from the curator:

“The Wind is a gossip. Not in a malicious way. She just likes to move around and stir things up. She runs through the fire barefoot and has no fear of heights. She carries big blue bowls of rain with her. She plays the flute and loves all kinds of sounds. Her laughter fills the sky. The Wind is a wonderful storyteller. I still remember how she introduced me to the Qualities when I was a child.” - J. Ruth Gendler

Wind, a trace or a sign?(1) Margaret Crowley and Travis Morehead consider this question alongside notions of medium, knowledge, and memory in their exhibition: Wind. Wayfarers in their own respect, the two artists explore ways of knowing through contesting the coherency between an object and its referent. By centering wind as a medium in which we are suspended to, the force of interaction itself, the works recast and transfigure sinuous encounters with the weather-world(2) that underlies Crowley and Morehead’s embodied epistemology.

From collecting Marlboro Miles in Ottawa, IL with their family or obtaining remnants from a windfallen willow tree on the bank of an human-made lagoon, Crowley and Morehead’s weathered materials reveal a splintering of our desire for fixity and referentiality.

Wind is the fourth chapter of 2026’s tête-à-tête-à-tête and is on view September 12- October 31. Curated by Michael Cuadrado, Wind features work by Margaret Crowley and Travis Morehead in the waiting and reading room with the addition of Pedro Albertini Guerra as invited by Shannon Stratton. This chapter’s tête-à-tête is made my Kelly Kaczynski, the queen of the chair.

Michael Cuadrado Gonzalez is an artist from San Juan, Puerto Rico. He received his BFA in Drawing from Pratt Institute in 2018 and his MFA in Painting & Printmaking from Yale University in 2024. Following his MFA he attended the School of Criticism and Theory at Cornell University where he studied under Stephen M. Best. He now lives and works in Chicago, IL.

Margaret Crowley (b. 1987, Ottawa, IL) lives and works in Chicago.

Travis Morehead (b. 1987, Seattle, WA) is an artist based in Evanston, IL. Travis was a Fellow at Ox-Bow School of Art & Artists’ Residency, and has attended residencies at Haystack Mountain School of Crafts, The Ellis-Beauregard Foundation, and Monson Arts. Travis has exhibited at venues including Slow Dance (Chicago, IL), SHED Projects (Cleveland, OH), KB (New York, NY), Inland (Hope, ME), Haus Wien (Vienna, AT), Warbling (London, UK), Hyde Park Art Center (Chicago, IL), Center for Maine Contemporary Art (Rockland, ME), AS220 (Providence, RI), among others. Travis graduated with a BFA from Rhode Island School of Design, and an MFA from Northwestern University.

Kelly Kaczynski is a Chicago-based artist working within the language of sculpture. Selected exhibitions include Julius Caesar, IL; Tiger Strikes Astroid, IL, Peregrine Program, IL; Songs for Presidents, NY; Ortega Y Gasset Projects, NY; Soap Factory, MN; Comfort Station, IL; Gahlberg Gallery, IL; Threewalls, IL; Hyde Park Arts Center, IL; University at Buffalo Art Gallery, NY; Triple Candie, NY. Curatorial collaborations include the cooperative endeavor, Working Group for Unmaking: Living Within the Play, Poor Farm, Wisconsin 2019-ongoing; Manatee at Tiger Strikes Astroid, IL, 2018; the 2014 exhibition, RovingRoom, Georgia. Independent curation includes, Virtually Physically Speaking at Columbia College, Chicago, IL; and the 2011 exhibition, Mouthing (a sentient limb) at Hyde Park Art Center, Chicago, IL. Kaczynski is a recipient of the Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation Award, 2015; Artadia Chicago, 2008; and Visible Republic Boston, 2000. Kaczynski earned their MFA from Bard College. They are Professor, Adjunct at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

Pedro Albertini Guerra (b. 1998, Santiago, Chile) is a visual artist based in Chicago. Working across sculpture, photography, and installation, his practice explores fragility, transformation, and decay through found objects, organic materials, and small-scale mechanisms.