Current Exhibition

Mark Banks, Brian Petrone & Ryan Standfest: " Decisive Gesture Towards Uncertain Outcome"

Jan. 20 - Feb. 20

Reception: Friday, February 20, 5:00 - 8:00 p.m.

Artist Talk: Wednesday, February 18, 3:00 - 4:00 p.m. (In the gallery)

Decisive Gesture Towards Uncertain Outcomes pairs the work of Mark Banks, Brian Petrone and Ryan Standfest who each address infrastructure, the built landscape and its failings. Standfest’s paintings, drawings and prints approach these shadows of industry as unheroic; highlighting vulnerability and uncertainty rather than the ideal and monumental. Standfest’s work uses humor and the absurd to build a visual language in quiet conflict. In Of Phantom Appendages and Other Romantic Longings n.1 & 2 both structures and figures are bisected into disfunction, creating amputees of both the worker and the system.

Bank’s series of oil paintings In the Fields of Rotting Giants address the ruins of industrial sites along the southern tip of Lake Michigan that have permanently scarred the landscape to the molecular level. Several of Bank’s paintings address details of these spaces that serve as portraits of a larger system of extraction, pollution, and exploitation. In Study of Steel, he uses corrosion as a means of image making, which simultaneously will slowly break down his subject matter. Brian Petrone, an architect by trade, employs building materials to create sculptural work that references both the built world and environment that it impacts. His small scale works in Decisive Gestures Towards Uncertain Outcomes approach bricks and limestone with a collaborative reverence and create vignettes that consider larger scale implications with titles referencing Tectonics and Icebergs.

2025-2026 Season

Fall 2025

Art + Design Alumni Biennial

Aug. 25-Sept. 25
Reception: 5:00 - 8:00 p.m. Friday, Sept. 12

The Fine Arts Center Gallery is pleased to open the fall semester gallery season with multidisciplinary work by Art + Design alumni featured in this biennial exhibition and take part in a raffle to help support Art + Design scholarships.

Artists Featured: Carla Castro Gomez, Katrina Ramirez, Katelyn Krabacher, Rabia Tayyabi, Todd Irwin, Alex Velazquez Brightbill, Brian Garbrecht, Rachelle Hill, Jacqueline Sanchez, Xena Lopez, Rosemary Morrissey, Michelle Perez

Jonathan Michael Castillo: "American Institutional Indebtedness"

Sept. 29-Oct. 24

This exhibition is a critique of the American system of higher education, the US financial system and the federal government. The project consists of portraits printed on handmade paper, made from shredded US currency and is a direct visual representation of those individual's student loan debt.

Adrienne Elyse Meyers: "There's something in the silence"

Nov. 3-28

Paintings reflecting on moments of pause, on the sweetness of sapphic intimacy, and on a sense of awe or strangeness that seeps through the everyday.

Student Holiday Art Sale

Dec. 2-4

A sale of unique holiday gifts created by Northeastern Art + Design students. All proceeds go directly to the students.

Spring 2026

Mark Banks, Brian Petrone & Ryan Standfest: "Decisive Gesture Towards Uncertain Outcome"

Jan. 20-Feb. 20

Three Midwest-based artists address infrastructure and its failure to meet human needs through sculpture, painting, and printmaking.

Rebecca Griffith, Noah Kashiani & Allen Moore: "Morning Cartoons and Cereal"

March 2-27

A reflection on how pop culture invites us into a distinct, nostalgic, and often absurd world—where relics create points of connection and help shape identity.

Annual Art + Design Juried Student Exhibition

April 6-24

A juried exhibition of work in all media created by Northeastern students with a declared major in Studio Art or Graphic Design or a declared minor in Interaction Design, Photography or Studio Art.

Zeinab Saab: "Girls Just Wanna Lay the Smackdown"

May 4-29

Explores nostalgia, gender roles, and blurred memories and realities through the lens of late ’90s to early 2000s professional wrestling.

Summer 2026

NEIU Visiting Artist Exhibition

June 8-July 3

Featuring work by Cecilia Beaven, Cristian Martinez, bex ya yolk and Raeann Van Zee, created during their 2024–25 NEIU Visiting Artist residency in Studio Art & RISO.