Pierce the Veil
Sage Dawson, Chiara Galimberti, Victoria Martinez, Katharine Schutta, and Selina Trepp

Standing stones and monoliths, intentionally constructed so that at significant moments of the year – like transitions between seasons – the sun strikes on predetermined and symbolic elements, are often attributed to astronomical observance; suspected ritual sites but actual functions unknown. Lines of geomagnetic forces run through earth’s crust, and when concentrated in a specific place, intensify and amplify the magnetic field. 

Pierce the Veil, a group exhibition featuring the work of Sage Dawson, Chiara Galimberti, Victoria Martinez, Katharine Schutta, and Selina Trepp, takes its title from the historical television drama Outlander, based on series of novels by Diana Gabaldon. During the first season, an older local woman attempts to interpret the inexplicable disappearance of a visiting woman to her bereft and disbelieving husband. The visitor has touched a magical stone and been transported back in time two hundred years.

Though not all of the included artists create work that explicitly addresses the time-space continuum, they all make work that allows the viewer to transcend reality – to physically or psychologically walk through a portal, connecting distant locations, alternate dimensions, parallel worlds, or breaks with the future and past.

Originally from Italy, Chiara Galimberti is currently residing in Chicago. She earned an MA in Italian Studies from NYU in 2015 and an MFA in Painting and Drawing from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2012, where she was a Soros New American Fellow. Her work tends to be context and place specific rather than self-referential, and can take the form of drawing, installation or collaborative performance. She is particularly interested in looking at both public and private space as sites of continual power and boundary negotiation and contestation. Her work was recently shown at Woman Made Gallery in Chicago and New York University in Florence, Italy. She is a member of the feminist art collectives W.I.T.C.H and Tracers.

Selina Trepp is an artist whose work explores economy and improvisation. Finding a balance between the intuitive and conceptual is the goal, living a life of adventure is a way, embarrassment is often the result.
She combines installation, drawing, painting, and sculpture to create intricate setups for photos and videos. Selina Trepps work has been exhibited widely internationally and has received several awards and honors including the Swiss Art Award and the Illinois Arts council Fellowship. In addition to the studio-based work, Selina is active in the experimental music scene. In this context she sings and plays the videolah, her midi controlled video synthesizer, to create projected animations in real-time as visual music. She performs with a varying cast of collaborators and as one half of Spectralina, her audiovisual collaboration with Dan Bitney.

Sage Dawson is a Saint Louis-based artist, educator, and curator. Her work examines dwelling rights, land use, and the identity of spaces. Recent exhibitions were held at Pyramid Atlantic, the Center for Contemporary Printmaking, the Urban Institute for Contemporary Art, Boston University, the City University of New York, and the International Print Center New York. Sage’s work has been featured in Elephant Magazine and in From Here to There published by Princeton Architectural Press. Her work has been reviewed at Art in Print, Hyperallergic, and by Lori Waxman for 60 wrd/min art critic. Sage teaches printmaking at Washington University, and runs STNDRD–a gallery project based in Saint Louis.

Victoria Martinez is an interdisciplinary artist and educator from Chicago who explores installation, site-specific intervention, screenprinting, and painting. She believes in chance and intuition, creating projects for galleries and ephemeral experiences in the urban environment. Martinez works with vibrant colors; pattern based textiles, and overlooked items, sewing them together to create fresh perspectives. She has exhibited at Northwestern University, Hyde Park Art Center, Chicago Cultural Center, the Gaylord and Dorothy Donnelley Foundation, and Chicago Artists Coalition. Upcoming projects include group exhibitions at the National Museum of Mexican Art, the Franklin, and a solo exhibition at Washington State University.

Katharine Schutta is a Chicago-based artist. She creates paper collages, visual poems, that are explorations of the human condition - of art, intimacy, and transgression. Culling, cropping, repositioning and realigning images from a vast collection of auction catalogues, magazines and books, Schutta collides contemporary art and art history, science, technology and the natural world.