Spring/Break Fall 2026
Trouble Every Day
In an era defined by relentless acceleration, digital saturation, and often corrupt public realities, the domestic interior undergoes a radical transformation. It ceases to be merely a physical shelter; instead, it becomes a psychological sanctuary. Trouble Every Day brings together a body of work that utilizes domestic spaces and acute nostalgia as vehicles for temporary escape from the chaos of modern life.
The exhibition title Trouble Every Day refers to the 2001 film by Claire Denis, a French erotic horror film where the main character is locked away in her home every day to keep her from instigating violence. Here the domicile is a site for secrets between both the occupants and the outside world. With this title we acknowledge the duplicity of the form and content and its potential for darkness.
Through an innovative synthesis of paint, photography, sculpture, and mixed media, the artists construct spaces that are simultaneously familiar and safely out of reach. These works do not merely document the home; they map the internal landscapes of memory, yearning, and femininity. By deliberate design, each composition sets up a vibrating tension between fantasy and reality, inviting viewers to step out of the fractured present and into a timeless, curated solace.
In the works in this proposal, nature makes frequent appearances—yet it is never truly wild. This frozen flora creates a compelling paradox. By trapping nature within the confines of design, the artist highlights a universal human impulse: the urge to edit, manicuring the unpredictable external world into a predictable, beautiful interior. It is an aesthetic ecosystem where charm and excess are allowed to overflow, untouched by the decay of time or the corruption of the outside world.
Elissa Levy creates an uncomfortable balance between nature and culture in her sculptural photographic works. She photographs still lives set in nature, with found and sourced objects, and then prints out the images. Parts of those images are put back into nature to be photographed again, creating an in-camera collage and building new landscapes. In the final image, these elements merge into the environment, forming an awkward space and adding an enigmatic layering and depth. The prints are mounted onto a malleable aluminum which is bent by hand. Levy treats the landscape like a body, adorning and enlivening it. In this way she reveals the symbiotic relationship we have with our environs, and how we have both altered to suit each other.
Stephanie Snider utilizes architecture as a metaphor for psychological space and interiority. Regardless of medium, she creates lyrical, curious compositions that launch the viewer into a poetic, often fictional place much like a literary work. Alongside strong nods to narrative and language, Surrealism, psychoanalysis, Indian miniature painting, architecture, design, and the decorative arts also serve as influences. Often there is a play between deep space and surface ornamentation. Compositional elements can be seen as metaphors for psychological
ideas—doubling or mirroring, the tricks our minds play on us, and repetition as obsession compulsion. Themes such as transparency, symmetry, interior and exterior, and geometric and organic join with concerns regarding pattern, place and psyche.
Since the early pandemic, a time filled with uncertainty, isolation, frustration, Lou Haney has been drawn to creating idealized, comforting interiors—spaces offering shelter from the pressurized atmosphere of the real world. These rooms are not memories, but imaginings born from a longing for a gentler, more serene past that never truly existed and offer a form of visual solace amid an era of crisis. Her work is a meditation on the past—on perceived innocence and simplicity that we yearn for when the present feels fractured. Through illusion, collage, decoration, and recollection, nostalgia becomes both a refuge and a mirror, offering a fleeting escape from the present, while quietly reflecting a past far from perfect.
Each artist in Trouble Every Day draws the viewer into a space that conjoins the daily, recognizable domestic with its illusory, amplified, or skewed version. Whether through Levy’s physically manipulated landscapes, Snider’s psychologically charged architectures, or Haney’s nostalgic, escapist interiors, the exhibition exposes the fragile boundary between comfort and unease. Ultimately, these works transform ordinary environments into complex mirrors of the human experience. By blurring the lines between what is real and what is constructed, the collection reminds us that our surroundings—both physical and mental—are continuously reshaped by our anxieties, histories, and desires.
Lou Haney
IG Lou_Haney
Elissa Levy
IG Ellelvy
Stephanie Snider
IG Stephaniesnider
