Main Space

Chantal Wnuk: Walking and Falling at the Same Time
June 17, 2023 - July 2, 2023
Opening Reception: Saturday, June 17 from 5-8 pm

Ortega y Gasset Projects is pleased to present Walking and Falling at the Same Time, a solo exhibition of paintings by Chantal Wnuk, curated by OyG Co-Directors Zahar Vaks and Lauren Whearty. Please join us for a reception on Saturday, June 17 from 5-8 pm.

The exhibition will be on view from June 17, 2023 - July 2, 2023.

Chantal’s large figurative paintings consist of solitary women, who powerfully dominate their landscapes across varying times of day and night, while expressing both physical and internal experiences and states of being. 

The figures in Chantal Wnuk's work embody fatigue, stress, gravity, nausea, stability, hope, and more. This wide-ranging, shifting, and often contradictory collection of sensations acts as a channel to share her personal experience of diagnosis and treatment of metastatic breast cancer. Through painting, she's searching for a place where hurting and healing overlap and pushing against simplified stereotypes of the sick female body. 

Artist Bio:
Chantal Wnuk is a painter currently living and working in Columbus, OH. She was born in Houston, TX, has her BFA from the University of Texas at Austin, and recently received her MFA from The Ohio State University. She uses her work to better understand and translate the experiences of pressure, weakness, and power resulting from diagnosis and lifelong treatment of metastatic breast cancer. 

Recent solo-exhibitions include Ahead and Above Water at Stop-Gap Projects in Columbia, MO; A Beach for Me (and maybe you) at Ignition Project Space in Chicago; and I Dreamt of a Perfect Ocean, I Dreamt of Stepping in a Hole at Best Practice in San Diego. Recent group-exhibitions include Being Here with You/ Estando aquí contigo at the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego and Big Cloud at Urban Arts Space in Columbus. Chantal has been awarded residencies at ACRE, Bread & Salt, 1805 Gallery, and The San Diego Art Institute. She is attending Skowhegan School of Painting & Sculpture this summer.

Curator Bios:
Zahar Vaks (born Tashkent, Uzbekistan) has had exhibitions in New York, Philadelphia, Columbus, Las Vegas, Houston, Vienna, on the island of Svalbard in Norway, and, most recently, in Beijing, China. Zahar participated in the Robert Rauschenberg Residency; the Galveston Artist Residency; and most recently in the Artists in Residence (AIR) program at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville in 2021. 

Lauren Whearty is a painter, educator, & curator based in Philadelphia. She received her MFA from The Ohio State University, and BFA from Tyler School of Art. Lauren has been a Co-Director at OyG Projects since 2017. Lauren has attended Yale’s Summer School of Art, Vermont Studio Center, and Golden Foundation residencies. She has recently received grants from Elizabeth Greenshields Foundation and Joseph Roberts Foundation. Lauren currently teaches at The University of the Arts and Tyler School of Art & Architecture in Philadelphia.