Upcoming

Rendezvous

Zolla/Lieberman Gallery | Chicago
January 9 - February 7, 2026

325 W Huron St #1e, Chicago, IL 60654
P: (312) 944-1990

ZL Gallery Website

Highlights

The Elmhurst Art Museum, Elmhurst, IL

Legacies: Selections from the Elmhurst Art Museum Permanent Collection, May 30th - August 17th 2025

International Museum of Surgical Science | Chicago, IL

Buñuel: Master of Dreams, August 28, 2025 - February 22nd, 2026

Rhona Hoffman Gallery | Chicago, IL

Women on the Verge, curated by Lisa Wainwright, October 27 - December 15, 2023

Rina Banerjee, Aviv Benn, Louise Bonnet, Louise Bourgeois, Caitlin Cherry, Emma Cousin, Elizabeth Glaessner, Katya Grokhovsky, Payton Harris-Woodard, Maryam Hoseini, Hayv Kahraman, Barbara Kendrick, Maria Lassnig, MJ Lounsberry, Wangechi Mutu, Gladys Nilsson, Christina Quarles, Christina Ramberg, Celeste Rapone, Karen Seapker, Tschabalala Self, Cindy Sherman, Nancy Spero, Nicola Tyson, Robin F. Williams, Caleb Yono, Mary Lou Zelazny

The exhibition includes works by 27 artists and examines the prevalence in painting today of eccentric sendups of women by those who identify as women. With the hearty return of figurative painting in the last decade, it seems timely to take the pulse of a facet of feminist expression that currently lampoons the female body. Wrestling with the grand tradition of the bather and the reclining nude in art history, these distorted and contorted sisters are a convulsive response to the myriad pressures within a society on the verge of a nervous breakdown, as Pedro Almodóvar prophetically put it in his film of 1982. Such visual rhetorics speak to the concerns of those breaking the colonial gaze, or those queering representation, or those asserting a satirical engagement with heteronormative poses, or some intersection of all. Our current climate of judiciary conservativism with the abolition of Roe vrs. Wade makes such images of torqued women all the more timely to assess."

Carl Hammer Gallery | Chicago, IL

Whistling in the Dark, October 28 - December 30, 2022

The Ukrainian Museum of Art | Chicago, IL

The New UnNatural, curated by Robin Dluzen and Mary Lou Zelazny. January - March 2019

In "The New UnNatural," seven female artists examine the modern grotesque. The genre of the "grotesque" is ancient, with examples from every culture and period. Ranging from the fanciful to the hideous, hybridized figurative forms have been used by artists around the world as satire, commentary, ornamentation and ritual. For the artists in "The New UnNatural," Laurie Hogin, Amanda Elizabeth Joseph, Renluka Maharaj, Julie Potratz, Chloe Seibert, Maria Tomasula and Mary Lou Zelazny, the attraction to rough or deformed amalgamations is both personal and political. 

In embracing the unsettling, the absurd and the repulsive, the artists in this exhibition eschew the notion of the "beautiful," not as a feminist critique of "beauty" or its representation in art; rather, the grotesque offers a means of coping with the rising anxieties and overstimulation of our times: a callous of sorts to strengthen one's ability to withstand inescapable bombardment of stimuli. 

So too does the grotesque provide a vehicle for power and self-assertion, especially in the hands of women. Through the violent, technicolor chimeras of Hogin's paintings; Joseph's hyperreal, emphatically flawed female bodies; Maharaj's sensual, macabre rituals; Potratz's exaggerated, uncanny costumed performances; Seibert's ghastly, crudely wrought faces; Tomasula's viscous still-lifes; and the mongrel, Frankenstein-ed figures of Zelazny's works, each artist projects a vision of the unexpectedly terrifying that reveals a visceral female sensibility.

Elmhurst Art Museum | Elmhurst, IL

What Came After: Figurative Painting in Chicago 1978-1998, curated by Suellen Rocca, exhibited a major overview of Chicago figurative artists from September 2019 - January 2020

Press:
~ What Came After’ Exhibition Explores Legacy of Chicago Imagism, WTTW, Marc Vitali, October 8, 2019.
~ Overdue Overview, The Chicago Sun Times, Kyle MacMillan, September 12, 2019.
~ Defining Chicago Imagism, NewCity Art, Chris Miller, October 4, 2019.

