CHICAGO, IL.- Palomar is a group exhibition about watching the sky, something that appears deceptively simple at first. Featuring twenty-nine artists, it unfolds in two parts, each five weeks long. Some works remain in place while others come and go, this encounter in time acting like a double exposure. Gradually, the familiar act of looking up spills over into a sense of life that is more layered and complex, or even contradictory. It turns out there is a lot at stake in the space above us.

Decades ago, after the launch of the first satellite into orbit, humans had big dreams of leaving the Earth. Politicians, poets, and scientists made public comments in this spirit. Today it’s mostly billionaires who talk of escape, or of mining the planets out there. The rest of us look to the sky from the ground as life carries on. An earlier age of optimism around space exploration and human progress has given way to successive new eras, as the stars fade from view in our cities, new technologies emerge with unsettling effects, and those in power surveil from above. Through it all, the sky is a steady presence. The sun rises and sets. The moon, too. The stars come out, where you can see them. We organize our lives by these patterns. They infuse our concepts, our sense of time, and our language, even when they’re not on our minds.

Part 1 of Palomar introduces certain celestial rhythms and cycles, while thinking about astronomy and other forms of observation in everyday life. It also begins to draw out experiences of time, as it is marked, measured, and perceived. Part 2 brings into view changing relationships with technology and the militarization of the skies. Both parts are shadowed by the question of what one sees and what one doesn’t, and the roles that images play, especially photographs, often wrapped up with the comforts and discomforts of distance.

The exhibition borrows its title from the name of an observatory on a California mountaintop, which once had the largest optical telescope in the world. It lost that distinction in 1976, but it is still used to study the stars. In the eighties, Italo Calvino wrote a book about a man who shares his name with that place: Mr. Palomar, a seeker of the cosmic in the commonplace and an unflagging, if absentminded, observer. Taken together, these two touchstones evoke different kinds of observation and attention.

Looking overhead can be a way to understand one’s place in the world, as it has been for thousands of years. Given the many ways people watch the sky or look to the cosmos, from scientific study to the habits of daily life, there are just as many different things to think or feel. The movement of the heavenly bodies offers a measure of continuity in the face of destabilizing change; the view above can be a source of solace, a realm of startling beauty, a reminder of something larger than oneself. The sky can also be a dark premonition, a site of violence or grief, a reminder of what there is to lose, or for many what is already gone. Sometimes it’s all of this at once.

Curated by Karsten Lund.

Artists featured

Part 1 (May 2–June 7, 2026)
Darren Almond, Sarah & Joseph Belknap, Myriam Boulos, Vija Celmins, Paul Fägerskiöld, Pierre Huyghe, Rinko Kawauchi, Jason Lazarus, Tony Lewis, Aspen Mays, Eadweard Muybridge, John Opera, Chantal Peñalosa Fong, Kathleen Ryan, Carrie Schneider, Heji Shin, Erin Shirreff

Part 2 (June 10–July 12, 2026)
Sarah & Joseph Belknap, Myriam Boulos, Vija Celmins, Cynthia Daignault, Paul Fägerskiöld, Lawrence Abu Hamdan, Sebastian Jefford, Jordan Kantor, Tony Lewis, Eadweard Muybridge, John Opera, Trevor Paglen, Torbjørn Rødland, Kathleen Ryan, Heji Shin, Erin Shirreff, Alec Soth, Shomei Tomatsu, Samira Yamin

Videos online (Parts 1 and 2)
Allora & Calzadilla, Chantal Peñalosa Fong, Simon Starling, Alice Wang