Gathering is thrilled to bring a selection of paintings and works on paper by Tamara K.E. to the debut edition of Neighbors, a curated art fair during Chicago Expo Week.

The fair will feature K.E.’s large-scale painting Je t’aime 36, which sees playful characters emerge from the subconscious through porous layers of cracks, drips and brush strokes. Her painting will be accompanied by various works from her series Revisiting Fear.

Two final works from the series Screwed Up Screens will be shown in Chicago. Despite their iconographically cute associations, the bunny figures of this series carry an air of mischief, darkness and isolation, stripped to a simplified form in a cartoonish and graphic style. While the series lacks one singular understanding, the artist presents various uncanny codes and signifiers to address our cultural memory— familiar and foreign at the same
time. In this way, K.E.’s works echo traditions of Dada and Surrealism and highlight the emotion, playfulness and abandonment of logic that seeps into our everyday lives. K.E. will be the subject of a major exhibition at the Kvareli Foundation, opening April 2027.

With no booth walls or white cubes, Neighbors will take place at 1355 North Astor Street across four rooms and just over 1,200 square feet in the former apartment of the Goodman family, a major patron of the arts in Chicago. Collector Mirka Serrato and Jonny Tanna, founder of London’s Harlesden High Street gallery, are launching Neighbors to bring a curated approach within a distinctive space to Chicago’s Expo Week, exploring the domestic spaces that art used to live in before it was institutionalised.