is a contemporary art gallery/curatorial umbrella founded in 2022, with an office space (Annex/Cointelpro) in Chicago's Albany Park neighborhood, and a vitrine (Hole) in Chicago's Logan Square neighborhood. The gallery's program focuses around allowing artists opportunities to present ambitious and challenging work in a site-responsive and collaborative manner, alongside exhibition-specific ephemera.

Directed by Milo Christie and Sam Dybeck.





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Tired Light
An Emard, Nick Hobbs


August 25th, 2023 - September 24th, 2023

An Emard (they/them) is an interdisciplinary artist locating the myth-making and world-building potentials of queerness. while examining the myths that have birthed our dimension. They were born into a large family in suburban Chumash Land / Ventura. CA and spent their formative years navigating queerness in the shadow of the Catholic Church and the light of lemon orchards. asphalt. and the Pacific Ocean. Emard now resides on the unceded homelands of the Council of Three Fires / Chicago. IL An Emard has exhibited in Los Angeles. Chicago. and Vermont at venues including Steve Turner Gallery. Block Museum. Usdan Gallery. Kibum MacArthur. Some Clouds. among
others.

Nick Hobbs is a visual artist. writer. and educator living and working in New York City. He grew upin Louisiana and his work is informed by over a decade of experience as an amateur astronomer and a lifelong curiosity about our relationship with the cosmos. Nick has been published in ArtMaze Magazine. Friend of the Artist. and Booooooom. He has shown his work with Arcadia Contemporary. IRL Gallery. Manifest Gallery. Random Access Gallery. the Louisiana Art & Science Museum. and the Masur Museum of Art. among others.

Press Release
Checklist It was noticed in the mid-1800s that distant galaxies appear more red in color than nearby galaxies (“redshift”). The prevailing belief at the time was that the universe is stable and has always been the same size (“Steady State Cosmology”) In the 1920s, the “Tired Light” hypothesis was proposed to both explain redshift and preserve the popular Steady State model. The idea goes that light is redshifted not by the Doppler effect/expansion but by photons of light bouncing off of dust particles and losing energy (getting tired). The farther light has to travel, the more tired it gets, and the more red it gets. This  hypothesis has a huge flaw in that the same explanation would mean that images of distant galaxies would also be blurred and distorted by all that intergalactic dust, but such a thing is not observed. Any discourse surrounding space phenomena can fall into the trap of compressing these huge and unimaginable events into rigid and compartmentalized taxonomies, the sciences more a medium for measuring and interpretation than pure knowledge. This dialectic of concession mirrors the way identity may be subsumed into more easily digestible forms within popular culture. Space itself as an empty frontier is situated perfectly to have American capital's fanatsies of escapism projected upon it, mediated through narratives of 'Great Men' and a newer, reconstituted version of manifest destiny.

We watch a very sterile resucitation of a space race. fronted by corporate figureheads. splitting the atom. mastering the cosmsos in a way that is utterly and undoubtedly violent. The colonial connotations of these events are now posited as a rush to bring us the most impressive and life-chanigng prooduct. rather than to bolster our national pride. But space has existed and does exist regardless of those institutions. It is inacessible in a very specific way. in our age of artificial light that washed out the stars. but it is as divine and ancient as any other aspect of nature.


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3336 W Lawrence Ave #303
Chicago, IL 60625
Open Saturdays 1-4 while a show is up.