Carrie Secrist Gallery is pleased to announce our second exhibition with Chicago-based gallery artist Stephen Eichhorn: Portals | Voids | Stacks. Our online viewing room is now live on our website and will be up through August 29. We will also be offering ‘by appointment only’ visits to see Stephen Eichhorn’s exhibition at our space at 900 W. Washington BLVD.

Portals | Voids | Stacks brings Stephen Eichhorn’s collage-based works on paper to a new realm of otherworldly experiences not unlike these strange times we’ve all been experiencing. Created over the course of the last 6 months and within our collective self-isolations, these intricately cut out images of cacti, succulents and their accompanying flowers are strategically piled and placed on monochromatic or gradated sheets of paper.

Eichhorn’s deep interest in these plants goes beyond their aesthetic and virtuous appeal. Just previous to developing the artwork for Portals | Voids | Stacks, and well into the current pandemic, Eichhorn began to collect, cultivating and meditate with living cacti and succulents gathered from all over the world. His curiosity and subsequent education about these plants came as a kind of comforting distraction and the process of cutting and gathering started to take on a different, slower or more deliberate function as a meditative act. From Eichhorn: “In the moment, each component becomes critical with each thorn or flower petal needing care and attention, as if the paper image was living.”

At the request of Stephen Eichhorn, 10% of all sales will be donated to Planned Parenthood of Illinois.

Click here to view the online exhibition. If you’d like to visit the exhibition, please email us.

Stephen Eichhorn (b. 1984, United States) lives and works in Chicago. He has had solo exhibitions at the Franklin Park Conservatory, Elmhurst Art Museum and the Chicago Athletic Association. His work has also been included in group exhibitions at the Tower Hill Botanic Gardens, the Ukrainian Institute of Modern Art, NEIU Fine Arts Center Gallery, Illinois State Musem Lockport Gallery and the Museum of Arts and Design, New York. 

Stephen Eichhorn, The Stack (Red Flowers) detail, 2020, Collage on archival paper, 37.5 x 24.5 inches