Western Exhibitions is thrilled to present our sixth solo show with Lilli Carré, a two-part exhibition: in Gallery 1 we will present Fallen Anvils, featuring ceramic sculpture and hand-painted acetate cels and in Gallery 2, the animated film Evacuations. Fallen Anvils + Evacuations will open on Friday, November 7 and runs through December 20. Gallery hours are Tuesday through Saturday, 11am to 6pm. The gallery will be accessible by appointment during the holiday break.

The exhibition is anchored around the animated short film Evacuations (2025). Painted formless figures haunt recent photos of emptied-out public spaces. As cel-animated smear frames, they perform various repetitive acts in these settings, with movements expressing a helpless, frantic energy felt in our current moment. The film is a string of varied evacuations – earth and organs are emptied, situations are fled. The figures become displaced from their locations, as their environments dissolve and their printed record evaporates.

Gallery 1 holds 20 individual cels chosen from the film out of over 1000 hand-painted animation frames, certain frozen instants of transitional smear frame energy. Throughout the room sit ceramic mutations of classical anvil forms, inspired by the heavy, hammered cartoon object known for falling unexpectedly out of the sky. Hand-drawn lenticular elements are embedded into the anvils, adding unexpected life and motion into their weight.

Lilli Carré’s interdisciplinary creative practice employs a wide range of media, including experimental animation, drawing, comics, weaving, and ceramic sculpture. Recent works focus on perceived misbehaviors, bodily communication, and the grotesque. She is particularly interested in the open-ended possibilities and histories of the animated body – simultaneously physical and virtual, free of expectations or fixed form.

Representations of the feminine form and animated body throughout history are a source of fascination for Carré. Her images look at ways in which people interact with and inhabit cartoon bodies that appear to feel no pain or touch, and our relationship to separate, virtual selves. In addition to animation, her drawings and ceramic sculptures explore mutation, tactility, and malleability, translating cartoon logic from the virtual to the physical world through material disobedience.

Evacuations was recently included in the Ottawa International Animation Festival, winning Best Sound Design. From the jury: “Sound creates the physical experience in film, moving from its source directly to the body. Our selection employs sound playfully juxtaposed with image and movement to create a whole stronger than its individual parts.”

Lilli Carré is a recipient of a 2024 Guggenheim Fellowship in Film-Video. Her solo shows include the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, the Columbus Museum of Art in Ohio, Museo Internazionale e Biblioteca della Musica di Bologna in Italy, 150 Media Stream, Chicago and Western Exhibitions. Her work is held in the collections of The National Gallery of Art and The Library of Congress, both in Washington, D.C.; The Booth School of Business, University of Chicago; The Progressive Art Collection, Mayfield Village, Ohio; and Thomas J. Watson Library, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Her animated films have been shown in festivals throughout the US and abroad, including the Sundance Film Festival; Annecy; the Edinburgh International Film Festival; Ottawa International Animation Festival; 25FPS; European Media Arts Festival; the Ann Arbor Film Festival; and the International Film Festival in Rotterdam. Carré co-founded the Eyeworks Experimental Animation Screening Series in 2010, which is held annually in Chicago, Los Angeles, and New York. She has several published graphic novels with Fantagraphics and her work has appeared in The New York Times, The New Yorker, Best American Comics and Best American Nonrequired Reading. Artist residencies include MacDowell, Yaddo, and Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts. She received a BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and MFA from Northwestern University. Carré is represented by Western Exhibitions in Chicago and she lives and works in Los Angeles, where she teaches in the Experimental Animation program at CalArts.

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Tags: : Fallen Anvils // Evacuations, Chicago, Lilli Carré, West Town, Western Exhibitions