Elmhurst Art Museum | Elmhurst, IL

The Figure, Humor and the Chicago Imagists, curated by Suellen Rocca, featured several Chicago Imagists alongside current Chicago artists. A symposium and panel discussion with Dan Nadel, Frank Trankina and Mary Lou Zelazny accompanied the exhibition.

Carl Hammer Gallery | Chicago, IL

Vivarium, Zelazny's fifth solo exhibition with Carl Hammer Gallery, featured new mixed-media paintings of floral arrangements and trees.

Press:
~ Vibrant Bouquets from Mary Lou Zelazny, Judy Carmack Bross, Classic Chicago Magazine, April 22, 2018.
~ "Vivarium": Mary Lou Zelazny, Bruce Thorn, New Art Examiner, April 19, 2018.
 

The Research House for Asian Art | Chicago, IL

Analog RAM, curated by Mary Lou Zelazny, featured the work of over 120 young artists in an extensive series of collaborative collages, assembled from drawings made over 6 years in Zelazny's course Figure Painting — From Photo to Memory.

See the collection now as a permanent addition to the Joan Flasch Artist Book Collection at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Viewings available by appointment.

The Museum of Contemporary Art | Chicago, IL

Surrealism: The Conjured Life, curated by Lynne Warren, November 21, 2015 - June 5, 2016

PBS airs an episode on the work of Mary Lou Zelazny in Artrageous with Nate, The Artist in Your Backyard. 

Elmhurst Art Museum | Elmhurst, IL

Selections from the Cleve Carney Bequest exhibited 300+ works bequeathed to the museum by Cleve Carney.

Carl Hammer Gallery, Art Expo 2015 | Chicago, IL

10 Highlights from the Expo Art Fair, Paddy Johnson and Robin Dluzen, ArtFCity, September 19, 2015.

Carl Hammer Gallery | Chicago, IL

New Works, April-May 2014

Press:
~ Mary Lou Zelazny at Carl Hammer Gallery, James Yood, Art LTD, August 2014.

The National Veterans Art Museum | Chicago, IL

The Exquisite Corpse of the Unknown Veteran was organized by Jeanne Dunning and Aaron Hughes. The first iteration of the project was featured in the Surrealism & War exhibit at the National Veterans Art Museum. Zelazny partnered with Lisa Boumstein-Smalley and Geoffry Smalley to create a drawing titled The Exquisite Corpse of Stanistaw Zelazny.

"I have chosen my father, Stanislaw Zelazny, because of his WWII experiences. In 1938, at the age of 14, he was kidnapped from his home by the German military for slave labor. 40,000 to 50,000 children aged 14 to 15 were abducted in operation 'Heu-Aktion.' The term means harvesting the hay. After the liberation, my father joined the British reconstruction forces." —Mary Lou Zelazny  

Carl Hammer Gallery | Chicago, IL

The Cake Lady Returns, Carl Hammer Gallery, September - October, 2011.

Press:
~ Mary Lou Zelazny / Carl Hammer Gallery, Brian Hieggelke, NewCity Art, October 4, 2011.
~ The Opening of Chicago's Fall Art Season, Paul Klein, Huffington Post, September 12, 2011.

The School of the Art Institute of Chicag, Sullivan Galleries | Chicago, IL

Touch and Go: Ray Yoshida and His Spheres of Influence was a large retrospective of Yoshida's work held at the SAIC. The retrospective also featured selections from Yoshida's private collection, which included the work of Mary Lou Zelazny and other students that Yoshida influenced and later collected throughout his teaching career. Yoshida's private collection now resides at the Kohler Art Center in Sheboygan, WI.

Press:
~ Ray Yoshida's Foresight, John Yau, Hyperallergic, December 13, 2015
~ Reviving the Spirit of an Artist Through His Personal Collection, Jillian Steinhauer in conversation with Karen Patterson, Hyperallergic, January 15, 2014