On view July 19 - September 1

In 1882 a man wrote a letter to his wife, Martha. It read:

“Tables and chairs, beds, mirrors, a clock to remind the happy couple of the passage of time, an armchair for an hour’s pleasant daydreaming, carpets to help keep the floors clean, linen tied with pretty ribbons in the cupboard and dresses of the latest fashion and hats with artificial flowers, pictures on the wall, glasses for everyday and others for wine and festive occasions plates and dishes ... and the sewing table and the cozy lamp, and everything must be kept in good order or else the couple who has divided their hearts into little bits, one for each piece of furniture, will begin to fret. And this object must bear witness to the serious work that holds the household together, and that object, to a feeling for beauty, to dear friends one likes to remember, to cities one has visited, to hours one wants to recall. ... Are we to hang our hearts on such little things? Yes, and without hesitation.”

The man who wrote that letter was Sigmund Freud, a wildly sexist, largely discredited psychoanalyst whose contributions to culture now seem less certain. Still the letter (though highly edited) contains beautiful sentiment. What do we do with such tarnished things? Can the good parts be enjoyed separately from the bad? Think of an expensive present that was a gift from an ex-lover. Do you keep it? It’s too nice to give away. While deciding what to do with such a thing, the object remains in the back of a drawer, perhaps never to be used or seen again. The objects in our home are charged with power. They can give us joy, but they can just as easily remind us of a painful childhood memory, a departed loved one, a failed relationship. Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar, but sometimes...it’s not.

- Gwendolyn Zabicki

Gwendolyn Zabicki ( @gwendolynz) is a painter from Chicago. She earned her BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2005 and her MFA from the University of Illinois at Chicago in 2012. Her work has shown at White Columns, Anastasia Tinari Projects, Heaven Gallery, Slow Gallery, Roman Susan, Comfort Station, the Hyde Park Art Center, Gallery 400, and the Bauhaus­ Universität in Weimar, Germany. She was selected for the 2022 Midwest edition of New American Paintings, issue 161. In 2020, she was named a Breakout Artist by NewCity Magazine. Her work has been reviewed in the Chicago Reader, the Chicago Tribune, and she has appeared on the Bad At Sports podcast. She has curated exhibitions at Heaven Gallery, the Ukrainian Institute of Modern Art, the Riverside Arts Center, the College of DuPage and the Illinois State Museum. She has taught painting and drawing at the Hyde Park Art Center, Skidmore, Owings, and Merrill, and the University of Illinois at Chicago.

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