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The group exhibition “Windows” at Baker—Hall Art presented with Marlee Katz Snow features paintings by 12 artists exploring the nuanced intersections of home and identity, stillness, and self-reflection: Anna Berghuis, Thomas Bils, Josiah Ellner, Saskia Fleishman, Javier Hernandez, Nicholas Bono Kennedy, Deb Koo, Melissa Middleberg, Kiernan Pazdar, Jeremy Shockley, Sara Suppan, Melissa Wallen and Bradley Wood.
The exhibition explores themes of perception, home, place, and identity through landscapes, still lifes, and portraits. It invites viewers to reflect on how we relate to objects, spaces, and environments, and how these relationships shape both personal and shared experiences.
Many of the works explore notions of home and connected thoughts on identity, including Deb Koo, who considers identity and self in South End Brunch, in which she frames a meal as a self-portrait, where the absence of figures becomes a reflection on presence. In Kiernan Pazdar’s Lost and Found, floral repetition and pattern blur the lines between object and environment that are part of the scene we encounter. It is someone’s home, a small glimpse into their environment. Generally interested in exploring themes such as internalized misogyny, anxiety, desires, and narcissism, Pazdar provides space to discuss a variety of emotions and experiences and allows for moments of discomfort.
Thomas Bils’ paintings are closely tied to location and Florida as home. He positions the viewer visually into a space marked by local surroundings, connecting markers of identity with references to place. Saskia Fleishman’s work is equally marked and positioned by landscape and materiality, as she mixes sand into the acrylic paint as a physical representation of place. Her work preserves the spirit encountered when identity ties to landscape by capturing transitory moments in nature such as sunrises and sunsets.
Javier Hernandez captures identity and home by drawing on the Caribbean literary tradition of magical realism, which imbues the presence of supernatural and fantastical elements into daily lives. In his paintings, the familiarity and mundane of the home invite the unexpected in, and leave space for wonder and ambiguity. Cinematic references appear both visually and emotionally as his work A Place in the Woods offers a dreamlike, twilight view of a glowing home framed by foliage—a still from an imagined film of memory and return.
A certain stillness and sense of observation of daily life offers an additional throughline in the exhibition, as in the work of Kiernan Pazdar and Nicholas Bono Kennedy, who has a keen eye for lived environments and human interactions with spaces. The dreamscapes of Melissa Wallen offer a more spiritual observation as we encounter an idea of personal experiences and dreams that feel deeply personal yet also transcend this immediate moment, where we connect familiar elements with traces of something that we cannot quite grasp and capture.
Collectively, the dialogues are framed as much by the mundane as spiritual and personal journeys to share works that feel equally emotional and observant. Throughout, there’s a strong sense of reflection and self-reflection as in Melissa Middleberg’s Reflections, where a young girl meets her gaze in the mirror—capturing the suspended psychological space of introspection. In Sara Suppan’s painting Seeing You, Seeing Me Seeing You, a mirror doesn’t reflect a face but hints at the presence of the inhabitants of the space, and their relationships. Anna Berghuis reckons with authenticity and performance, reflecting on the many impressions that exist of the self, and Thomas Bils intertwines very personal narratives with anxieties that can connect audiences universally.
Taken together, the show unfolds like a visual journal of personal windows—each piece a still from a life paused, yet we were offered glimpses of what has passed and know the stories will continue. The works whisper, linger and reflect. As a whole, Windows is not just a look outward or inward—but a gentle invitation to notice the moments we usually miss. Through texture, light, and quiet transformation, this exhibition affirms that beauty is always there, waiting to be seen. With Windows, the gallery also presents a true snapshot of contemporary painters from across the country engaging with their medium’s evolution and shifts, and aligning with momentous conversations about the elevations of the mundane.
What: Windows (group show)
When: Through April 26, 2025
Where: Baker-Hall Gallery, 1294 NW 29th Street Miami, FL 3314
More info: bakerhall.art
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