art Center College of Design, Pasadena, CA. Her work has been exhibited in solo and group exhibitions at Anat Ebgi, Los Angeles/New York; LAXART, Los Angeles, CA; Maccarone Gallery, Los Angeles, CA; and Mike Weiss Gallery, New York, NY. Her forthcoming solo exhibition Chromoception opens at Anat Ebgi in March 2024.
Letha Wilson Letha Wilson is known for her synthesis of mediums, expanding the visual and physical dimensions of photography and sculpture. Letha has developed unique fabrication processes that combine her landscape photographs with steel, concrete, aluminum and drywall. She sees photography as a visual language that demands a unique physical presence to fully come alive, often merging the raw beauty of natural landscapes with the power of movement and force. Wilson earned her BFA from Syracuse University, NY and an MFA from Hunter College, NY. Residencies include The MacDowell Colony, Peterborough, NH, University of Nevada, Las Vegas, NV, Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in Madison, ME, The Yaddo Foundation, NY, Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts in Omaha, NE, and Headlands Center for the Arts in Sausalito, CA. Wilson has participated in group exhibitions at the New York Public Library, New York, NY; The Henie Onstad Triennial for Photography and New Media, Henie Onstad Kunstsenter, Høvikodden, Norway; MASS MoCA, North Adams, MA; MACRO Museo d’ Arte Contemporanea, Rome, Italy; Essl Museum, Klosterneuburg, Austria; Bemis Center for Contemporary Art in Omaha, NE; Bronx Museum of the Arts, Bronx, NY; and the Aldrich Museum of Contemporary Art, Ridgefield, CT.
1801 West Hubbard Street | Chicago | 60622 | 312.212.8888 www.secristbeach.com Back Cover Image: Back Cover Image: Alyson Shotz, Recumbent Fold #7 (Vase), 2019 and Harmony Hammond, Chenille #1, 2016-2017 (left) Harmony Hammond, Chenille #1, 2016-2017 (right) Alyson Shotz, Recumbent Fold #7 (Vase), 2019