every speck of dust illuminated

March 14 – April 18, 2025

Alexandra Lakin
Karen Lue
Erin Mallea
Joseph Ryznar
Shori Sims


every speck of dust illuminated presents a tableau of the everyday. Inspired by Richard Siken’s poem “Visible World,” the exhibition sketches a feeling around quotidian notions of quietude, the banal, dreaming, and interiority (Siken, 2005). Assembled here is the work of five artists with ties to Allegheny County, each of whom have distinct material approaches to observing these notions and the memories inflected therein.

Alexandra Lakin’s paintings and statuette sculptures employ color and scale to consider themes of sanctuary, protection, and rest. Memory compounds within and emanates from her figures, who often are depicted in relation to others—family, friends, nature and nostalgia—such as in Mom Genes (2022) and Drift/Past (2023). At a larger scale, Joseph Ryznar paints in a lineage that teeters between abstraction and representation, and has developed a unique approach to a style of contemporary pointalism. Using tools other than paint brushes (credit cards, toothbrushes, corks), Ryznar approaches painting with a cinematic quality, framing scenes that are fleeting and full of pathos. 

Working in moving image and sculpture, Shori Sims views memory as a portal through which to access transcendence, seeing mythology as something that is forever in the making. Their two channel video installation presents distinct vignettes, each a horizon: one, a floating still-life, and the other, a figure within a disintegrating home and the apparition of sky. Karen Lue likewise works with images to parse ideas around ritual, self-representation, and spectatorship. A self-taught photographer, Lue presents a diptych of large-scale photographs in which the artist is captured performing for the camera, with aspects of her figure redacted (or highlighted) by the device’s shutter.

In the center of the gallery, a sculptural installation by Erin Mallea provides a micro and macrocosmic framework for the exhibition. Like an anthropogenic spider’s web, Condition Report comprises thrift store jewelry, aluminum and bronze slag, and spotted lantern flies encased in wax and resin. Mallea considers the entanglement of history, people, and the environment as an ever-unfolding set of conditions.

This exhibition is juried by Patrick Bova and Lucas Regazzi, Directors of april april, Pittsburgh, in collaboration with Nina Friedman, Director, Tomayko Foundation. The exhibition is presented in partnership with the Associated Artists of Pittsburgh. 

Patrick Bova and Lucas Regazzi comprise april april, an art gallery located in the Regent Square neighborhood of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, in the borough of Wilkinsburg. april april represents and exhibits a comprehensive range of practices with an artist-driven curatorial sensibility. It was founded by Bova and Regazzi in 2021. From 2021-2024, the gallery operated as a project space in the front room of their apartment in Brooklyn, New York. april april is a member of the New Art Dealers Alliance (NADA).