Swan House Artist Talk

From the venue:

They Will Not Complete It In Their Lifetimes

Exhibition Dates: February 20 - March 20
Opening Reception: Thursday, February 20, 6 - 9 PM

Artist Talk: Saturday, March 15, 3PM

The Swan Coach House Gallery is pleased to present They Will Not Complete It In Their Lifetimes, a group exhibition featuring ceramics, sculptures, and paintings by Atlanta-based artists Emily Llamazales, Aaron Kagan Putt, and Ben Steele. The Swan Coach House Gallery’s Artistic Director, Jacob O’Kelley, curates the exhibition.

They Will Not Complete It In Their Lifetimes unites the practices of Emily Llamazales, Aaron Kagan Putt, and Ben Steele, three artists whose works transform materials and forms into speculative environments and aspirations. Collectively, they are interested in hybrid forms, imperfection, and the layering of time, creating spaces where objects and ideas become artifacts of fact and fiction. 

Emily Llamazales, a thousand stars against the bow —into dark oil lakes

Emily Llamazales’s ceramic and metal sculptures evoke terrain and microscopic organisms through layering found objects with personal significance and experimenting with shape, material, and texture. Through this process, Llamazales’s hybrid forms create a vocabulary of overlapping elements interpreted as archaeological remnants of an evolving world.

Aaron Kagan Putt’s playful and process-driven approach to his work merges architectural structures with experimental materiality. Putt captures moments that oscillate between legibility and abstraction. The artworks operate as apertures by densely arranging imagery and objects, opening pathways for interpretation and grounding abstraction in intimate, hopeful gestures.

Ben Steele’s practice roots itself in the theoretical exploration of worldbuilding and the search for knowledge. Constructed models and historical, painterly landscapes evoke the tension between human-made structures and nature. Steele’s work draws from futurism and cinematography, embodying themes of creation and ruin, embracing the inevitability of time’s impact. 

Llamazales, Putt, and Steelereflect on the human desire to create. The works in the exhibition suggest that fragments, imperfections, and unfulfilled attempts hold as much meaning as finished forms, offering space where time, memory, and potential converge. They Will Not Complete It In Their Lifetimes presents a collective vision of resilience and optimism, inviting viewers to consider the beauty and possibility inherent in what remains unfinished.

Aaron Kagan Putt, Support Structure 5