Still Point
Curated by Caitlin Monachino & Gretchen Kraus
September 6 – October 12, 2025
Opening Reception Saturday, September 6th, 6–8pm

At the still point of the turning world. Neither flesh nor fleshless;
Neither from nor towards; at the still point, there the dance is,
But neither arrest nor movement. And do not call it fixity,
Where past and future are gathered.
Neither movement from nor towards,
Neither ascent nor decline. Except for the point, the still point,
There would be no dance, and there is only the dance.
I can only say, there we have been: but I cannot say where. 
And I cannot say, how long, for that is to place it in time.
—T.S. Eliot

Ortega y Gasset Projects is pleased to present
Still Point, a group exhibition featuring eleven artists who challenge conventional perceptions of time, co-curated by Caitlin Monachino and Gretchen Kraus. The exhibition will be on view September 6 through October 5, 2025, with an opening reception on Saturday, September 6, from 6 to 8 pm.

The artists participating in the exhibition are Larissa Bates, Amy Brener, Rachelle Bussières, Langdon Graves, Olivia Jia, Carolina Jiménez, Abigail Lucien, Heidi Norton, Sahana Ramakrishnan, Jonathan Ryan, and Tracy Thomason.        

The exhibition takes its title from a line in T.S. Eliot’s Burnt Norton (1936), the first of his renowned Four Quartets: “At the still point of the turning world.” In the poem, Eliot meditates on the paradoxes of time—its brevity and boundlessness, inertia and momentum, permanence and constant transition. Influenced by early twentieth-century movements such as existentialism and phenomenology, Eliot suggests that spiritual insight emerges through a release from linear time. In this state—often described as the “Eternal Now”—past, present, and future are experienced as an integrated whole, where the present holds both echoes of the past and anticipation of the future.

Through material, memory, and mythology, the artists in Still Point open portals into layered temporalities, where reflection and possibility converge. In this suspended space, the limits of chronology dissolve, allowing for a deeper reckoning with change, continuity, and presence. The exhibition unfolds across three thematic frameworks: Time as Medium and Form—works that engage with time through process, structure, and temporal markers; Time as Cultural Memory and Legacy—works that explore time through identity, generational knowledge, and familial histories; and Time as Myth and Narrative—works that draw on storytelling, speculative worlds, and reimagined cosmologies.

With its conceptual foundation grounded in poetry, the exhibition is accompanied by a reading library that offers visitors additional pathways into the work on view. The curators invited each participating artist to recommend one or two books that resonate with their practice or with the show's central ideas. Spanning genres from science fiction and memoir to short stories and experimental fiction, these selections form a collective bibliography that has informed, inspired, and supported the artists’ thinking, extending the exhibition’s scope beyond the gallery.

Still Point is curated by Caitlin Monachino and Gretchen Kraus, recipients of the 2025 Curatorial Open Call. 

Artist Bios:

Larissa Bates was born in Burlington in 1981, and grew up between Vermont and Vara Blanca, Costa Rica. Bates has exhibited across galleries and institutions nationally and internationally since graduating from Hampshire College in 2003. Her work has been in several museum exhibitions, including the Ulrich Museum, the Weatherspoon Museum, the Hunter Museum of Art, the Hood Museum of Art at Dartmouth, and the DeCordova Museum and Sculpture Park. Her work is in the permanent collection at the Hood Museum, The West Collection, 21C Museum Hotel Collection, and the Wellington Management Collection. Solo shows have taken place at Taymour Grahne in London, GNYP Gallery in Berlin, Richard Heller Gallery in Los Angeles, Galeria Espacio Minimo in Madrid, NADA Art Fair in Miami, Mogadishni in Copenhagen, and ten solo shows with Monya Rowe Gallery in New York. Bates is the recipient of the Artadia Award as well as the LMCC residency. Her work has been featured in publications such as The New York Times, The Huffington Post, El Cultural, and New Yorker Magazine.  

Amy Brener (b. 1982, Victoria, BC, Canada) lives and works in New York. Since graduating with an MFA from Hunter College, Brener’s work has been exhibited at galleries and institutions in the US, Canada, Europe and China. Museum exhibitions include MoMA PS1 in New York, the Nasher Sculpture Center in Dallas, The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum in Connecticut, The Speed Museum of Art in Kentucky, Hafnarborg Museum in Iceland, MacLaren Art Centre in Ontario and Riverside Art Museum in Beijing.  Brener has had three solo exhibitions at Jack Barrett gallery in New York, where she is represented. Other gallery exhibition highlights include Galerie Pact in Paris, Wentrup Gallery in Berlin, Berthold Pott in Cologne and Reyes Projects in Detroit. Her work has been featured in publications such as The New York Times, Art in America, CURA, Hyperallergic, Artnet News and The Brooklyn Rail.

