Mariane Ibrahim Gallery

Mariane Ibrahim is pleased to announce "The Horizon Keeps Moving", the gallery’s second solo exhibition with Jennifer Rochlin, on view in Chicago from June 6 through July 18, 2026. The exhibition involves a new group of ceramic vessels and paintings that interleave with personal narratives. Returning to the city where she received her MFA in painting in 1999, the artwork in The Horizon Keeps Moving serve as both homecoming and excavation. The sculptures here are shaped by her impressions and memories of Chicago. A horizon line above the lake; the river; its grand architectural legacy; and its intimate haunts (bars, alleys, and decks) all populate her sculpted anecdotes. It is through their representation as in the delicate drawings that unfurl across the vessels’ surfaces that we see Rochlin engaging the city as a subjectivizing and structuring logic. The Horizon Keeps Moving is grounded in the present: a call to attend not only to beauty, but also to the inescapable tensions that shape the contemporary landscape. It is in this manner that Rochlin holds together memory and immediacy, art history and lived experience, allowing the encounter to generate a charged visual rhythm—akin to the perceptual intensity often associated with the intricate patterns of a Persian carpet, where repetition becomes a site of both pleasure and disquiet.

Mariane Ibrahim is pleased to present its first solo exhibition with Youssef Nabil, "No one Knows but the Sky". Cinema forms the stage upon which the photographic and video work of Youssef Nabil unfolds. Within it, the history of Egyptian cinema coexists with his childhood memories of Cairo, shaped by the film posters of a country that remains a major center of popular culture. Through its images, sounds, and stories, Egyptian cinema has shaped tastes, morals, and even language across the Arab world for decades. Through cinema, Nabil encountered art for the first time, and it remains the lens through which he has continued to observe and register the many transformations of his native land.

Mariane Ibrahim is pleased to present I" Dream I Cross the River in One Stride", a group exhibition bringing together the work of Clémence Gbonon (b. 1994), Brittney Leeanne Williams (b. 1990), and Autumn Wallace (b. 1996). The exhibition is inspired by ideas explored in Lorraine O’Grady’s seminal essay "Olympia’s Maid: Reclaiming Black Female Subjectivity". If, as O’Grady argues, the Black female body has long functioned as the unseen reverse side of Western femininity—present as stereotype, absent as subject—these artists reclaim the right to produce images that are self-authored, multiple, and unafraid of excess. Across painting and sculpture, Gbonon, Williams, and Wallace refuse inherited dichotomies and instead inhabit what O’Grady calls a “both/and” space: sensuous and thoughtful, wild and monumental, intimate and vulnerable, queer and undefined. Presented together, these artists do more than correct an art-historical omission; they propose a contemporary grammar for seeing and feeling lived experience. In dialogue with O’Grady’s text, the exhibition suggests that reclaiming female subjectivity today means moving beyond rescue from the male gaze toward a more radical act: freeing these figures from the historic script altogether. Here, the artworks become sites of self-knowledge, contradiction, pleasure —spaces where the right to complexity is not negotiated but asserted.

Mariane Ibrahim is pleased to present "Once upon a midnight dreary", a solo exhibition of new works by French-artist Djabril Boukhenaïssi. This show marks the artist first solo presentation in the United States, and the first with the gallery. Djabril Boukhenaïssi’s new series of paintings are the result of various encounters: with an artwork in an old monastery; with the poetry of Baudelaire, Rilke and Novalis; and with the routine yet mysterious phenomenon that is the night. The artist is interested in night-time as a form of wilderness, a time when absence — of light, of people, of activity — offers a kind of refuge from the materialistic sensibilities of twenty-first century life. Of course, night as it once was has all but disappeared: the darkness we experience is weaker, the stars vastly less numerous, and this has had an under-acknowledged effect on us all. It also poses a profound challenge to artists.

Mariane Ibrahim is pleased to announce Flaming Memory, a solo presentation of new works by Tokyo–based painter, Yukimasa Ida, whose portrait-based practice explores the tension between fleeting perception and the lasting imprint of memory on canvas. Yukimasa Ida builds his paintings through decisive brushstrokes, layering matter onto the canvas to render faces, whether of people close to him or strangers encountered during his travels. These portraits simultaneously convey a sense of vulnerability, marked by the impossibility of truly confronting these figures face to face. At the same time, his recurrent use of red infuses the works with a contagious inner intensity. Imbued with memories of both near and distant presences, Yukimasa Ida’s work lingers in the viewer’s mind like the image of a glowing fire, at once magnetic and perilous.

Mariane Ibrahim is pleased to present Thus masked, the world has a language, a group exhibition exploring the masquerade and mask traditions across the African diasporas in Mexico, the Caribbean, and the United States.

Michi Meko, The Big Mental Pause, 2024. Courtesy of the artist and Mariane Ibrahim. Mariane Ibrahim is pleased to present Under the Flickering Light of the North Star, the gallery’s inaugural solo exhibition with Atlanta-based artist Michi Meko. On paper and canvas, the work layers tactile materials as narrative elements, taking the viewer from moments of stillness to bursts of action as it explores the artist's contemplations on the legacies of critical geographies, particularly those of the American South.

