NOVEMBER 10th 2018 - JANUARY 5th 2019

M. LeBlanc is proud to present ‘US’, an exhibition of new work by Chicago artist Kate O’Neill.

Astrological charts draw relationships between bodies. A natal chart depicts the arrangement of heavenly bodies in relation to the coordinates of the human body at the moment of first breath. These coordinates describe a vantage: a view of the sky at a specific moment, from a particular perspective. The flattened abstraction of the chart allows us to map affinities and tensions, influences and gravities, and envision transformational processes: all diagrammed as geometric lines and angles. Opposition, conjunction, sextile, square.

The hand-drawn chart announcing Kate O’Neill’s solo exhibition at M. LeBlanc presents three charts nestled, separate, but together. The alignment of three suns in the lower right of the chart allude to the fact that the charts share the same date, over different years. In an abandoned apartment over the gallery space, the crematory ashes of a stranger were found. The date of cremation coincides with the artist’s date of birth and the opening of the exhibition. And so the triple chart traces the first breath of a body; a body turned to ash, its material destroyed; and a collective engagement with a body of objects.

O’Neill responds to this material, temporal, and spatial framework in an exhibition of photography, sculpture, and installation considering death, décor, astrology, and exercise equipment. 

Kate O’Neill (b. 1982 in Denver) lives and works in Chicago.