Steven Zevitas Gallery is pleased to present SCENE, an exhibition of new paintings by Chicago-based artist Assata Mason. Through luminous, larger-than-life figures, Mason explores the complexities of personhood: the desire for independence amid social expectations, the uneasy balance between ambition and fear of failure, and the search for meaning in the face of uncertainty and mortality. Throughout the exhibition, these tensions open onto the possibility of transformation and renewal.

Mason’s figures command attention while rewarding close inspection. Broad washes of pigment pool and seep into the canvas, while thicker passages of paint gather in the shadows. Bodies stand, crouch, fall, and emerge, their physical presence offset by the fluidity of the surfaces they inhabit.

In Complex, a monumental female figure towers over the courtyard of an apartment complex. Strings extend from marionette controls at her fingertips to smaller figures below. Through their poses and props, these puppets embody the expectations associated with adulthood: partnership, child-rearing, financial stability, and domestic life. The central figure remains connected to these prescribed roles, yet she also directs their movement. Stepping forward, her gaze fixed ahead, she asserts the possibility of shaping a life on her own terms.

SCENE also features I. C. A. RUSE, Diana, Sapience, Inhumation, and the Flesh & Stone series. Across these works, Mason gives private anxieties a visible form, exploring how personal desires become entangled with the expectations of others. Through her figures, she considers how a person might shape a life amid the pressures that shape them. Painting becomes a means of confronting what might otherwise lead to paralysis, allowing fear and uncertainty to be examined. To speak and make oneself visible is to open the possibility of change. Hope emerges through the difficult, persistent act of moving forward.