The Sacristy Gallery at Epiphany Center for the Arts
Take my Hand, Feel your Fantasy Slip Away is an exhibition that approaches the figure as a manifestation of vulnerability, sensibility, and human emotion, through the lens of a lived queer experience expressed by drawings on paper. The aim of these works is not to represent an actual person or figure, but to create an image that gives way into these three artists’ narratives of existence—a peek into an honest sense of pleasure, desire, sorrow, solace, gender, and most definitely a straying away from the mundane. By flaunting images of intense sexual pleasure, eroticism, bondage, alluring fantasy, leisure, gentle intimacy, and unapologetic selfness, these drawings achieve a sense of other-worldly-ness that elevates them into a realm seemingly unachievable, but eternally desirable. Featuring work by Vani Aguilar, Nia Danielle Lovemore Rutledge, and Nicholas Zepeda, Take my Hand, Feel your Fantasy Slip Awayseeks to create an exhilarating, yet mysterious mythology that investigates the emotional trauma and endurance of queer folks and their imagination.
This exhibition invites viewers to let go of their reality and enter an atmosphere where they can be seduced, a fantasy where they can share a space with powerful beings, and a private space where they can just feel. Presenting this series of wanderlusting adventures are the drawings themselves, for drawing as a medium allows for an intimate experience between the work and the viewer. Filled with mark-making and detail, this fundamental form of image-making creates a close bond between viewer and drawing. Up-close and personal, these drawings are to be carefully examined they are to be deliciously consumed.
Take my Hand, Feel your Fantasy Slip Away is curated by Juan Arango Palacios. Arango Palacios is an Artist and Designer born in Pereira, Colombia, who underwent a series of migrations in their youth that shaped their identity. They graduated from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2020, and have found a safe-haven within the queer community in Chicago.
To attend the free opening reception for this exhibition on September 17, please click to register and reserve your spot:
For more information and sales inquiries, please email art@epiphanychi.com.
