With "Dusk" at Patron Gallery, Bethany Collins Is Nothing but Dawn

Newcity Art
October 9, 2025

With originality, grace and precision, the artist's solo exhibition offers an exceptional sampling of her practice through five different bodies of work.

Bethany Collins, fresh off a solo exhibition at Seattle Art Museum, an inclusion in the Prospect 6 Triennial in New Orleans, and a forthcoming work in the “Monuments” show at The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles and The Brick, seems not to be slowing down, but rather speeding up. An artist with an insurmountable prowess and affinity for language, its intersection with race and history, Collins continues to meet the gold standard for artistic expression. With originality, grace and precision, “Dusk” at Patron Gallery offers an exceptional sampling of the artist’s practice through five different bodies of work, a collection of paintings, drawings and sculptures. At this Chicago venue, Collins is an exacting reminder that in the right hands, language’s ephemerality can be grasped, if only for a moment; perhaps there is no greater gift than this, someone who can trace language’s frailty and fugitivity in all its wonders.

 At the centerpiece of the show, three magnificent works from the series “The Battle Hymn of the Republic” transform a famous American contrafactum into visual landscapes. Contrafactums, or melodies that remain static while their lyrics alter, notoriously ebb and flow in their social, political and cultural pertinence. On the pictorial plane, every gestural mark washes out its own legibility. The stems of flowers look as if the pastel and acrylic have cried on the surface of the paper. Running colors like falling tears abstract semi-observable lyrical forms. The blue-greys and blacks darken the tonality of the work and adapted lyrics, at times barely legible cursive pirouettes, form clouds throughout. In other areas, small individual letters, some black, others white, are precisely positioned. The assemblage of textual and visual build results in an atmospheric gesture toward language. Without thunder and lightning, Collins has weathered an exquisite storm.

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