Without Permission - Exhibition Opening

The Art of Paul Sierra, Kevin C. Lawler, & David Hauptschein 

Opening Reception Friday, May 1

6:00 to 10:00 p.m.

Chicago Grand Gallery

2842 W. Chicago Ave.

Openings are strange events. They exist for a few hours, gather a room full of people, and then disappear into memory almost immediately. What remains are fragments — conversations half-remembered, images that linger, and the quiet sense that something briefly aligned.

Without Permission, opens Friday, May 1st at Chicago Grand Gallery, brings together the work of Paul Sierra, Kevin C. Lawler, and David Hauptschein — three practices that don’t entirely agree with one another, which is precisely why they belong in the same room.

The title is not rhetorical. It describes the condition under which most meaningful work is made. Art rarely waits for approval. It appears, insists on itself, and often arrives before it can be justified.

Three Approaches, One Unstable Conversation

Paul Sierra’s paintings move through identity as something in flux — shaped by memory, migration, and a constant negotiation between past and present. Forms emerge and dissolve, never fully settling, as if the image itself is trying to remember where it came from.

A Cuban-born artist, Paul's tropical palette is based on childhood memories, and his trademark vibrant colors provide a cultural corridor between his turbulent heritage and his adopted country. His beautiful yet often haunting paintings are transmitted directly from his fecund imagination to the blank canvas. Color and gesture become a language for navigating the space between past and present.

Kevin C. Lawler approaches painting through material and surface. His background in gilding and conservation is visible, but not restrictive. The work carries a sense of time — built, layered, and altered — holding a tension between control and spontaneity that resists easy resolution.

Kevin approaches painting through material and surface. With a background in traditional gilding and conservation, his work carries a strong sense of craft while remaining visually immediate. His compositions often hold tension between control and spontaneity, where texture and surface act as a record of time.

My own work continues an exploration of artificial intelligence as a tool for picture-making. Not as an author, and certainly not as an intelligence, but as a mechanism that generates material. The work begins afterward — in the selection, rejection, and reconstruction of what the machine produces. The resulting images are less about answers than about narrative possibilities, often unsettled and open-ended.

The Value of Physical Presence

There is also something quietly important about seeing this work in a physical space. Digital images, in particular, behave differently when they leave the screen. They slow down. They become objects rather than content. The viewer is no longer scrolling past them, but standing in front of them, negotiating their presence in real time.

This shift matters more than we tend to admit.

An Exhibition That Doesn’t Resolve

Without Permission does not offer a single interpretation, and it isn’t trying to. Instead, it holds contradiction, fragmentation, and uncertainty in place. The works don’t resolve into a unified statement. They remain in conversation — sometimes aligned, sometimes in tension.

That instability is part of the point.

The Opening, and After

The opening reception on May 1 gathered that temporary alignment of people, images, and attention. As always, it passed quickly. What remains now is the work itself, continuing in the gallery without the noise of the event.

The exhibition runs through May 29 at Chicago Grand Gallery.

If you’re curious, come see it in person. The work tends to behave differently when you’re standing in front of it.