2025 Spotlight Exhibition Series featuring Michael Koerner and Yicong Li

Curated by Shane McAdams

Through the Spotlight Exhibition Series, Peninsula School of Art intends to provide career development and experience for visual artists and to share high-quality, concept-driven exhibitions with the Door County community. Instead of the thematic group exhibitions normally presented in the Guenzel Gallery, the Spotlight Series features concurrent solo exhibitions by two or three artists, each showing a complete body of work. The spring of 2026 marks the next installment in this series.

MICHAEL KOERNER

 RISE & FALL, is an interdisciplinary exploration and social commentary on the profound effects of isolation, insularity, and shortsightedness.

 The thirteen drawings shown here are the sum of my recent sabbatical from Indiana University, taken while living and practicing as an artist in a rainforest on the Southwest Coast of Vancouver Island. I initially only knew that I wanted to make drawings with things falling from the sky in relation to insularity, which is defined by Oxford as: “ignorance of or a lack of interest in culture, ideas, or peoples, outside of their own experience”. Cambridge defines insularity as: “the quality of only being interested in your own country or group and not being willing to accept different or foreign ideas”. To get the ball actually rolling for producing work though, and with a sly nod to Chicken Little, I developed a construct that stated if a composition consists of things falling from the sky, then it implies that they’ve risen at some point, to be in the position to fall.

 I ended up focusing on a variety of culturally relevant topical issues; the triptych
Timber! | Forest Fall | The Perpetual State of Flying Around in Circles specifically addresses deforestation. While I had naturally been aware of old-growth deforestation blighting the island in advance of my stay, there is no substitute for experiencing something directly. It’s this sentiment that drives my research into how humans seldom genuinely consider the long-term effects and collateral damage of an action/inaction, empathize with those affected, or collectively take steps towards rectifying an issue, unless the issue is happening on their doorstep. Whether I was negotiating narrow roads with logging trucks or passing desolate sections of clear-cut forests, I couldn’t unsee what was happening or turn a blind eye because it was occurring in front of me. How can we live off of and give to the land without depleting its resources so that the relationship is mutualistic? With cedar being one of the most harvested conifers there, the irony didn’t escape me upon returning to Indiana, to my home made of cedar and stone, that I am part of this narrative too.

 In addition to the drawing series, this exhibition includes multiple paint-poured found objects/vessels, collectively titled as The Journey is the Destination. They address the isolation inherent in the COVID-19 outbreak. In the context of a global pandemic, physically traveling anywhere was, for many, off the table. Implications went far beyond the trivial nature of not being able to take a vacation but struck a nerve on a more humanist level when fundamental forms of affection, empathy, and compassion – such as giving a loved one a hug – weren't even possible. As someone whose spouse is an immigrant, my family felt the compounded implications of being separated from our extended family and friends residing across the Atlantic each day. The conceptual aim here is to use the poured color/hue (that needs to be handled carefully as it's seemingly in a liquid state) as a metaphor for the triumph and beauty of our journey at a difficult time when many of us were physically bound to our residences, and our minds were running rampant as we strove to adapt while many passed away each day.

YICONG LI

 TENDRIL

Threads intertwine like memories, weaving together the seen and the unseen, the personal and the collective. Tendril explores the organic expansion of thought, emotion, and transformation – how the subconscious unfurls like fiber, reaching outward while anchoring within.

 Rooted in the meditative act of fiber techniques, my soft sculptures serve as extensions of the body, vessels for introspection, and sites of quiet metamorphosis. Inspired by Nuo Opera’s ritualistic transformation, these forms become masks, veils, and protective skins – barriers and bridges between self and world. As strands knot, loop, and expand, they mirror the way human experiences interlace, forming intricate networks of memory, trauma, and healing.

 Like the creeping tendrils of a vine, growth is both delicate and persistent – an entanglement of past and present, subconscious and conscious, individual and collective. These same threads echo patterns found in nature, from the branching veins of leaves to the flowing tentacles of deep-sea creatures. My forms borrow from the organic language of the natural world – coral polyps, mycelial networks, and the soft undulations of aquatic life – blurring the linds between the human body and the living ecosystems that shape us.

 Tendril is a space for connection, an unfolding of fibers that bind us not only to ourselves and to each other, but also to the vast, interwoven rhythms of nature.