Your Attention, Please

UNDERSTORY, an artist-run gallery championing new and emerging voices, is dedicated to driving discourse with Your Attention, Please, opening June 18, 2025. Political commentator Chris Hayes writes, “Every single aspect of human life across the broadest categories of human organization is being reoriented around the pursuit of attention.” This exhibition, showcasing the work of eight regional and national artists, asks what it means to pursue attention.

Shannon Cleere’s 2D work explores exposure to an overload of conflicting news. How does one pay attention and stay informed while simultaneously protecting their mental and emotional well-being?

Combining deep listening and a systems approach to composition, Kevin Gilmore’s sound art responds to the idea of paying attention in a culture constantly bombarded by visual and sonic information.

Julie Graves Krishnaswami’s research-based work investigates how courts capture, present, and describe attention within the justice system over time through an archive of phrases and sentence fragments.

Lens-based media artist Jamie Hahn reflects on attention in her moving image series, positioning the viewer in stillness and contemplation before shifting landscape surfaces.

Carol Langley’s installation studies how social behaviors attract or demand attention. Selfies are reframed—trapped in glass and exposed on both sides. We curate how we want others to see us, but do they see through it?

Using parts of a tall tumbleplant, c marquez’s sculptural wall installation invites viewers to attend to the relationship between chromosomes and sex determination. By omitting the 23rd chromosomal pair, the work prompts viewers to reimagine humanity beyond societal labels.

In her media installation, Susan Snipes contemplates the shift in attention from active participation to passive observation, such as children watching videos of other children playing. What does it mean to experience life by watching rather than engaging directly?

Jamie Zimchek’s five-frame video installation ponders disattention in the context of childhood. Zimchek’s work considers the complicated relationship between movement as a way to help focus attention by some and a distraction–and punishable offense–by others.

UNDERSTORY is focused on exhibiting interdisciplinary and conceptual work by regional and emerging artists and promoting experimental art, creative dialogue, and community engagement.

Join us for the opening reception of Your Attention, Please on Wednesday, June 18, from 5-8 pm at UNDERSTORY, located on the RAMP (lower level) at 78th Street Studios in Cleveland.