ASTERISM: exhibition opening at Gallery 881
Kate Hennessy and Trudi Lynn Smith will show one of their artworks created as the art collaborative Pairatext in Gallery 881’s upcoming group exhibition, Asterism.
EXHIBITION
December 6, 2025 - January 15, 2026
OPENING RECEPTION
Saturday, December 6, 2025 · 2–5pm
This December, our Asterism Exhibition invites returning Gallery 881 artists back into alignment for a vibrant Winter Salon. This special exhibition gathers familiar voices in fresh configurations to celebrate the evolving practices that continue to shape 881’s lens-based community.
Please join us on Saturday, December 6, from 2–5pm for the opening reception—an afternoon of art, perception, and reconnection as we welcome returning artists back into one shared sky.
EXHIBITION STATEMENT
“We are all star-stuff contemplating the stars.” — Carl Sagan
In the night sky, there are 88 official constellations, each fixed by astronomical boundaries. Asterisms fall outside these definitions. They are visual structures shaped by perception — patterns we create by connecting points of light through imagination, memory, and perspective.
So too with this exhibition: each artist stands independently, but the pattern formed by their gathering is open, unfixed, and continually reinterpreted. Like the Teapot, the Winter Circle, or the Winter Triangle, Asterism invites viewers to trace their own alignments — to find meaning not in a single form, but in the shifting connections between images, materials, ideas, and the artists themselves.
At its core, Asterism considers how meaning is constructed through acts of perception. Just as an asterism emerges when scattered points of light are linked across the sky, viewers create their own patterns within this exhibition. The conceptual gesture lies not in a fixed narrative, but in the way each visitor draws relationships, tensions, and resonances between works — assembling a personal constellation shaped by memory, intuition, and attention.
Asterism gathers artists who have previously exhibited at Gallery 881 in our solo and smaller group exhibitions, forming a renewed constellation of practices that reflect the gallery’s evolving community. While Gallery 881 is grounded in lens-based practice, artists were invited to share work that reflects their current artistic direction. The exhibition brings together new and recent pieces that expand the possibilities of photographic thinking, both materially and conceptually.
Asterism celebrates this moment of reunion and renewal: a temporary gathering of voices that illuminates the breadth, depth, and possibility of lens-based art at Gallery 881.
ARTISTS
Alexa Black, Andrew Latreille, Anne Sargent, Barbara Strigel, Bill Pusztai, Chad Wong, Chris Jordan, Danielle Bobier, Gerri York, Goran Basaric, Hank Bull, Jennifer Lim, Karen Zalamea, Kate Hennessy, Kristin Man, Lam Wong, Launie Wong Fairbairn, Michelle Sound, Monika Wiartrowska, Monique Fouquet, Paula Nishikawara, Pia Massie, Randy Lee, Cutler, Richard Sandler, Roger Larry, Sarah Fuller, Trudi Lynn Smith, and Valerie d. MacPherson.