Rachelle Bussières is a French-Canadian artist based in New York whose practice investigates perception, time, and the natural world. Her work has been exhibited widely across North America and Europe, including at the International Center for Photography, Penumbra Foundation, and Rubber Factory in New York; Robertson Arès in Montréal; Melanie Flood Projects in Portland; Johansson Projects and Robert Koch Gallery in the Bay Area; and Galerie l’Inlassable in Paris. She has also shown at the Institute of Contemporary Art San Jose (CA), Center for Fine Art Photography (CO), and Headlands Center for the Arts (CA). Bussières holds an MFA from the San Francisco Art Institute and has participated in residencies at institutions such as Banff Centre, Brooklyn Darkroom, and Silver Art Projects. Her work is included in several public and private collections, including the Museum of Contemporary Photography (Chicago), Arter Contemporary Art Museum (Istanbul), SFMOMA Library, and Facebook. She is also the founder of LUMIERE NYC.

Langdon Graves is a Virginia-born, New York City-based artist who holds a BFA from Virginia Commonwealth University in Painting & Printmaking and an MFA from Parsons School of Design. She is adjunct faculty at Parsons and Assistant Professor in the Graduate Fine Arts program at Pratt Institute. Langdon has shown her work throughout the United States, Canada, Europe and Australia with solo and group exhibitions that include Dinner Gallery, TEI’s Art in Buildings, Mrs., Tilton Gallery, Deanna Evans Projects, Grimm, Taymour Grahne Projects, STONELEAF and the Delaware Contemporary Museum. Langdon has attended the Fountainhead Residency in Miami, the Kunstenaarsinitiatief Residency and Exhibition Program in the Netherlands, the Object Limited residency in Bisbee, Arizona and STONELEAF Retreat in upstate New York. She is a recipient of Canson & Beautiful Decay’s Wet Paint Grant and has been featured in Artnet, Art in America, Hyperallergic, Vice Creators Project, Juxtapoz, Art F City, Blouin Artinfo, the Artmatters podcast and Madeline Schwartzman’s See Yourself X.

Olivia Jia received a BFA from the University of the Arts, Philadelphia in 2017. She has had solo exhibitions at Margot Samel, New York, NY, Fleisher/Ollman, Philadelphia, PA, and Workplace, London, UK. She has been included in group exhibitions at venues including Workplace, London, UK; Uffner/Liu, New York, NY; La Nao, Mexico City, MX; Margot Samel, New York, NY; Pangée, Montreal, Canada; Nathalie Karg Gallery, New York, NY; Yee Society, Hong Kong; Marginal Utility, Philadelphia, PA; The Woodmere Museum 78th Annual Juried Exhibition, Philadelphia, PA; and Dongsomun, Seoul, Korea, among others. Her work is in the collections of the Brooklyn Museum, NY; Palm Springs Art Museum, CA; Huamao Museum, Suzhou, China; Zuzeum Art Center, Riga, Latvia; The Bunker Artspace; and the Beth Rudin DeWoody Collection, West Palm Beach, FL.

Carolina Jiménez (b. 1991, Riverside, CA) received her BArch from Syracuse University (2014) and an MFA in Textile Design at Rhode Island School of Design (2018). She has held solo and group exhibitions internationally including Lobster Club, Los Angeles, CA; Alison Bradley Projects, New York, NY; JO-HS, Mexico City, Mexico; Bainbridge Museum of Art, Bainbridge, WA; and RISD Museum, Providence, RI. Her grants and awards include the Josef and Anni Albers Foundation Residency, Bethany, CT; Museum Art and Design Artist Fellowship, New York, NY; Casa Lu Residency, Mexico City, Mexico; and Etvernal Residency, Brooklyn, NY. Jiménez lives and works in New York, NY. 

