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CURRENT
Soft Logic: Systems, Process, and Repetition
Curated by April Behnke
Opening: October 10, 3 – 5 pm
Sheboygan, WI – Soft Logic brings together four Midwestern artists who work through self-imposed systems, repeating and assembling simple forms to produce multifaceted abstractions. Each develops frameworks, whether through coding, reuse, ritual, or systematic layering, in which the hand is present and its fallibility is embraced. Feature artists are Rajee Aryal (IL), Antonia Gurkovska (IL), Melanie Pankau (MN), and Cole Pierce (IL). Soft Logic is curated by April Behnke.
Join us for our opening reception for Soft Logic on October 10, 3-5 pm, at Artdose Projects located at 1310 Wisconsin Avenue, 1st Floor, Sheboygan, WI 53081. Soft Logic runs from October 10 to November 21, 2026.
In Soft Logic, formal repetition is neither rigid nor fixed. Rather, it operates as a flexible framework through which memory, perception, ritual, and material transformation unfold. What emerges is not perfect order, but a record of thinking, making, and revising, an old and fundamental practice seen through a contemporary lens.
About the artists
Rajee Aryal
Rajee Aryal builds her work through custom-coded systems informed by her background in computer science. Using grids generated from images of discarded objects in meaningful locations, she layers and reworks these structures to examine memory, erasure, complicity, and shifting perception.
Originally from Kathmandu Nepal, Rajee Aryal is a Chicago-based interdisciplinary artist working across painting, drawing, textiles, and digital processes. Using custom-coded computer-generated grids derived from images of garbage in personally significant places, she creates layered works that transform and nearly erase their source imagery through labor-intensive patterning. Interested in textile traditions, computer programming, weave structures, shapes, symbols and systems of representation, her work explores memory, degradation, complicity, erasure, and shifting perception. Aryal received her MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and has exhibited nationally and internationally.
Antonia Gurkovska
In her Closed Circuit series, Antonia Gurkovska uses painting and collage to recycle fragments of previous works. Each composition reassembles painted remnants into new structures. Repetition and reuse emphasize circulation over completion, keeping abstraction in a state of continual unfolding.
Antonia Gurkovska is a contemporary artist whose works are characterized by paint collage, layered texture, puncturing of the pictorial plane, and deliberate repetition, often structured within centripetal grid systems that function simultaneously as language, architecture, and metaphor for order and disruption. Frequently conceived as installations, her paintings convey both monumental and intimate encounters with space. Gurkovska received an MFA in Painting from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and a BFA from the National Academy of Art in Sofia. She is a recipient of the George and Anne Siegel Fellowship, a Fulbright Scholarship, and an Erasmus Student Exchange Grant, and has exhibited widely in Europe and the United States. While from Sofia, Bulgaria, she currently lives and works in Chicago, Illinois.
Melanie Pankau
Melanie Pankau follows a disciplined system of daily meditation combined with automatic drawings to generate paintings. Her iterative process produces geometric forms and diagrammatic structures that guide each piece, while allowing the work to develop naturally over time. She balances structure and openness within her non-hierarchical compositions.
Melanie Pankau’s paintings are guided by her daily meditation practice followed by a process of automatic drawing where geometric forms and diagrammatic structures unfold. For over a decade she has studied various meditation traditions and techniques and integrates this parallel practice into her paintings. Pankau received her BFA from the Minneapolis College of Art and Design in 1999, her MFA from the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee in 2011, and studied at the Bauhaus Universtät in Weimar, Germany. Her work has been shown in regional and national exhibitions at venues including: Minnesota Museum of American Art, St. Paul, MN; Thomas Barry Fine Arts, Minneapolis, MN; South Bend Regional Museum of Art, South Bend, IN; Boston Center for the Arts, Boston, MA; Catherine G. Murphy Gallery, St. Catherine University, St. Paul, MN; TuckUnder Pavilion, Minneapolis, MN; McCormick Gallery, Chicago, IL and art fairs Art Miami, FL, and EXPO Chicago, IL. She has participated in several artist residency programs including the Vermont Studio Center, the Ragdale Foundation, and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. Pankau is a recipient of a Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs Community Arts Assistance Program Grant, a Metropolitan Arts Council Next Step Grant, and grants from the Minnesota State Arts Board. Her work is represented by McCormick Gallery in Chicago. She is based in Minneapolis, MN.
Cole Pierce
315 (Sky stratum, blue streak), 2026. Acrylic on canvas, 14 x 11 in. Courtesy of the artist.
Cole Pierce investigates perception through an idiosyncratic process of layered masking to create pattern-based paintings. In his work, the complex interaction of layers forms compositions that reveal shifting perceptual relationships. Small inconsistencies and fractured edges introduce subtle instabilities that breathe life into repetition.
Cole Pierce received his MFA from Northwestern University and a BSS in Art and Sociology from Cornell College. He has recently exhibited at THE MISSION, the Evanston Art Center, Heaven Gallery, Peter Paul Luce Gallery , PArC Lima, and McHenry County College Art Gallery. He received DCASE (Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events) grants in 2016, 2017 and 2019, and was a SÍM (Association of Icelandic Visual Artists) resident in Reykjavík, Iceland. In 2016, he completed his first major public work, a 60’x11’ mural in the Rogers Park neighborhood of Chicago. He is based in Chicago, IL.
About the curator
April Behnke received her MFA in Painting and Drawing from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2011 and has completed residencies at the Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts in Omaha and the Slak Foundation in the Netherlands. The Chicago-based artist has exhibited nationally and internationally, including in Mexico City, Seoul, New York City, Berlin, Chicago, London, and Basel. Her work is included in Georgetown University’s art collection and has been featured in Chicago Gallery News, the Washington Post, Time Out Chicago, and on CBS News, among other media outlets. In addition to her art practice, Behnke is a contributing writer for Artdose Magazine. Soft Logic is her first curatorial project.
About Artdose Projects
Artdose Projects provides the perfect backdrop for experimentation, conversation, and community building—sparked by curiosity, creative risk-taking, and critical discourse.
Contact
April Behnke, curator
email: aprilbehnke@gmail.com
Frank Juárez, director
email: artdosemagazine@gmail.com
If you go:
Soft Logic: Systems, Process, and Repetition at Artdose Projects
1310 Wisconsin Avenue, 1st Floor, Sheboygan, WI 53081
October 10 – November 21, 2026
Reception: October 10, 3-5 pm
Open by appointment only.
Off-street parking available
PAST
Let’s Face It: Drawings by Pete Moran
July 11 – August 15, 2026
Summer Open Studios at 1310
Door County Contemporary
April Behnke, Frank Juárez, Linda Marcus, & Rachel Hausmann Schall
June 4-7, 2026
Parallel Logic
Rachel Hausmann Schall x Sara Willadsen
December 6, 2025 – January 18, 2026
Artdose Projects is open by appointment only
To schedule an appointment to view the exhibition, submit the contact form below.