Johalla projects is pleased to invite you to the opening reception of Lights Out, an installation by Kate McQuillen at The Ace Hotel on December 10th, 2019 from 5:30-8pm.

There is a mystery that washes over the reliability of everyday life when dusk ushers in the darkness of night. Bustling streets become silent corridors, familiar sounds shift into creaks and quakes, and the blanket of stars invites ambiguity and anonymity into nightlife. Also, a time for rejuvenation, for rest and dreams to take priority over to-do lists and responsibilities, the night is a calming counterpart to the expectations that reside in daytime. Lights Out invites the night to cross into daytime, suspending the temporary nocturnal state to a constant presence.

McQuillen’s installation transports the vastness of space and the night’s sky into the lobby of the bustling Ace Hotel. Referencing a streak in the Milky Way, McQuillen expands outward to create an imagined celestial topography that reaches beyond the charted and tracked sky. The immensity of nighttime can be both soothing and unnerving; looking up into the stars and planets that pepper the darkness with a burst of illumination, the eye is filled with a horizonless field and one can find themselves awash with self-reflection. The vast scale of Lights Out embraces this sensation by mirroring the use of peripheral vision that is utilized when looking out into space. Through scale, McQuillen fills the Ace Hotel Lobby with limitless celestial possibilities.

Opening December 10th, 2019 and exhibited through the end of March 2020, Lights Out unites the parallel forces of night and day, awakening an opportunity to harmonize the self we are with the sun, and the person we become in the darkness. Find yourself flooded with the luminous beauty of the night-time in an exhibition that suspends the order of nature and transports the Ace Hotel lobby into a surreal atmosphere where light meets dark and finds a dance in between.

Kate McQuillen is a Brooklyn-based painter and printmaker. Recent exhibitions include solo and group shows at Deanna Evans Projects, (New York, NY), Massey Klein Gallery (New York, NY), and Left Field Gallery (Los Osos, CA). She is a member of Super Dutchess, an artist-run project space on the Lower East Side. Writings about her work have been included in Art in Print, Hyperallergic, Printeresting, The Chicago Tribune, and The Chicago Reader. She has attended residencies in the U.S. and abroad, including Mass MoCA, Ox-Bow School of Art, and the Frans Masereel Centrum. She holds degrees from Massachusetts College of Art (BFA), and York University (MFA).

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Tags: Ace Hotel Chicago, Johalla Projects, Kate McQuillen, Lights Out, near west side