Oct 11–Nov 9, 2025

T. Mari Art Gallery
1023 N Western Ave, Chicago
https://www.tmarigallery.com

Tender Hooks, 2017

meat hook, baby shoes 
18" x 6" x 3"

Objects hold power. They fix memory in matter, carry belief across generations, and press against perception until it shifts. To stand before them is to be addressed. Object Lessons is built on that charge, arranging objects that act not as images but as agents.

In Object Lessons, Tim Lowly approaches curation as inquiry. The works do not resolve into answers but remain open, asking what an object might hold and how meaning emerges in its presence. The exhibition holds this tension, inviting an unfolding conversation between object and viewer.

Paying homage to artist Robert Gober, whose practice has long modeled the transformative force of context and framing, this exhibition gathers the work of seventeen artists, each represented by a single object. Distilled to its essence, each work becomes a site of encounter—conceptually rigorous, layered, and concentrated into a field of relations.

Hosted by T. Mari Gallery, a contemporary gallery in Chicago’s West Town founded by artist Tina Mari Rucker.