Object Lessons: A Tim Lowly Curatorial Project at T. Mari Gallery

Objects hold power. They fix memory in matter, carry belief across generations, and press against perception until it shifts. To stand before them is to be addressed. Object Lessons is built on that charge, arranging objects that act not as images but as agents.

In Object Lessons, Tim Lowly approaches curation as inquiry. The works do not resolve into answers but remain open, asking what an object might hold and how meaning emerges in its presence. The exhibition holds this tension, inviting an unfolding conversation between object and viewer.

Paying homage to artist Robert Gober, whose practice has long modeled the transformative force of context and framing, this exhibition gathers the work of seventeen artists, each represented by a single object. Distilled to its essence, each work becomes a site of encounter—conceptually rigorous, layered, and concentrated into a field of relations.

Hosted by T. Mari Gallery, a contemporary gallery in Chicago’s West Town founded by artist Tina Mari Rucker.

About the Curator

Tim Lowly (b. 1958) is a Chicago-based artist, curator, and educator known for portraiture that renders fragility and embodiment with uncommon clarity. For more than three decades his work has often centered on his daughter Temma, whose life has shaped a practice attentive to dignity and universality. From 1994 to 2023 he served as professor, gallery director, and artist-in-residence at North Park University, while exhibiting nationally and internationally. His curatorial work grows from the same commitments, attentive to how works of art accrue meaning across time and context.