Abigail Lucien is a Haitian-American interdisciplinary artist. Implicating our relationship to material and place through an architectural vernacular, Lucien uses formal poetics to ponder concepts such as loss, love, and grief as fluid processions rather than states to reach or become. Lucien received the 2023 Sondheim Award, a 2023 Ruby’s Artist Grant, a 2021 VMFA Fellowship, and the 2020 Harpo Emerging Artist Fellowship. Lucien’s work has been featured in publications such as The New York Times, Hyperallergic, Artforum, Frieze magazine, and Art in America. National and international exhibitions include Palais de Tokyo (Paris), MoMA PS1 (NY), Baltimore Museum of Art (Baltimore), SculptureCenter (NY), California African American Museum (Los Angeles), MAC Panamá (Panamá), and Tiwani Contemporary (London). Residencies including Skowhegan School of Painting & Sculpture (Madison, ME), Amant Studio & Research Residency (Brooklyn, NY), The Fabric Workshop and Museum (Philadelphia, PA), and The Luminary (St. Louis, MO). Lucien is currently based in Queens, NY where they are an Assistant Professor and Area Head of Sculpture at Hunter College in NYC.

Heidi Norton is an artist and writer whose upbringing as a child of New Age homesteaders in West Virginia resulted in a strong connection to the land, plant life and nature. She received her BFA from the University of Maryland, Baltimore, and her MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Norton has presented solo exhibitions at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, Wave Hill (NY), Lubeznik Museum (IN), Elmhurst Art Museum (IL), Turley Gallery (Hudson), and Monique Meloche Gallery (Chicago), among others. Her work has been featured in group exhibitions at the Contemporary Museum (Baltimore), Swale House (Governors Island, NY), Chicago Cultural Center, La Box Gallery (National School of Art, France), Northeastern Illinois University, Halsey McKay Gallery (East Hampton, NY), Sargent’s Daughters (NY), GRIMM Gallery (NY), the Knitting Factory (NY), Asya Geisberg Gallery (NY), and Uffner Liu (NY). Her writing and work have appeared in Artnet, Artnews, Art21, Frieze, BOMB Magazine, Hyperallergic, Journal for Artistic Research, Grafts by Michael Marder, and Why Look at Plants edited by Giovanni Aloi, among others. Norton’s work is held in the collections of the Museum of Contemporary Photography, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Joyce Foundation, and numerous private collections. She is a professor at the International Center of Photography and the founder and director of Vantage Points, an art education and portfolio development service that supports students of all ages in cultivating their artistic practice.

Sahana Ramakrishnan was born in Mumbai, India and raised in Singapore. She travelled to the United States to complete her BFA in Painting at the Rhode Island School of Design, and has since been living and working in Brooklyn and Jersey City. Sahana’s work has been exhibited internationally and nationally with Fridman Gallery, Jeffrey Deitch Projects, Rachel Uffner Gallery, the McEvoy Foundation for the Arts, the Rubin Museum, the NARS Foundation, and more. Sahana has been an artist in residence at Yaddo, Saratoga Springs, NY, a recipient of the SIP fellowship at the Robert Blackburn Printmaking workshop, the Feminist-in-Residence program at Gateway Project Spaces, the Yale/Norfolk Summer program, and the Florence Lief grant from RISD. Her work is currently in the collections of the Institute of Contemporary Art in Miami, The Brooklyn Museum in New York, and the Kadist Foundation in Paris, among other private collections. Ramakrishnan’s paintings and exhibitions have been reviewed and featured in publications such as The Brooklyn Rail, Artforum, Hyperallergic, Artnet News and more.

Jonathan Ryan (b. 1989 Buffalo, NY) received his BFA from Louisiana State University and MFA from the Tyler School of Art at Temple University. Ryan has exhibited across the US and Europe, including solo shows at the Landing (Los Angeles, CA) and Hesse Flatow (New York, NY). He has also been in group exhibitions at Monti8 (Latina, Italy), Andrea Festa Fine Art (Rome, Italy), Gerhard Hofland (Amsterdam), Hesse Flatow East (Amagansett, NY), la BEAST gallery (Los Angeles, CA), Ekru Project (Kansas City, MO), Good Mother (Los Angeles, CA), Tiger Strikes Asteroid (Los Angeles, CA), The Brand Library (Glendale, CA), Field Projects (New York, NY), and the Woodmere Art Museum (Philadelphia, PA). He has received fellowships and awards from Woodmere Museum of Art, Tyler School of Art, Vermont Studio Center, and LSU School of Art. Ryan currently lives and works in Los Angeles, CA.

