BEST PGH ART SHOWS OF 2023

by Emma Riva

As the year comes to an end, every single media outlet on earth releases some sort of best-of or retrospective. I thought I would put together a little smorgasbord of my favorite gallery shows I saw this year. Thanks for a great and turbulent 2023. Let’s raise some hell and keep making art in 2024.

Ester Petukhova – If And When You Find Me
here gallery. Curated by Sean Beauford.

“In If and When You Find Me, Ester Petukhova presents a body of work exploring post-Soviet identity in a digital age that still finds itself deeply rooted in censorship. An assortment of distinct, yet interconnected references spanning timelines, borders, and generations create multiple starting points for the post-Soviet body to work from all in an attempt to chart a path forward.”

Michael Lotenero – Other Ghosts
Zynka Gallery. Curated by Jeffrey Jarzynka. 

“Inspired by places traveled, and by layers of others yet to be explored, Michael Lotenero balances identity, place and memory through constructed relics from unrealized civilizations –– Other Ghosts linger from the past, while some visit from the future.”

Bridget Gettys – Caroline’s Butterfly Trap 
Bunker Projects. Curated by Jessie Rommelt and Anna Mirzayan.

“A waxy feathered thing is laid out, wings spread, as if recently captured and pinned for presentation. But also shaped like a pelvis, it’s perhaps more like a dug up bone, with origins yet to be determined. The drawings and objects in this room operate this way — often something Either/Or/Both/And. Bones look like butterflies, butterflies have bones and feathers, bones and feathers are frozen and dripping in what looks like oil. The drawings meanwhile are chalky and colorful or inky and dark, with spirals and starbursts, maybe labyrinths and explosions. And throughout, a skeleton with wings often appears as the central character. It refers to a plastic toy found in the basement of an estate sale that hangs from the rearview mirror of the artist’s car. Named Caroline, she became a guardian angel, eventually a morphed self-portrait. She is multiplied as a swarm of buzzing flies, singular and solemn with colorful wings, and doubled into a 69-ing reflection. Is she dead, alive, a fairy, a ghost, an angel? Like the rest of the work in the room, Caroline seems to be always in the middle of morphing into something else, or hovering in between stages of change. The only figure in this world, trying to capture something that is always already in the process of escaping.”

Grant Catton, Corey Ochai, and Brent Pheto – Chaotic Structures
Ketchup City Creative

“Chaotic Structures is a show that needs a long walk-through, with a plethora of surprises and subtleties within the paintings and curatorial decisions. Ochai’s section of the space is curated into the shape of a fish, making creative use of small canvases on a large wall. Ochai, Pheto, and Catton used the far wall of the gallery to showcase a collaborative piece between the three of them. But even within the individual paintings, there are commonalities. Pheto’s The Process of Finding an Advocate, Ochai’s 5th Ace in the Back Pocket, and Catton’s Algorithm / Go Ahead and Take 15% Off all contend with social media and the ways it feeds our egos and saturates us with mass information. The undercurrent of the show is this sense of depersonalization, that something is always wearing us down and disconnecting us from ourselves. And it proves, to me, that making art is the way to hold onto integrity, maintain your sense of self, and stay sane.”

Andrew Allison, Steve Alexis, Jasen Bernthisel, Hibs, Jacquet Kehm, Mike Kelly, Julie Lee, Joshua Rievel, and Dyvika Peel – Eschaton
Center for Civic Arts. Curated by Jacquet Kehm, Dyvika Peel, and Mike Kelly.

“Eschatology: A study of the end times. A concern common to most religions. Who saves whom & why & how? How can we claim to know & what does pondering the end provide the living?”

Leah Patgorski – Catches
Union Hall. Curated by Shelby Ciarallo.

“catches embodies the dilemma of making art works from a place of loss without allowing it all of its weight. Simultaneously, it proposes new material directions in dialogue with the
artist’s past. catches invites memories of Leah, age eleven, in the midst of the backyard plants, or in her room crafting paper animals and other objects. It was a creative time, she remembers, unburdened by worries about the world, relationships, or impending teenage angst.” (From essay by Paula Victoria Kupfer)

Akudzwe Elsie Chiwa – Divinity/Femininity 
937 Gallery. Curated by Dominique Seneca.

“Divinity/Femininity is the first US solo exhibition of the Zimbabwean contemporary artist, Akudzwe Elsie Chiwa whose multidisciplinary practice explores themes of migrant identity, femininity, and Afro-Feminisms. Chiwa’s exhibition reimagines erased histories and explores the question “do we have the right to define the divine?””

Akea Brionne, Larry W. Cook, Alanna Fields, Marissa Long, Eduardo L. Rivera, Shane Rocheleau, Lisa Toboz – Radial Survey
Silver Eye Center for Photography. Curated by Helen Trompeteler and Leo Hsu.

“Radial Survey is Silver Eye’s flagship biennial exhibition featuring preeminent emerging and mid-career photographic artists based within 300 miles of Pittsburgh. This third edition, Presence, includes seven artists nominated by Radial Survey Vol.2 artists and selected by Silver Eye’s curators. These seven artists create work that invites us to explore the relationships between presence, visibility, and absence. Recontextualizing family and found photographs, reimagining genres, and affirming their unique subjective experiences, these artists create visually compelling languages that recognize and subvert forces larger than ourselves. In doing so, they question learned ways of seeing and how these affect our contemporary experience.”

Shohei Katayama – As Below, So Above
The Mattress Factory. Curated by Danny Bracken

“As Below, So Above invites viewers to challenge their perceived reality and consider their place in a complex and ever-changing world. The exhibition draws inspiration from the ancient Hermetic phrase, “As Above, So Below” and explores the interplay and interconnectedness of ‘all things’ through a dynamic work spanning two levels of the Mattress Factory’s original warehouse building. Throughout the museum’s lobby, seventeen wooden floorboards have been selectively and precisely removed. In their place, transparent panels fill the voids, allowing light from the first floor to enter the underground gallery below. As visitors traverse the lobby, their movements unknowingly influence the light shining into the darkened basement. Simultaneously, via motion and sound sensors, visitors navigating the lower-level gallery will activate the lobby space above with subtle sounds and movements. In doing so, the spaces become intertwined, highlighting the relationship between these separate rooms, and blurring the boundaries between observer and observed.”

Juliet Phillips – Get Out From Under the Rock
Pullproof Studio

“PULLPROOF Studio presents Get Out From Under The Rock, by Juliet Phillips–a collection of observations both seen and imagined on paper and clay. Fleeting thoughts, sketches and notes to self cover, lift & bump up against each other in a mad dash to illuminate a larger more mysterious narrative.“

Happy new year! ❤