SATELLITE’s inaugural project VERDE opens on the occasion of the fourth annual Chicago Exhibition Week, with a public reception on Thursday, September 17, 5:00–8:00 PM

SECRIST | BEACH is thrilled to announce our new project space, SATELLITE. This creative incubator will pioneer new modes of encountering organic concepts across disciplines and media, fostering experimentation, collaboration, and exchange. The inaugural project of SATELLITE, titled VERDE, is a collaborative project between gallery artist Stephen Eichhorn and new partners: designer Bridgette Buckley and builder Jason Lewis along with Tara Heibel and Stephen Hill of Sprout Home. Additionally, educator and author Giovanni Aloi and creative director Chris Hunter are providing cultural programming and strategic initiatives, respectively.

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VERDE, SATELLITE’s inaugural installment, brings together new collage-on-panel artworks by Stephen Eichhorn, a living installation created in response to Eichhorn’s work by plant partner Sprout Home, and a botanic-themed library featuring Botanical Revolutions: How Plants Changed the Course of Art by SATELLITE’s Creative Director of Cultural & Content Programming, Giovanni Aloi, who will also organize a conversation series at SATELLITE in the coming months.

The nature references are intentional: at the heart of the raw 5,000-square-foot bow truss space is a three-part, greenhouse-inspired structure filled with plants, art, and gathering spaces, designed by award-winning Chicago furniture designer and maker Bridgette Buckley in collaboration with Eichhorn. The structure anchors a broader landscape of plant life throughout the surrounding open perimeter, where performance, sound, food, installations, and community-building draw inspiration from nature.

In addition, co-curated with Stephen Eichhorn, VERDE will present works by artists who share a grounding in the generative and mystical power of the natural world. Pots, vessels, and sculptures explore organic materials and ideas of containment—of plants, flora, and representation—while embracing the vessel as both form and concept. Participants include: Jesse Brown, Debbie Carlos, Emily Counts, Orr Gidon, Roxanne Hopper, Cody Hudson, Alessandra Norman, William J O’Brien, Zack Repko and Patrick Walsh.

In response to the constellation of works, Sprout Home will incorporate plants, trees, and succulents throughout the installation, creating a call and response between artistic and organic forms and drawing the works’ shared concepts into dialogue. Plant specimens will be on offer for acquisition through Sprout Home.

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SATELLITE is intended to be a constant evolution of experiences focused on the organic growth of ideas. It will feature an ongoing rotation of participatory encounters where cross-pollination, experimentation, and surprising connections are encouraged. A visitor might witness an artist working through an idea before presenting its finished result, hear a musician in conversation with a botanist, or taste a cocktail or tea infusion themed to a topic being explored in the space. They might watch a performance shaped by research or simply meet someone whose way of thinking rarely intersects with their own.

“Gallery spaces are largely built around completed works,” says Carrie Secrist. “But how do those works originate? What if we built a space dedicated to the act of creativity itself? SATELLITE is an arena where ideas can germinate and random acts of inspiration are encouraged to take root. This space carries forward the generosity I encountered when I entered the art world. I want it to be a place where Chicago’s creative community can encounter the unexpected and one another when ideas are still forming and before everything has been resolved.”

With this mission, SATELLITE intends to contribute to Chicago’s long tradition of fostering original forms of exchange between artists, designers, musicians, thinkers and makers who blur the boundaries of their disciplines and create new communities around ideas. As an open, participatory environment, SATELLITE will draw visitors closer to the creative process itself.

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Tags: Bridgette Buckley, Chris Hunter, debut, Jason Lewis, SATELLITE Project Space, Stephen Hill, Tara Heibel, VERDE