Friday March 14th, 2025
7-11 PM
On view March 14 - April 27
Artist: Kailyn Perry
“Better Than Revenge" is a selection of oil paintings by Kailyn Perry that use recognizable Chicago landscapes as a backdrop for personal anxiety and apocalyptic fears. The work is influenced by 19th-century French Impressionism and plein-air painting. Water, specifically Lake Michigan, is a continuous theme throughout the work. The lake’s surface is both placid and erratic: mirroring the outward appearances of composure, while pointing to depths that are turbulent.
Throughout the paintings, femininity is explored. This idea is depicted with purposely stereotypical hysteric imagery: screaming women with red lipstick that is emphatically smudged. Women are often invalidated and not believed. This phenomenon ripples through daily life like a wave: eroding any sense of power. Together, this imagery shows deeply personal stakes, within a world leaning towards collapse. City architecture looms starkly over neon pink sunsets, waves crash violently upon the shoreline, and artificial city lights eerily illuminate the night sky. It is within these constructed worlds that the artist invites the viewer to contemplate an impending universal cataclysm, right alongside her.
Kailyn Perry was born and raised in Massachusetts and received a BFA in Art History and Painting from Massachusetts College of Art and Design. She has attended The London Summer Intensive, an artist residency at Slade School of Fine Art at University College London in 2018. Her has been exhibited at many Chicago galleries such as Heaven Gallery, Belong Gallery, and Cleaner Gallery. She has also shown at the Camden Arts Centre in London, The Neon Heater in Findlay, Ohio, and at a pop up exhibition featuring the Chicago Imagists at 56 Downing St Brooklyn NY. My exhibitions have been reviewed in The Chicago Tribune, ArtNet, Artsy, Art
News, and NewCity.