current

front room:

Janelle VanderKelen
verses in verisimilitude
May 9 - May 30, 2026

back room:

Kayle Karbowski
Wet Matter
May 9 - May 30, 2026

There is something unruly and deeply attentive in the way Kayle Karbowski and Janelle VanderKelen approach material. Their works exist in a state of continual becoming; surfaces swell, sag, harden, bloom, and overtake themselves. What emerges is an ecosystem shaped by seepage, ornament, excess, and transformation. Their practices move with a strange faith in the intelligence of the natural world, nature understood as process, invasive, erotic, fungal, decaying, lush. These works feel grown rather than constructed, listening to pressures and impulses older than language.

upcoming

Group Show
IN PRAISE OF SMALL THINGS WE ALL SEE
organized by Fool’s Gold
June 2 - June 12, 2026

This June, e.s.r. in Milwaukee will host IN PRAISE OF SMALL THINGS WE ALL SEE, a group exhibition organized by Fool’s Gold, an ongoing project by Rachel Reichert and Alex Gartelmann. Emerging from their weekly Studio Night gatherings, the exhibition centers on a large communal table built within the gallery, bringing together artists across distance, friendship, and shared histories to consider the table as a site of exchange, ritual, humor, generosity, and experimentation.

The opening on June 2nd will host a special Studio Night gathering in place of a traditional reception; the night embraces process, conversation, snacks, unfinished ideas, and the connective energy that forms around making together. On June 12th, we celebrate the table with a closing reception.

Studio Night
Tuesday, June 2, 2026
6-9 pm

Closing
Friday, June 12, 2026
6-9 pm

past

Cameron Clayborn
Thats When Love Just Swallows You Whole, Right. Now.
April 4 - May 2, 2026

Diana H. Chu
Altostraat
April 4 - May 2, 2026

M Chang
Critical Minerals: In my nightmares, I’m screaming your name like it’s an amulet
February 21 - March 28, 2026

Group Exhibition
Out Of The Box: An Asian Creative Showcase
February 21 - March 28, 2026

Emmanuel Guerra
࣪ ˖⟡ let sleeping dogs lie⟡˖࣪
January 10 - February 14, 2026

Alayna N. Pernell and Billie Carter-Rankin
to live and be loved // to have and to hold
December 6 - January 3, 2026

Joe Willis
Like A Summer With 1000 Julys
October 25 - November 22, 2025

Sara Caron
White Noise
August 30 - October 5, 2025

Eun-Ha Paek, Melissa Pokorny, Sahar Khoury
Pain Stuck Under Soles
August 30 - October 5, 2025

news

We are thrilled to announce our first Artist in Residence with Diana H. Chu

Diana H. Chu (b. 1990) is a first-generation Chinese American artist based in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Chu deconstructs and reimagines her subject matter in colored pencil, arranging familiar objects next to ancient relics and imagined creatures on paper. She merges incongruous timelines to introduce a mythic perspective. Her cut-and-paste aesthetic develops her ideas of shifting selfhood, using the vernacular of collage to put her identity directly in conversation with time, belonging, and representation.

Chu’s compositionally dense images were developed from living in Hong Kong for ten years (1998–2008). By what she leaves out of an image, Chu questions how personal history is erased. Chu’s drawings are arranged in sequential narratives and Risograph printed in limited color palettes of 1–4 colors. Her prints are hand-bound into visual art books. Chu employs the Risograph to help blur the line between canonical fine art media and ones co-opted from corporate environments.

Sudden Death (1, 2, 3), 2018

Sudden Death (1, 2, 3), 2018

Sudden Death (1, 2, 3), 2018

experimental sculpture room