CAMi February First Friday Exhibition

Felix Labisse, Judith, (1927). Lithograph on wove paper, 29 7/8"H x 21"W (sheet)

The Contemporary Art Museum of Indianapolis campus has three exciting new exhibitions debuting during this weekend's First Friday!

Blue Blood: Félix Labisse's Goddesses, Demons and the Space Between

Tube Main Gallery

Feb. 6 - March 15

French Surrealist Félix Labisse created a universe where blue-skinned warrior goddesses —known as "Selenides" — pilot impossible machines through realms that don’t follow normal physics, navigating desire, mythology, and parallel dimensions of time. This exhibition features works from Labisse’s 1960s Selenide series and selections from his 1940s Histoire naturelle series depicting hybrid creatures and accompanying poems, and a group of hand-colored illustrations from his 1957 book Le Sorcier des familles. Together, these works imagine consciousness itself as a vehicle, where myth, eroticism, and imagination open portals to non-linear time.

Félix Labisse (1905–1982) was a French painter, illustrator, and theater designer. Born in northern France, he was shaped by the Gayant carnival, WWI occupation, and an obsessive reading of 19th-century science fiction. After moving to Paris in 1933, Labisse designed theater sets for Jean-Louis Barrault and Jean-Paul Sartre while developing what he called a “personal demonology” — a fusion of Flemish Expressionism, occult symbolism, and erotic mythology. Throughout his work, Labisse envisioned blue-skinned figures preparing for ceremony, magic, and battle in landscapes that exist nowhere and everywhere at once.

Pavlina Vagioni: AVÁSIMO (BASELESS)

Tube Video Gallery

Feb. 6 - March 29

What does a financial collapse sound like? In this immersive multimedia work, stock market data from the 2008 crash is transformed into a haunting musical score. A vocoder-processed "service" voice follows the algorithms with robotic precision, while a live human lament rises in defiance — grieving what the numbers cannot feel. Featuring ancient symbols of the Phaistos Disc scrolling like a modern ticker tape, the piece explores the tension between patriarchal economic systems and the deep, matriarchal mysteries that lie beneath the surface of our perceived stability.

Pavlina Vagioni is a Greek-born interdisciplinary artist based in Houston, TX, whose work spans sculpture, painting, sound, and digital art. She has exhibited at notable venues across the US and Europe, including the Byzantine Museum, Hellenic American Union, Kappatos Gallery (Athens), TANK Space, Lawndale Art Center (Houston), Carillon Gallery (Fort Worth), and Opening Gallery (New York). Vagioni completed a residency at the School of Visual Arts and created a public art project at Houston’s ION Building. Her work is recognized internationally and held in multiple private and public collections, including the MOMus-Museum of Contemporary Art (Thessaloniki, Greece).

Stephanie Williams: Common Matter

Guichelaar Gallery

Feb. 6 - 18

Williams uses ceramic wall sculpture and photography to explore the repeating patterns shared across nature, science, and human design. Modular ceramic forms shift between geometric and organic structures, while photographic works reveal cosmic patterns at microscopic scales, inviting viewers to notice how similar visual and mathematical “rules” appear across vastly different dimensions. Drawing inspiration from sources ranging from historical cosmology to everyday observations, Williams examines proportion, growth, and repetition — including spiral forms associated with the Fibonacci sequence — to show how the macro and micro mirror one another. Rooted in ceramics and expanded through photographic processes, the work ultimately reflects on humanity’s place within these universal systems, suggesting that the patterns we observe and recreate are fundamental expressions of our connection to the universe itself.

Stephanie Williams is an Indianapolis-based artist in Big Car Collaborative’s CAMi Long-Term Artist Residency program. A Herron School of Art and Design 2019 graduate she has exhibited in a variety of galleries across Indiana. Williams works at American Art and Clay Company (AMACO).