Western Exhibitions is a contemporary art gallery that shows thought-provoking, and visually innovative artists who work across most media, with an emphasis on personal narratives and cosmologies; LGBTQ and feminist artists and issues; pattern, decoration and surface concerns; works on paper; and artist books. Western Exhibitions presents unique artist projects, curated group shows and maintains a specific inventory of artist books and multiples, gathered together as a sister entity and store, WesternXeditions.
Artists represented:
Dan Attoe, Marshall Brown, Elijah Burgher, Jessica Campbell, Lilli Carré, Courttney Cooper, Edie Fake, Nicholas Frank, Julia Schmitt Healy, Richard Hull, Jessica Labatte, Dutes Miller, Miller & Shellabarger, Aya Nakamura, Rachel Niffenegger, Paul Nudd, Robyn O’Neil, Stan Shellabarger, Geoffrey Todd Smith, Deb Sokolow, and Ben Stone.
Upcoming 2026 exhibitions:
Jan 9-Mar 21: Spaces for People, Systems for Spaces (group show about the built environment)
Mar 27-May 30: Marshall Brown
Jun 5-Aug 15: Richard Hull
Image: Marshall Brown, installation view of Remastériser, Western Exhibitions, 2023. Photo by James Prinz.
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Opening reception: Friday, September 12, 5-8pm
Western Exhibitions is pleased to present The Gloaming, Journie Cirdain’s second solo show with the gallery. Cirdain’s large allegorical drawings exist at the intersection of the human and animal, internal and external, magic and reality, and ultimately, life and death. The show opens on September 12 with a public reception and runs through November 1. Gallery hours are Tuesday to Saturday, 11am to 6pm.
Another word for twilight is gloaming, which influences Cirdain’s almost exclusive use of a crepuscular value range of graphite. She meticulously renders moments of tension between the human and non-human, reimagining art historical subjects (still lives, nudes, and luxury items) as living participants in an enmeshed environment. With a film director’s focus on drama and a romantic flirtation with the macabre, her drawings betray an exquisite attention to light surface as a chandelier becomes an environment for cobwebs; a spiderweb glistens like crystal; a bouquet hangs next to the site of its extraction; an environment shows beheaded tulips. Her drawings engage with ideas about living and dying as entangled beings.
Journie Nikala Cirdain was born in 1993 in Santa Rosa, California. In 2017, she received her BA in Liberal Arts in the Great Books at St. John’s College and an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. She has shown in exhibitions nationally and internationally, including The Green Gallery in Milwaukee, Elmhurst Art Museum in Illinois, A Gallery in Seattle, and in Chicago at Goldfinch and Patient Info. Cirdain lived and worked in Chicago for the past five years and is now on her way to Queens.
Image:
Chandelier (Crystals), 2025
Graphite on paper mounted on aluminum dibond
60h x 48w in