Tribeca, New York
Group Exhibition
The Aeolipile
ThetaMichael Bala, Eli Coplan, Kelsey Isaacs, Nandi Loaf, Gedi Sibony, Richard Sides, Johnathan Wilborn, Terry Winters The world’s first steam turbine was created in the 1st century AD by Hero of Alexandria. In his book Pneumatica, the aeolipile was described as a hollow sphere mounted to turn on a pair of hollow tubes that pushed steam into the sphere from a cauldron below, causing it to revolve. The aeolipile is the first known device to transform steam into rotary motion, and it was used as little more than a party trick. Two millennia passed before the idea of steam power would finally connect to functional industrial use with a practical steam turbine. The systems that govern how we live are vast, intricate, and resistant to mastery. While the artist is not a physicist, both work by extending networks of existing knowledge to invent new forms. In art, though, mastery can be subverted by abstraction, or ornamented into something else entirely. Perhaps the scribbles of a mad scientist are just as beautiful as the resolution of their hypothesis. Everything in this exhibition is a container of ideas—responses to the inherited forms and formulas that shape how we express a vision of progress. Michael Bala (b. 1994, Maui, HI) lives and works in Los Angeles. Bala received a BFA from the University of California, Los Angeles in 2019. Solo exhibitions include Overduin & Co, Los Angeles (2025) and Tiffany’s, Los Angeles (2023). Selected group exhibitions include: Clearing, Los Angeles;, Clearing, New York (both 2024); CO,MA and Peana, Mexico City (2024); Overdiun & co, Los Angeles (2023); House of Seiko, San Francisco (2023); Castle, Los Angeles (2023); Et al., San Francisco (2023), and Paul Soto, Los Angeles (2021), among others. Eli Coplan (b. 1992, San Diego, CA) lives and works in New York. Coplan studied at Reed College, Portland; and the Independent Study Program, New York (2022-23). Solo exhibitions include: A. Squire, London (2024) and Commercial Street, Los Angeles (2023). Group exhibitions include Julia Stoschek Foundation, Dusseldorf (2025); carriage trade, New York (2024); inge, Long Island (2024); Magenta Plains, New York (2024); b11g, New York (2024); a. SQUIRE, London (2024); Stadtgalerie, Bern (2023); The Wig, Berlin (2023); and Claude Balls Int., New York (2022). Kelsey Isaacs (b. 1994, Los Angeles, CA) lives and works in New York City. Solo and two-person exhibitions include: Clima, Milan, IT (2024); Frieze London, Clima, London (2024); Theta, New York (2023); Paris Internationale, Theta, Paris, FR (2022); and Chapter NY, New York (2022). Recent group exhibitions include: Bortolami, New York (2025); Schiefe Zaehne, Berlin (2024) Zodiac Pictures, Los Angeles (2024); Tara Downs, New York (2023); Soft Opening, London (2023); Venus Over Manhattan, New York (2022); Harkawik, New York (2022); and King’s Leap, New York (2021). Nandi Loaf (b. 1991, Brooklyn, NY) lives and works in New York.. Recent solo and two person presentations include Liste Art Fair with King’s Leap, Basel (2025); Timeshare, Los Angeles, CA (2025); King’s Leap. New York (2024), Profil, Paris (2024); Room 3557, Los Angeles (2023); and Sebastian Gladstone, Los Angeles (2023). Selected group exhibitions include Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit and The Kitchen, Detroit, MI (2025); Good Weather and M. LeBlanc, Chicago (2025); The Wig, Berlin (2024); Shore Gallery, Vienna (2024); Weatherproof, Chicago, IL (2024); and We Buy Gold with Jack Shainman Gallery curated by Joeonna Bellorado Samuels, New York (2023). Gedi Sibony (b. 1973, New York, NY) lives and works in Brooklyn, New York. Recent solo exhibitions include Greene Naftali, New York (2023, 2020, 2018), and Mister Fahrenheit, New York (2022); solo institutional presentations include The Douglas Hyde Gallery, Trinity College, Dublin (2014); Culturgest, Lisbon (2011); Contemporary Art Museum, St. Louis (2009); and In the Still Epiphany, a curatorial project at The Pulitzer Foundation for the Arts, St. Louis (2012). Richard Sides (b. 1985 UK) lives and works in Berlin. Sides received a BA from Sheffield Hallam University and MA in sculpture from Royal College of Art in London. Selected solo and two person exhibitions include Carlos.Ishikawa, London (2025), KIN, Brussels (2024 and 2025); Shore Gallery, Vienna (2024); Stadtgalerie Bern, Bern (2023); Schiefe Zaehne, Berlin (2021); Kunsthalle Winterthur, Winterthur (2014); among others. Selected group exhibitions include Kunsthalle Friart, Fribourg (2025); Kunsthalle Zurich, Zurich; The Wig, Berlin; Centre d'art contemporain, Lausanne (all 2024), among others. Johnathan Wilborn (b. 1994 Denver, CO) lives and works in New Jersey. Wilbourn received his BFA from The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science of Art in 2020 and MFA from Mason Gross School of Art, Rutgers University in 2025. Selected exhibitions include Westbeth Gallery, New York (2025); Mason Gross Galleries, New Brunswick (2025); Will Shott, New York (2023); He attended the Yale Norfolk residency in 2019, and received the Michael S.Vivo Memorial Prize in 2020. Terry Winters (b. 1949 Brooklyn, NY) lives and works in New York City and Columbia County, New York. He has had one-person exhibitions at numerous museums, including the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York, the Whitechapel Art Gallery in London, the Kunsthalle Basel, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. Most recently, the Drawing Center in New York organized a survey of his drawings in 2018.