Spectral Psalm

We’re thrilled to announce Spectral Psalm, a solo exhibition of a new installation by Lindsey Dorr-Niro, on view at Compound Yellow May 23 through June 20, 2026. The exhibition opens with an opening reception on May 23, 2–6 PM, followed by two activations on June 6, 7–9 PM with Zander Raymond and Erik Kramer, and on June 13, 4–7 PM with Lindsey Dorr-Niro and Marty McConnell. Spectral Psalm is an act of world building and re-building. It is a second act -- an amplification, condensation, and reconfiguration of a previous constellation. What began as documentation of that work turned into a film within which a technical glitch yielded hundreds of abstractions that, alongside a series of inquiries into the nature and function of order became the motivation, the source, for this re-iteration. Failure of control as generative. Emergent. Emergence. The result is a stream-like structure of experiential inquiry and exposition in the form of a film which acts as the source point and guide for the installation, a text (as narration in film and printed object), a musical score (Zander Raymond), a poster (Sonnenzimmer), and an entangled environment encompassing Compound Yellow as a site of activation, event, and communion. As a kind of stage, it hosts related embodied inquiry through guided contemplation, poetry, text, conversation, and musical performance. -- Psalm. Song. What is a Spectral Psalm? One definition of psalm is a sacred poem or song accompanied by music. We find ourselves in a moment where it seems nothing is deemed sacred -- a crisis of the sacred we might say. So much of the violence and suffering we are witnessing is the result of an extractive materialist worldview that sees only convenient objects and resources. And yet, if we take sacred to denote “worthy of profound reverence or awe,” we are reminded just how much of what makes this life worthwhile is precisely sacred. What might a practice of sacred vision--sacred looking look like? Could we practice seeing the world this way, through the eyes of wonder, openness, and possibility rather than objectification, separation, and circumscription? Can we live in the moment—the space before the name? A common device used in psalms is parallelism, a structural technique where thoughts or ideas rhyme. The second line repeats or reinforces the thought of the first line using similar words. Spectral Psalm is a song of pairs, pairing, parallelism. Of recursion, Of connection, Of interdependence. A Spectral Psalm blinks in and it out. It weaves back and forth from the mediated to the direct, the rational to the more mysterious and absurd. It holds this space. It lives in between. It sings through it. ____ Artist Bio: Lindsey Dorr-Niro is an artist and educator based in Chicago. Primarily through large scale installations, Dorr-Niro orchestrates diverse contemplative platforms and spaces of entanglement that invite the viewer into a more relational and elemental awareness. Enticing the viewer into the space before a form becomes a “thing” and emphasizing the space and connection between forms, her work enacts and highlights interdependencies--processes and relations of emergence, modulation, potential, and transformation—illuminating one’s capacity to re-imagine and re-construct the world and themselves otherwise. Her work was most recently included In/Situ for: bye, bye Avondale (Chicago, 2025). She has also exhibited (solo and collaboratively) at Wedge Projects (Chicago), Ditch Projects (Springfield, OR), and Regards (Chicago). Credits: Poster by Sonnenzimmer *Editioned posters available for purchase onsite

Event Links

Website: https://go.evvnt.com/3604565-0

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