Five Chicago galleries open new shows this month

The Intuit Art Museum in West Town is hosting a solo exhibition titled Karla Wong: Journeys of Being. The show features large-scale oil paintings by Wong, a Chicagoan born in Veracruz, Mexico. Her work draws heavily on Oaxacan culture and Día de los Muertos iconography. Wong previously worked as a forensic and witness sketch artist for ten years after graduating from law school. Christina Stavros, an associate curator at Intuit, stated that the paintings are encoded with references to Wong's life as a Mexican immigrant and a trans woman. The exhibition runs through January 10. Wong will hold an artist talk at the museum on Saturday, November 7.

Secrist/Beach on West Hubbard Street is presenting a group show called Before the Dawn. The exhibition runs through November 14 and features nine artists working in various media. The collection explores the moon and stars. One piece in the show is an installation by Penelope Umbrico. This work is part of her Everyone's Photos Any License series. It consists of more than 600 images of the full moon taken in November 2015. Umbrico found the photos on Flickr. The images are displayed on one long horizontal wall in the gallery.

Prairie, a gallery located at 2055 W. Cermak Ave., is hosting its final exhibition. The show is titled Retrospective and runs through December 5. Tim Mann and Jack Schneider have run the gallery since 2017. Schneider said the pair decided last year to close Prairie at the end of its tenth year. He described the final show as a celebratory survey of their program. The retrospective features a selection of artists the gallery worked with over the past decade. It exclusively includes objects the gallery has shown before. The gallery operated with a focus on promoting artists rather than turning a profit.

The Logan Center for the Arts in Hyde Park is opening a new show on November 6. The exhibition is titled Charles White Across Media: A Visual Archive. It will run through January 31. The show collects photographs, prints, album covers, book jackets, magazines, and other ephemera featuring the work of Charles White. White was born on the South Side in 1918. He won a scholarship to attend Saturday art classes at the Art Institute as a young child. At age 14, he took a job as a sign painter to help his family during the Great Depression. He later attended the School of the Art Institute and became an influential figure in Chicago’s Black Renaissance. White died in 1979.

Studio 2850 in Logan Square has opened a new storefront-window exhibition. The show is titled Drips and Amoebas and runs through December 24. It features 13 new paintings by Sharon Sprague. Sprague is a former theater set and costume designer. Her work uses texture, metal, and shimmer to transform drip and cell-like forms. The exhibition is built to be visible from the sidewalk even when the gallery is closed. A QR code on the window links to more information about the artworks. Passers-by can use the code to learn about the pieces or purchase one on the spot.