Joy Machine is a contemporary art gallery in Chicago’s Irving Park neighborhood. Founded in 2025 by Grace Ebert and Christopher Jobson, the gallery exhibits works by emerging and established artists, with a particular focus on creating dialogues between those working locally and others making their Chicago debuts. Fostering joy through accessibility and the unexpected remains a central tenet of our programming.
Image: Installation view of Light Preserver (2025). Photo by Daniel Kwon
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Drawing its title from Wendell Berry’s often-quoted poem, The Peace of Wild Things is a return to wonder through disparate yet complementary practices. For both Brown and Kwon, color and layering become a means of self-discovery and a way to tap into the emotions, dreams, and memories that might not surface otherwise. Their practices diverge in notable ways–Brown works abstractly, while Kwon turns to surreal representations of care and domestic life–but when presented together, they enter into a harmonic dialogue about the ways experiences linger long after a moment has passed.
Whether working on a monumental mural or intimate painting on canvas, Brown revels in riotous geometries of color. Amorphous forms and clean lines commingle in compositions that conjure the emotional power of magenta, peach, cobalt, or goldenrod. Describing her studio practice as the space in which her inner child emerges, the artist harnesses the playful energy we typically associate with adolescent imagination. In both her canvases and irregularly shaped found-cardboard pieces, each line resists being bound by the edge of the frame, instead appearing to continue onward on its own course.
Inversely, Kwon nests tiny scenes of family life into stacks of folded clothes and bulbous vessels evocative of Korean Moon Jars. Holding the mundane with affection, the artist preserves small acts of care by placing them securely inside these larger forms. Rendering elements at different scales echoes the ways experiences fade and reappear over time, while the soft, pastel color palettes suggest a tenderness toward quiet intimacies.
Kwon also draws on her Korean heritage and training in Asian painting traditions, the latter of which informs her understanding of negative space. In the diptych “What We Hold Dear,” she pairs a trio of vignettes depicting outdoor adventures with hands cradling the small findings from such endeavors. The pieces are presented in a folding frame with soft, rounded edges inspired by Korean design.
For both Brown and Kwon, painting offers the necessary space to process the past and imagine the future. Perhaps more importantly, though, the practice demands one’s presence and creates the conditions that spark wonder and joy.
The Peace of Wild Things is on view from August 28 to October 17, 2026. Please RSVP to our opening reception.
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October 23-November 21, 2026
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Working in acrylic, oil, ceramic, textiles, fire, pencil, watercolor, and vintage wallpaper, more than 70 artists have conceived of one-of-a-kind matchboxes for this incredible show.
What does solidarity mean for the artist? Or, what can art do in a time of crisis?
The concept of a general strike is appealing to many advocates and activists because, in the face of oppression or inequality, it’s one of the few options available to the general public. General strikes are sometimes thought of as the “people’s veto,” and for the un-unionized among us, are less about joining our colleagues on the picket lines and more a call for solidarity. They ask us to pinpoint our strengths and identify how our skills can best be of use.
Writing about the need and dream of solidarity, activist and novelist Sarah Schulman describes recognition, risk, and creativity as the essential tools in harnessing “the people power necessary to reach the tipping point that transforms lives and, in the most extreme conditions of brutality, actually saves lives.” For artists, these three tenets–recongition, risk, and creativity–are often already the building blocks of a practice. Discerning eyes and trenchant observations, personal sacrifices and provocative positions, combined with a wealth of imagination, are evident in both the studio and the streets. Artists are in many ways world-builders, helping to illuminate what’s previously gone unnoticed or otherwise been thought impossible.
In General Strike, we witness more than 70 approaches to a singular object: a large, wooden matchbox. Containing purple-tipped matchsticks, these vessels of potential display a wide array of mediums and methodologies offered by artists across North America. While some revel in whimsy, beauty, and the pleasures of life, others direct us toward bold, decisive action. All, in their own ways, speak to an innate impulse to transform something simple into another thing entirely.
Like any crisis, whether tangible or of conscience, what’s required is a variety of responses, the best of which fan the flames of courage and ultimately insist on our shared humanity. The particularities of such approaches–and those stoking their creation–are what make this fight worthwhile, especially when we’re all striking together.
General Strike opens on November 21 and runs through December 20.
