PRESS RELEASE

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

CONTACT: 
Emilie Heidemann, Carnelian Art Gallery marketing director
920-763-6980
eheidemanncag@gmail.com

PHOTOS: 
Email eheidemanncag@gmail.com, and you will be given access to a Google Drive link with visuals of paintings.

MADISON, Wisconsin, Sept. 28 - Carnelian Art Gallery, located at 221 King St., Suite 102, in downtown Madison, is pleased to announce its November exhibition, titled ”An Empty Desk” This is a duo exhibition – with works curated by Madison artists R-Lo and Rachael Hunter – that aims to explore themes around agency, education, morality, ethics and education.

“In the back of class,
time lives on. Counting
every stain on the ceiling
as the teacher yawns.

Squeezing shut
anything that hears,
an empty desk asks
if it could hold your tears.”

An Empty Desk is slated to kick off with an opening reception at 5 p.m. on Friday, Nov. 6, for Gallery Night, organized by the Madison Museum of Contemporary Art. The show’s end date is on Sunday, Nov. 29. As always at Carnelian Art Gallery, admission on opening night is free, and light refreshments will be served.

At 6 p.m. on opening night, R-Lo and Hunter will give a brief talk regarding how the exhibition came together. The exhibition also features an interactive installation, whose details won’t be revealed until Gallery Night.

Gallery Night “offers art lovers and art novices alike an opportunity to enjoy a wide variety of exhibitions, opening receptions, special events and demonstrations at venues throughout the city. During Gallery Night, dozens of venues open their doors to invite the public in to see and shop for original artwork,” according to MMoCA.

Hunter is a painter based in Madison, Wisconsin. Growing up in Minnesota as an only child, she spent much of her time alone playing make-believe. She continues this practice today by creating paintings that inhabit a world parallel to ours, entirely her own, out of her studio at Roundhouse Studios with two artist friends on Madison’s north side.

Her focus is on creating ambiguous and unsettling narratives that invite viewers to create their own meaning. She works primarily with vibrant oil, acrylic and Flashe paints on alternative surfaces. Wood planks found on the side of the road are intuitively carved into blobs, and bedsheets sourced from second-hand stores, friends, or even her own bed become her canvas.

A key influence in Hunter’s artistic journey is the legacy of the magical realists of the Midwest. Hunter uses her paintings to explore and understand an increasingly horrifying reality. With fascism on the rise and a small group of people attempting to control every aspect of daily life, she paints to keep it together and find meaning in it all.  

R-Lo, an upstate New York native, is a community organizer and Madison-based artist. Using charcoal, he specializes in creating drawings ranging in scale from small to life-size works. R-Lo uses figures and abstraction to articulate narratives within dark surrealist fantasy, thematically exploring the shadows of conceptual thought to encourage self reflection for both the artist and audience.

He broke into the art world in 2023 and started a committed career journey in art beginning with a full year residency at The Millworks in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. This set in motion the first public viewings of his personal work and sprung R-Lo into his first invited gallery exhibition at Maryland Art Place (MAP). Following his first exhibitions, R-Lo has organized a number of group shows and has been featured exhibiting at institutions such as the Art Lit Lab and Overture Center for the Arts.

R-Lo has also had multiple solo exhibitions including a residency with Latinos Organizing for Understanding and Development and a solo exhibition, “The Fall,” at Gallery Within. Notably, R-Lo has exhibited as an emerging artist (2025) and returning mentor (2026) at the Kohler Arts Museum as part of the Mid-Summer Festival of the Arts Emerging Artists Program presented by Art Dose in collaboration with John Michael Kohler Arts Center in Sheboygan.

“The gallery has been so pleased to work with R-Lo and Rachael Hunter in planning ‘An Empty Desk’,” said Evan Bradbury, Carnelian Art Gallery owner and head curator. “This exhibition represents a first for our gallery from its concept to how each artist’s works will be displayed in our space. Carnelian Art Gallery is proud to showcase the talents of these community-oriented and hardworking artists. We hope our visitors enjoy the show as much as we enjoyed helping put it together.”

“Art is the most human thing that we have,” said R-Lo. “To perform alchemy in the ways artists do is to transmute feelings, emotion and energy into physical objects and artifacts.”

“I am so grateful for Carnelian and how they consistently show up for local artists in our community,” said Hunter. “Working with them means getting more say in curation, flexibility with process and support for our ideas. Since the gallery is run by artists they just have a beautiful understanding for how to tangibly support us.”