Pearlstein Gallery is pleased to present two concurrent exhibitions in Spring 2026, with artists selected from our 2025-26 Call for Entries.  

Collective Landscapes: Photographs by Matthew Ludak and Textiles by Maris Van Vlack brings together two artists who mine collective histories to investigate the impacts of time, disinvestment, and conflict on architectural landscapes. Ludak’s photography takes inspiration from his grandmother’s life amidst the rugged towns of Western Pennsylvania's coal-mining communities, expanding his lens to capture current themes of urban and rural life amongst spaces ridden by structural neglect. In her multifaceted practice, Van Vlack uses textile, sculpture, and collage practices to create tapestries that investigate the impacts of war and weather on landscapes from her family’s history. Her unique layering techniques mirror the cycles of accumulation, entropy, and regeneration on the built environment over time. 

Conflagrations, a group show featuring recent works by Viola Bordon, Evan Curtis Charles Hall, Narendra Haynes, and Emmanuela Soria Ruiz, investigates fire as force, event, and aftermath.  Moving between active burn and residual trace, the artists ask how we might respond to fire's capacity to clear, consume, reveal, and reorder. As fire increasingly shapes our ecological context, these works reflect on how fire constructs and destroys in the same gesture, reshaping ecologies, infrastructures, and collective memory. What burns. What survives. What returns.  

The exhibitions open Tuesday, April 7, and run through Saturday, May 23. There will be an opening reception on Wednesday, April 8 from 5-7:30pm.