2025 EXHIBITIONS
STEPHANIE SARA LIFSHUTZ
AS THE WORST HAD ALREADY HAPPENED
OPENING RECEPTION: SATURDAY, DECEMBER 7TH 6-9PM
Var Gallery is pleased to to present Stephanie Sara Lifshutz's, "As The Worst Had Already Happened", opening Saturday December 7th, 6 - 9 PM at Var Gallery 5th Street.
"This exhibition was borne of extensive autobiographical writing directly following the unexpected passing of my youngest brother, Avigdor Chai Avraham, z”l, in April 2021.
The work chronicles some of the experiences of that night when I coincidentally happened to be at my grandparents’ home, getting updates over the phone while trying to break the news to them and handle the aftermath. While revisiting my records of that experience with this type of grief has at times been contemplative, numb, or physically painful – as it had been in the moment; what was most surprising were the seemingly trivial details that I had documented and now share with you.
This work is dedicated to the memory of my brother and would not have been possible without the support of my family and friends. Special thanks to Random Neon LLC and West Coast Custom Designs LLC for their contributions."
Stephanie Sara Lifshutz is an artist and educator residing in Brooklyn, NY. She first began working with glass and neon while attending the University of Wisconsin, Madison as a graduate student. While much of her work comes from a personal place as a female, Jewish artist, Lifshutz’s latest body of work has been about universal experiences and emotions. Lifshutz initially studied photography and printmaking at Franklin & Marshall College and became infatuated with portraiture.
She began learning neon in earnest in order to make some new work in the medium herself, struggling to learn while appreciating the time and process as a reference to the tedium and meditative nature of the darkroom. Lifshutz’s studio practice first focuses on concept and subject matter before deciding which medium to realize the piece, and neon felt like a natural progression to edit down a concept to its simplest form - directly communicating it to the viewer.
Lifshutz’s work has been exhibited nationally, including the Phillips Museum of Art at Franklin & Marshall, Museum of Neon Art, and Aqua Art Miami. Her work resides in various collections and keeps an active studio practice in addition to her teaching, and currently runs her own neon fabrication shop Pumpkin Studios.
Led By Jesús
Isaac Harris
Opening Reception: June 20, 2025 6-9 PM
Isaac Harris (b. Columbus, Ohio) is a Milwaukee-based photographer whose work explores the nuances of human connection through street portraiture. A graduate of The Ohio State University, Harris began his practice in New York City, transitioning from street fashion photography to a more intimate, portrait-driven approach. His work is grounded in the spontaneity of public space, where chance encounters become sites of quiet exchange and emotional resonance. Harris has exhibited in galleries throughout New York, Columbus, and Milwaukee, as well as in a museum setting in Milwaukee. He is the author of a self-published photo book and has collaborated with commercial clients including Refinery29, Absolut Vodka, and Harley-Davidson. His photographs have appeared in various national and international publications. Photography has been a gateway for Harris — a means of connection that has introduced him to people he never would have met otherwise. For him, the photograph is merely a trace of something more meaningful: the encounter itself. “The physical photo is secondary,” he says. “The brief encounter and conversation is where the magic happens.” He continues to approach his work with a sense of openness and curiosity, excited to discover who he’ll meet next.
"Around the time of the COVID-19 pandemic, I found myself drawn to stories about horses and the people who care for them — sparked in part by watching the Concrete Cowboys documentary. That interest stayed with me. One day, while taking my car to my local mechanic, Jesús, I noticed a dusty photograph above his workbench. Surrounded by tools and auto parts, the image showed a rider in street clothes atop a horse on a racetrack. I was immediately drawn to it. I asked Jesús where the photo was taken. His eyes lit up as he described a local Mexican horse racing scene — a grassroots event where people pull up in pickup trucks with coolers of beer and watch horses race on dirt tracks. It sounded like a world completely its own. After doing some research, I found out where one of these events was happening and decided to go document it. I didn’t know a single person there and was clearly an outsider. As I arrived, an older man approached and asked, “Amigo, what are you doing here?” I explained, then moved quietly through the crowd, camera in hand. What I witnessed that day was joy, laughter, and a sense of ease — families and friends gathering on a quiet Sunday in the middle of nowhere, in a small Midwestern town. This series is my attempt to capture that spirit: the people, the horses, and the quiet beauty of a community doing something they love."
“Jesus didn’t just fix my car, he led me to something real” - Isaac Harris
ALL BENT OUT OF SHAPE
Ian Sonsyadek
August 15 - October 11, 2025
Var Gallery is pleased to announce the opening of Ian Sonsyadek's solo exhibition All Bent Out Of Shape.
Ian, was born in Ukraine and emigrated to the States at a young age. He was raised in Chicago and had a 6 year interim in Milwaukee for undergrad and work, and back to Chicago after that. Being in quickly developing urban centers for most of his life honed his awareness of not only the constructed landscape, but of the implications that developing urban environments have on the migrations of people, culture, and the natural elements therein. The navigating, bulldozing, building, and shifting of the assembled metropolis mimics the activity of his art making, and vice versa.
Ian Sonsyadek is a 2012 graduate of MIAD. He continues to hone his craft and develop his concepts while exhibiting work, primarily in Chicago and Milwaukee.
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"When I get to making something, the drive behind the impulse is to get at and exploit the at-first seemingly mundane quality of our collective surroundings. You either get lost in or completely ignore your daily setting most of the time, but the visual background noise hums along. With time and scrutiny, our habitats can expose themselves to the bizarre mixture of influences that form them, especially in a city environment. Observational in its foundation, my work tends to shift and merge into the abstract through sampled components and hints of collage, like abstraction-lite. More recently, this process has come to include the visual slang of mediation, through filters and layers of various apps or programs, and other methods of sharing our common, seemingly simulated, experiences. Synthetic in their conception, my paintings are compressed compositions of disparate elements of the natural and the manmade, the byproducts of our constructed environments."
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"They’re nice, some monstrously present now, varied, even variegated, and the sometimes similarly inclined guests fawn over the flora when they visit, but the sixty plus house plants aren’t quite cutting it. There were several infographics dispersed online that said certain species really blast that oxygen, but the air feels the same.
There’s a block nearby where the dense canopy completely covers the crumbling street beneath. There, the cement blocks of the sidewalk jut out from level to the city-planned-and-developed-interspersed-with-light-poles-15-feet-apart-masses-of-roots of the indentured trees providing solace from the sun. Again, arguably nice, but it’s a single block, right there are the cars, bumper to bumper, synchronized swimming in the heat waves, with sirens parting the seas.
Gone are the days of going out into unbridled nature, rolling landscapes, real Oxbow type shit. Best we can do is the conservatory, about a half hour away, traffic permitting. Inside, meticulously managed corner to corner vegetation, climate controlled and simulated by region, a great escape, reprieve for city slickers and tourists alike. It’s rife with photo opps, throw on the Rio De Janeiro filter for added effect, tag the location, and add to the 45k+ digitized collective understanding of where nature fits in.
There are of course, environmental destinations not inside a building. About a 2+ hour drive out, throw on some Roman Mars for the trip, on the way to touch grass. Pass enough of the vague nothing-in-particular scenery that renders out from the city, a scrolling loading screen building out the journey and the destination. Park the Subaru Crosstrek in the designated lot and get to steppin. Clamber far enough in where the hum of the nearby highway seamlessly transitions into the rustling of leaves in the wind. It’s convincing enough in its manipulation, feel some temporary type of peace. Go home, check for ticks."
