sounds better with you

Chris Austin – Joey Center – Raven Chacon – Marcus Imani Kennedy – Bill Lilly – Isabelle Frances McGuire – Dave Muller – Sun Ra – Micah Schippa-Wildfong – Lucy Walsh

******Guest curated by Iris Colburn and Gabriel Garza

Opening Reception:
Friday, May 23rd, 2025
5 – 8pm
Performance by VanGoGo 7:00 pm.

For gallery hours & appointments, please email [email protected]

Gallery Hours with the Guest Curators:
Friday, July 11th, 2025
6 – 8pm
Performance by Dorothy Carlos, details forthcoming.

My first car was a two-door 1993 Jeep Wrangler that always shook in the wind. It was a stick shift, so hardly anyone could borrow it. For music, I had a rotating stack of cassettes from Gabe—Nina Simone, Angel Olsen, Bruce Springsteen. Even when he wasn’t there, his music was. Eventually the cassettes wore out in life’s messes, so I’d tuck them away when he’d get in, and we’d go to museums, shows, the beach, anywhere. L.A. traffic in the heat. Two friends trying to figure life out. The Jeep was a statement piece, and I loved every minute of it.

Eight years later and Gabe’s my friend who picks me up in his car from the airport when I visit L.A. Trading songs and giving sounds a second listen.

——

My cellular devices have mostly been flip phones, save for two years when I had smartphones. In 2014 I accidentally dropped my first smartphone off a balcony on the seventh floor of a building. I was listening to the Yo La Tengo cover of George McCrae’s “You Can Have it All”. I had lightly hopped, and the phone launched out of my shirt pocket, briefly bungeeing from its connection to my headphones. For a moment, I felt like I was looking up at myself.

Not until ten years later did I have another smartphone. The second one was stolen at a party with great music playing — the air was clear, to err is human. For those two “smart” stints, I did experience listening to music airborne. I played Aretha Franklin’s “I Say A Little Prayer” at takeoffs to cinematically calm my ascent into the sky.

On my flight to Chicago from L.A., I had my computer with me for the first time ever on a trip. It was a red-eye, and I wanted to read the book I brought, which was the autobiography of Fritz Reiner, the infamous conductor who had a long-standing position leading the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. I realized I could use the light from the computer screen to illuminate the book, half closed and sandwiched by the keyboard. The show must go on!

While reading about Reiner, I listened from my computer to Chamber Music of the New Jazz by Ahmad Jamal, White Roses, My God by Alan Sparhawk, DSU by Alex G, and The Carnegie Hall Concert (Live) by Alice Coltrane. I listen to music every day, and it guides me in my journey to and from experiences of art viewing, making, and curating. Even when a song isn’t around, I always have a tune in the back of my head —

? spring is here — do you wish you were? — and now you see — I wanna be there ?

——

Iris Colburn is a curator and writer based in Chicago. She is currently curatorial associate at the MCA Chicago, where she recently curated Chicago Works | Andrea Carlson: Shimmer on Horizons as well as the MCA’s presentation of Virginia Jaramillo: Principle of Equivalence. She has also organized performances with Joelle Mercedes, Katinka Kleijn, and Micah Schippa and contributed writing to several publications including Virginia Jaramillo: Principle of Equivalence, Pope. L: Campaign, and Visualizing Genocide: Indigenous Interventions in Art, Archives, and Museums. She holds a Master of Arts from the University of Chicago and a Bachelor of Arts in art history from the University of California, Los Angeles, where she was awarded the Eugene Wurzel Memorial Art Scholarship.

Gabriel Garza is an artist from Los Angeles, currently pursuing his MFA in Art from University of Southern California. He holds a B.A. in Art and minor in Music History from UCLA. His solo shows include Malaprop Pablum at /(Slash) (San Francisco), and Escolar (Santa Rosa, CA). Recent group shows include Words That Start (Beauty Gallery @ Studio Route 29, Frenchtown NJ), and New Moon Figure Eight (120710, Berkeley CA). His curatorial projects include In Concert (San Francisco CA, 2023), Thats A More (Oakland CA, 2022), both of which were co-ran with Theadora Walsh, and from July 2020 to July 2021, he ran Punto Lairs inc, a gallery in his parents backyard (Los Angeles CA). He has organized exhibitions at Nationale (Portland OR), Personal Space (Vallejo CA), Staircase Gallery (San Francisco CA), and Bass & Reiner (SF).

******Special Thanks to John Corbett and Terri Kapsalis for helping make this exhibition possible.

Iris Colburn is a curator and writer based in Chicago. She is currently curatorial associate at the MCA Chicago, where she recently curated Chicago Works | Andrea Carlson: Shimmer on Horizons as well as the MCA’s presentation of Virginia Jaramillo: Principle of Equivalence. She has also organized performances with Joelle Mercedes, Katinka Kleijn, and Micah Schippa and contributed writing to several publications including Virginia Jaramillo: Principle of Equivalence, Pope. L: Campaign, and Visualizing Genocide: Indigenous Interventions in Art, Archives, and Museums. She holds a Master of Arts from the University of Chicago and a Bachelor of Arts in art history from the University of California, Los Angeles, where she was awarded the Eugene Wurzel Memorial Art Scholarship.

Gabriel Garza is an artist from Los Angeles, currently pursuing his MFA in Art from University of Southern California. He holds a B.A. in Art and minor in Music History from UCLA. His solo shows include Malaprop Pablum at /(Slash) (San Francisco), and Escolar (Santa Rosa, CA). Recent group shows include Words That Start (Beauty Gallery @ Studio Route 29, Frenchtown NJ), and New Moon Figure Eight (120710, Berkeley CA). His curatorial projects include In Concert (San Francisco CA, 2023), Thats A More (Oakland CA, 2022), both of which were co-ran with Theadora Walsh, and from July 2020 to July 2021, he ran Punto Lairs inc, a gallery in his parents backyard (Los Angeles CA). He has organized exhibitions at Nationale (Portland OR), Personal Space (Vallejo CA), Staircase Gallery (San Francisco CA), and Bass & Reiner (SF).

******Special Thanks to John Corbett and Terri Kapsalis for helping make this exhibition possible.