SIREN SIREN
Qian Cheng, Alex Gibson, Willem le Duc
Curated by Jonathan Alfaro
September 24 - October 16, 2026
Saturday April 4 - An Emard
April 4 to 19, 2026
Opening reception Saturday, April 4, 4-6pm
The exhibition will be viewable by appointment only after the opening reception. Email Scott at sctkmp@gmail.com to arrange a visit.
—
I was in a workshop, or something like it; a janitor’s closet, maybe an artist’s studio. My business suit, starched, hung still on its hanger behind the door as I worked. My hands slowly began to callous. I ground pigments of cadmiums and lapis, said to create an elixir of life, into phials of primordial ooze mixed with mercury and sweat. The phials rattled and BAM! A burst. The reaction revealed a cosmic scene, a tiny death, a bomb. Suspended, I faced this perfection — an impossible mirror showed what I am and therefore what I cannot be. From this confrontation, a shadow fell from light, like a spark from a hammer strike.
That spark became the devil.An Emard is an interdisciplinary artist exploring the myth-making and world-building potentials of queerness. They were born into a working family in suburban Ventura, California and spent their formative years navigating queerness in the shadow of the Catholic Church and the light of lemon orchards, asphalt, and the Pacific Ocean. Emard now resides in Chicago, IL, where they received an MFA from Northwestern University. Emard has exhibited in venues including Block Museum (Evanston, IL), Weather Proof (Chicago, IL), Chicago Artists Coalition (Chicago, IL), POP GUN (New York, NY), Steve Turner Gallery (Los Angeles, CA), Kibum MacArthur (Los Angeles, CA) and Some Clouds (Los Angeles, CA), among others.
Thursday March 12 - Grebe lingers at tideline by Robert Pedersen
Q U I C K B R E A T H , D I V E D E E P
C O B R A H E A D
L O N G B R E A T H , S T I L E T T O B I L L
R U S T E D G A T E C R E A K S O U T
O V E R F E R G U S O N P O I N T
G R E B E G L I D E S E A S Y
A B O V E P L A N K T O N C L O U D S
H E R R I N G P I E R C E D 3 M E T R E S
C R A B C R U N C H E D 9 M E T R E S
A B O V E S E A L E V E L S H O PP E R S
G R I P A N D S N I F F P I N E A P P L E S
A G A I N A C R E A K I N G W H I S T L E
C A R O M S O F F S T U B B Y
C L A Y S E A W A L L B A N K S
Thursday December 4 - Basketball, Pickle, Router, Horse by Steve Hubert
people is pleased to announce a new show of paintings by Steve Hubert.
Join us for the opening of Basketball, Pickle, Router, Horse on Thursday December 4th from 6-9pm. Afterwards the show can be viewed by appointment and on select weekend days, to be announced on Instagram @hubes1000. You can also contact Steve at stevenmhubert@gmail.com or @hubes1000 to arrange for a tour!
—
A question for Steve:
Why these pictures? Why now?
S- Many years ago, I was talking to a friend about the CD buy-back plan that A&B Sound used to have. We wondered where all the CDs ended up. I speculated that they got shipped from all over Canada to a big warehouse in Calgary and that they were redistributed from there. For some reason I thought this was funny. Like why? Because Calgary is spread out and probably has a bunch of warehouses? Honestly, at the time I’d probably only been to Calgary once or twice. My first time there I went to a little theater in Kensington to see Akira! This was with some cool, slightly older people, one of whom was wearing the Sepultura Arise T-shirt that gave me a lot of drawing ideas back then. Anyways, back to the CDs: that would have been the end of the story except that a few months later I was talking with the same friend and mentioned that I heard somewhere that A&B Sound has a warehouse in Calgary that stores all the CD buybacks. This friend pointed out that this was a joke we’d come up with only a few months earlier and that the whole thing was made up.
Q: So, circularity dressed up as serendipity?
S: Let me answer you another way:
On October 31, 2017, Facebook user M.e. [sic] Powers asked the question, “[h]as anyone noticed how much a mouse is like a [Ouija board] planchette? Helping us find answers from beyond our own knowledge?”
The discovery of this query answered my own google search which had been, “has anyone ever asked the question has anyone noticed how much a mouse is like a planchette”? I asked this question because it seemed so obvious, yet the similarity of a mouse and planchette had never occurred to me until just then. And this despite the fact that my recent painting, titled I Watched An Invisible Force Work Upon a Person Who Computes in Public, seemed to be so obviously about this similarity.
So I guess you can only know about what you know. I am mostly unfamiliar with Ouiji Boards because my mom forbade it (evil) and because I watched the movie Witchboard and that was enough of that. But to the point: if you only know what you know about you might become overly confident, even about things you know nothing about. For example, I did not know this phenomenon had a name until just now: the Dunning-Kruger effect. But now I do. And we are all victims of this effect to some degree. Although once you know about the D-K effect it becomes something you know about which must help in a feedback loop-y kind of way.
So back to your original question: Why these pictures? Why now? Well, I’m not sure if I chose to do them, exactly. Not directly. I would only paint these paintings if they happened at least partly by accident. Or through a series of surprises. And as for “why now?” Well ‘now’ is already back then, isn’t it?
Q: Ok. Thank you. I’ve learned a lot.
S: Me too.
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