Mariane Ibrahim is pleased to announce the upcoming exhibition in Chicago by artist duo Mwangi Hutter, entitled You Begin to See the Signs. The show will be on view from March 4 to April 16, 2025, and will mark the artists' third solo exhibition with the gallery and first in Chicago. The exhibition will be on view in tandem with the group exhibition Project a Black Planet: The Art and Culture of Panafrica at the Art Institute Chicago, which includes Static Drift (2001), part of the museum's permanent collection.

In an age of rapid advancement in virtual and augmented reality, Eva Jospin roots her practice in questioning perspective itself. In her tridimensional sculptures and immersive installations, she activates the illusion of depth to shift direct perception and guide the eye to multiple dimensions within each artwork— transforming sight into a conscious, interiorized process. As she explains, “I try to address the landscape as one we are part of—when nature becomes not just a space we observe but one we are inside of, it transforms into an interior, imagined vision.” While the notion of linear perspective was first theorized in the 15th century by Leon Battista Alberti, Jospin’s practice expands this singularity. In Vanishing Points the artist underscores the impossibility of engaging in her work from a single viewpoint. This is formally evidenced in sculptural scenes that unveil their complexity when observed from varying angles, heights, and distances. Each work conjures a sense of immersion that evokes the presence and immediacy of a rich landscape that has not been flattened by representation. Enlivened through one’s imagination, the work is further heightened as an internal experience. Inspired by the inhabitable structures of Italian Baroque gardens, Eva Jospin explores the ambiguity and theatricality of 18th century eccentric and decorative constructions found in parks also known as architectural follies. These forms bridge the visualities of a natural landscape to the curiosity and wonders evoked by sentimental and ornamental structures. Jospin works in their legacy as she blends the precision of architectural design with the fluidity of organic forms. The artist’s technical explorations into embroidery and textiles embody a diversity that deepens the tactile experience between her bi-dimensional and three-dimensional artworks. This metamorphosis of material using bronze, silk threads, and cardboard, is a journey through landscapes where subtle details invite a shift in perspective. Through her integration of diverse materials, Eva Jospin navigates the spatial interrelationships between humanity, architecture, and nature in deep contemplation of their interconnectedness. Vanishing Points is a chapter in the artist’s ongoing inquiry into the observer’s connection to their natural and built environment—a dialogue with resonance to the architectural heritage of Chicago, making this exhibition a fitting debut in the city.

Mariane Ibrahim is pleased to present Escaping the tyranny of meaning, a solo exhibition of new work by Leasho Johnson, on view from August 30 until October 26, 2024. This exhibition marks the artist’s first show with the gallery. In reflection of the rich sociologies of Jamaica, the centrality of mythology in Leasho Johnson’s work acknowledges the Caribbean and diasporic heritage to solidify history through folklore and imagination. Johnson’s practice situates imagination as an incubator for uninhibited connection and self-expression. Navigating the complexities of dark, abstract realms, his practice reveals sudden bursts of figuration, where creatures of presence emerge with striking clarity. By blending and experimenting with drawing and painting techniques, Johnson creates lush, vivid images brimming with sensual intensity. Image: Leasho Johnson, The centipede under two skies (Anansi #27), 2023. Courtesy of the artist and Mariane Ibrahim.

Mariane Ibrahim is pleased to announce Palimpsest, a summer group exhibition presenting work by Bethany Collins, McArthur Binion, Carmen Neely, Zohra Opoku, ruby onyinyechi amanze, Michael Rakowitz, and Edra Soto. Palimpsest sparks dialogue between hegemonic and emergent histories, private and public iconographies, mythologies, and fantasies. The show will be on view from July 30 through August 24, 2024. This convergence of work examines how drawing, painting, and sculpture serve as palimpsests as each embodies records of personal and diasporic narratives. These artworks highlight the opacity of history in our lives, where memories are veiled and known only through their traces. Composed of contested memories, social minutia and phenomena, alongside notions of spirituality and myth these visual records illustrate that even in the haste of erasure, histories may be shrouded, but traces remain, destined to be rediscovered. Palimpsest illuminates the dynamic interplay between visibility and concealment, memory, and imagination in our lives. By engaging in detailed observation, viewers uncover how these interconnected residual histories shape personal and collective narratives.

Sol Kordich (b. Buenos Aires, 1995) is an artist based in Berlin whose compositions exude sophistication and elegance, marked by a meticulous layering that imbues the canvas with depth and luminosity. Within the intricate layers of color lie fragments of poetry, song lyrics, and notation, echoing the unseen yet profound aspects of human experience. This hidden complexity serves as a testament to the artist's belief in the significance of both the visible and the unseen.

As her figures waver between figuration and abstraction throughout her work in Interiorities Miranda Forrester paints instability at the edge of presence and disappearance.