A portion of the proceeds from all work sold in General Strike will be donated to the ACLU.
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An opening reception will be held from 6 to 9 p.m. on January 30.
World in My Eyes is, first and foremost, rooted in the lives of everyday people. Both Sentrock and Mahaffey have long depicted friends and neighbors in their own Chicago neighborhoods, exploring how our city shapes its youngest residents. How are children cared for? How are their imaginations and dreams nurtured? These questions recur throughout both artists’ practices and always hinge on another: how do children thrive amid turmoil, whether political, cultural, or personal? In World in My Eyes, Sentrock’s signature bird character meets Mahaffey’s energetic cast. Each artist confronts an underlying struggle–whether an unrealized dream or a physical need–not through an unrealistic swaddle of optimism but rather through the often-repeated idea that hope is a practice. For children, and for all of us seeking a better tomorrow, hope starts with courage.
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Joy Machine also marked its one-year anniversary in February, so we'll also have cake from the amazing Emily Spurlin to celebrate.
Sentrock Print Release + Reception RSVP
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How do we conceive of change? With fear, excitement, or uncertainty? As Janny Baek builds sculptural ceramics of speculative beings and imagined landscapes, she grapples with these questions. The work follows its own dream logic, one that accepts incongruity and dissonance as necessary to play and experimentation. Marbling hunks of colored clay, coiling bases, and molding a singular material into something new is part of an exploratory practice that embraces transformation and its often strange outcomes. Life Forms emerges from this dual meaning, invoking both the act of creation and the fantastical works it produces. Neither wholly abstract nor representational, Baek’s sculptures draw on natural structures and processes and invite us to question how we interpret the world around us. Recognizable forms like open blossoms, birds, and creatures are met with the unexpected. These lively components make even the more abstract works appear animate, like ambiguous organisms that might decide to scuttle away. They evoke something primordial and yet are exhilaratingly new. Baek paints in the way she sketches, as a means of developing ideas and visualizing their potential. For her ceramics, she incorporates hand building alongside the Japanese pottery technique known as nerikomi, which involves splicing and designing patterns with strips of colored clay. “My material choices are a way of thinking about natural processes: color gradients as the continuous nature of change, a multitude of colors as potential, abundance, and vitality, and patterns as signals and communications,” she says. Hovering between worlds, Baek’s work populates a speculative environment in which beings morph, mutate, and blossom, their individual features forming an otherworldly lineage that’s recognizable but not identical. While “temporarily and imperfectly captured in a moment of many possible transformations,” the works beckon us into a world in which change is not only inevitable but also the most alluring proposition. Life Forms is Baek’s Chicago debut.
An opening reception will be held on March 20, and the artist will be present.
About the artist: Janny Baek is an artist and architect born in Seoul, South Korea, and raised in Queens, New York. She received her BFA in ceramics from Rhode Island School of Design, and worked as a sculptor in animation and toys before completing her Master's in Architecture at Harvard University. Baek brings her experience as a sculptor, designer, and architect to her ceramics today. After founding her firm, McMahon-Baek Architecture, in 2014, she returned to the medium in 2019. Her work is part of the collection of the Museum of Arts and Design in New York and has been shown at the Houston Center for Contemporary Craft, the Korea Society, and the Korea Ceramics Foundation, among others. Baek currently lives and works in lower Manhattan with her husband and their two daughters.
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May 15 to June 27, 2026
We're thrilled to share our first exhibition in partnership with Vertical Gallery: Wanderland, featuring all new works by Dutch artist Collin van der Sluijs. Opening on July 10, this exhibition marks the artist’s sixth solo presentation in Chicago and more than ten years of working with Vertical. We're honored to be part of the collaboration.
Wanderland comprises a new body of work developed during a two-year period. Spanning enormous mixed-media paintings, intimate drawings, and skate decks bearing the artist’s signature birds, the exhibition reflects both the momentous and mundane, particularly loss, grief, and the therapeutic powers of nature.
The opening also coincides with the publication of Wanderland: 1991-2026, a beautiful 180-page hardcover career retrospective spotlighting van der Sluijs' achievements as a painter, muralist and graffiti writer.You can pre-order it here.
Join us for an opening reception from 6 to 8 p.m. on July 10. Van der Sluijs will be present.
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