2026 - Cosmic Connections
Free Events:
Opening Reception: Friday, March 6 • 5-8 PM (CT)
Curator Gallery Talk: Saturday, March 14 • 11:30 AM (CT)
Family Day: Saturday, TBD • 1-3 PM (CT)
For centuries, artists have turned to the cosmos, drawing on science, mythology and the sublime to seek existential meaning and connection. Cosmic Connections explores the work of three artists – Ravi Arupa, Megan Greene and Michiko Itatani – who investigate the universe as an improvisational, creative process mirrored in human imagination. As beings quite literally made of stardust, we engage the cosmos physically and intellectually using art to navigate our place within it. The artworks in this exhibition weave together scientific, spiritual and subconscious insights, inviting us to reflect on our deep, ongoing connection to the universe.
Ravi Arupa explores cosmic interconnectedness through the spiral, a form found in everything from galaxies and weather systems to DNA, flowers and seashells. For Arupa, the spiral symbolizes continuous change, creativity, spirituality and the unity between inner and outer space, challenging the illusion of separation. His abstract, energetic and often obsessive graphite drawings, transformative found material sculptures and transcendental self-portraiture reflect a belief that we all share a deep, universal connection. By using the ancient and pervasive shape of the spiral, paired with a series of self-portraits incorporating the third eye, Arupa highlights growth, transformation, extrasensory perception and the spiritual energy that links us all. For Arupa, binaries are social constructs; there is no outside or inside. The cosmos is a homogeneous entity with no beginning or end. We are the cosmos.
Megan Greene’s drawings unfold through a slow, intuitive layering of ink wash and colored pencil, building dense, vibrating and otherworldly terrains. Using a recurring vocabulary of rays, waves, orbs and abstracted landforms, she composes scenes that feel at once familiar and impossible. Her vivid ultraviolet forms bend, fold and surge, generating cataclysmic energy, like radiant storms flaring across imagined solar systems. Her work evokes unseen realms that seem, by turns, microscopic and macroscopic. Guided by uncertainty yet marked by meticulous material control, Greene’s drawings act as portals into strange, mutable spaces where perception and meaning remain in flux. Working in a state of flow, she lets rational order fall away, tapping into an instinctual force that aligns with the creative pulse of the cosmos.
Michiko Itatani’s monumental oil paintings imagine vast galaxies and humanless interiors such as concert halls, observatories, libraries, cathedrals and even living rooms that look up to the heavens and are charged with supernatural light and celestial phenomena. Itatani channels science fiction, physics and cosmic inquiry to create fictional spaces filled with globes, scientific and musical instruments and star maps that engage with humanity’s quest for knowledge and creative connection. Her glowing rings, traveling stars and mysterious illuminated nocturnal vistas suggest portals to parallel universes, inviting viewers toward hopeful, speculative and transcendental realms beyond the here and now.
Artwork Shown:
Michiko Itatani, Close Binary, 2018, 72 H x 62 W inches/each, Oil on Canvas
