Melissa Pokorny
Was the Return Easier Than the Getting Here?

February 18 to March 26, 2025

For Melissa Pokorny, found objects constitute the starting point for elaborate constructions that address gender, the public and private self, the nature/culture divide, and most recently, the connection between “things” as potent containers capable of active agency and the deeply haunted sense of history that clings to landscape and personal possessions. The unremarkable narratives of everyday objects become activated and heightened as they move into new situations and re-positionings within larger tableau. This compulsion to collect and re-imagine the status of marginal objects and things is a focus in these works. The rarified and the quotidian act together to create momentary and speculative connections. Reveries. Fragmentary narratives emerge on the nature of loss and desire, the power of magical thinking and the manner in which popular media shapes our collective imaginings of enchanted spaces such as caves, underwater grottoes and forest glades, wherein the ghostly and magical find refuge. These “things” come from estate sales in and around Urbana, Illinois. The photographs were taken at various tourist sites, national parks, and wilderness areas in Missouri and Kentucky.       

Melissa Pokorny has been an exhibiting artist for over twenty years. Her large scale, assemblage-based sculptural works have been widely exhibited at venues across the US. Recent solo shows at Platform Gallery in Seattle and Front Room Gallery in New York augment a long career of solo exhibitions, beginning with Gallery Paule Anglim, in San Francisco and continuing with Bodybuilder and Sportsman in Chicago.  Selected group exhibitions include venues such as Yerba Buena Gardens, Southern Exposure, Victoria Room, and New Langton Arts in San Francisco, FOOD HOUSE Gallery in Los Angeles, Gallery 400, Columbia College, Devening Projects + Editions, and the James Hotel in Chicago and The Richard Peeler Art Center at Depauw University, in Greencastle, Indiana.  Her work is held in collections at Orange County Museum of Art, the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, the Richard L. Nelson Museum at UC Davis, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Oakland Museum of Art, and the Richard Peeler Art Center at Depauw University. Melissa Pokorny is an Associate Professor in painting and sculpture at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign where she currently lives and works. Pokorny is the recipient of a 2010 Efroymson Contemporary Art Fellowship, as well as frequent and generous support from the Campus Research Board, and the College of Fine and Applied Art, both at the University of Illinois in Champaign-Urbana.