Volume Gallery Archives - Chicago Reader

Gallery view shows a lantern covered in a silk, tent-like shape, with four steel legs. The lantern is on (via a plug) and the room, is dark.

The sacred and profound in Stephen Burks’s ‘Spirit Houses’

by Vasia Rigou September 19, 2023September 19, 2023

“Each morning I make my way to the large east-facing windows overlooking the Harlem River. Sage, photos of my Beloveds, candles, water and items too sacred to name adorn my makeshift altar—an antique wooden liquor stand turned ‘spirit house.’ . . . Imbued with the stories it holds and lives it has lived, my altar […]

On the white gallery walls hang two rope and terracotta sculptures. On the lefthand side of the image a ghostlike sculpture made of the same materials hangs from the ceiling. It resembles the form of a jellyfish.

Arts & Culture

Specters of material

by Maxwell Rabb May 12, 2023May 31, 2023

At first glance, Tanya Aguiñiga’s “Swallowing Dirt” seems to gesture to the phantasmagoric. Her spectral rope and terra-cotta sculptures fill Volume Gallery, suspended from the walls and ceiling. The figures ostensibly depict the uncanny body, which produces our premature illusory response. But under closer examination, Aguiñiga’s sculptures are corporeal. She threads together her two material […]