Tracy Thomason (b. 1984 in Gaithersburg, MD) received her MFA from the Cranbrook Academy of Art in Bloomfield Hills, MI, and her BFA from the Maryland Institute College of Art in Baltimore, MD. Thomason has been the subject of recent solo and two-person exhibitions at Miles McEnery Gallery, New York, NY; Marinaro, New York, NY; Teen Party, Brooklyn, NY; Cuevas Tilleard Projects, New York, NY; and the Interlochen School for the Arts, Interlochen, MI. Her work has been included in recent group exhibitions at The Pit LA, Los Angeles, CA; FJORD Gallery, Philadelphia, PA; Analog Diary, Beacon, NY; MOTHER, Beacon, NY; Marinaro, New York, NY; SUNNY NY, New York, NY; Over the Influence, Los Angeles, CA; University of Tennessee Downtown Gallery, Knoxville, TN; St. Charles Projects, Baltimore, MD; Pablo’s Birthday, New York, NY; Halsey McKay Gallery, East Hampton, NY; and 56 Henry, New York, NY. Thomason lives and works in Brooklyn, NY.

Curator Bios:
Gretchen Kraus is a graphic designer and art director. She is currently Design Director for The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum. Prior to this she worked as a designer, art director and production coordinator working with artist Julian Schnabel on projects with Creative Time, The Brant Foundation Art Study Center, Museo Correr, University of Michigan Museum of Art and NSU Art Museum Fort Lauderdale. She earned her BA in Studio Arts at Hampshire College. In 2018 Kraus co-founded Space Sisters Press, an artist-centric publisher.

Caitlin Monachino is the Curatorial and Publications Manager at The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum, where she has worked since 2018. She has organized presentations with artists Julia Bland, Wen Liu, Maya Jeffereis, Moko Fukuyama, Esther Ruiz, Amy Brener, and Adrienne Elise Tarver, as well as Yvette Mayorga: Dreaming of You (2023), the artist's first East coast solo museum exhibition. She has also worked on the curatorial teams for 52 Artists: A Feminist Milestone (2022) and Frank Stella’s Stars, A Survey (2020). Upcoming projects include Estefania Puerta: Laughing Death Drive (September 2025) as well as a co-curated two-person exhibition with Chiara No and Chenlu Hou (January 2026). Caitlin holds a Master's in Art History, Criticism, and Theory from SUNY Purchase, where she was the 2017 Neuberger Curatorial Fellow and organized Françoise Gilot: The Tamarind Years.

Support the Future of OyG Projects with a Monthly Gift

Dear OyG Community,

Like many artist-run spaces, OyG Projects is navigating a challenging financial year. Since COVID, we've worked tirelessly to keep our doors open — drawing down our emergency reserves and steadily repaying an SBA loan that helped sustain us during the most uncertain times. While we’ve been fortunate to receive support in the past from grant makers, including the NEA, those sources are increasingly unpredictable in today’s rapidly shifting funding landscape.

Because of these challenges, we are currently faced with a $25,000 deficit for 2025. We must raise these funds in order to complete this year's programming, and to begin planning for our near future.

We are asking you to help sustain it

The most impactful way you can contribute is by becoming a monthly donor with a recurring gift of $5, $10, $25 or more a month.

We hope you will help us meet a tangible short-term goal:
75 monthly donors by the end of Summer. 

Recurring gifts provide us with the steady support we need to plan ahead, produce ambitious exhibitions, and keep our programs free and accessible to all.

We’re incredibly proud of the work we’ve done: providing a platform that has launched the careers of countless artists and bringing meaningful, challenging, and joyful exhibitions to our community. With your help, we can continue this vital work — and grow it.

 At OyG, we believe in building space for experimentation, dialogue, and community — especially for artists who have historically been excluded from mainstream platforms. Our artist-run model prioritizes innovation and quality over commercial outcomes, offering artists a rare opportunity to take risks and grow.

Thank you for 12 years of OyGoodness!

OyG Projects 

Clare Britt
Eric Hibit
Annamariah Knox
Xingze Li
Leeza Meksin
Nickola Pottinger
Adam Liam Rose
Zahar Vaks
Lauren Whearty

Walls Wearing Worlds, a full color catalog is co-published by OyG Projects and Space Sisters Press with a curatorial essay by Eric Hibit and an interview with Jodi Hays and Leeza Meksin. Link to preorder.