Strange Familiarities: Three Women Artists at Surrealism's Edge | January 16 - 30, 2027

Strange Familiarities gathers three women artists whose work each begins with something known – the self, nature, or society, and adds layers of curiosity, forcing us to take a second look. Ana Monteiro, Sara Gallagher and Toni Hamel, each invite you to lean in, and what rewards that closeness is rarely what you expected. Warmth gives way to curiosity, or humor sharpens into critique.

Ana Monteiro turns the self-portrait into something luminous and untethered, an image of identity that drifts and dissolves while remaining entirely present. Toni Hamel paints engaging narrative scenes that look simple at first while revealing themselves as pointed commentary on the structures we live within, delivered with wit rather than volume. Sara Gallagher builds emotion through personhood and the natural landscape, letting feeling take the shape of the inevitability of change, growth, and healing.

None of these women would be comfortably filed under a single artistic movement, and this exhibition does not try to. Surrealism is a current they may move through, not a label they carry. What links them is a shared instinct: to make the ordinary slightly strange, and the strange filled with tenderness.

The pieces here are intimate, though they hold magnitudes. They are patient, observant, and a little mischievous. Each asks you to linger at the threshold of what you think you know, then step through. Strange Familiarities invites you to look closely, and to note what looks back.

Established in 2013, CK Contemporary represents the very best in contemporary American and European artists working across a broad range of styles and media. While realism and representational art has long been the focus of the gallery, we continue to showcase artists whose distinct points of view set them apart within genres as far ranging as abstraction to still-life. In addition to our international roster of contemporary artists, the gallery has developed a number of historic artist estates, primarily of mid-century American painters. Located in San Francisco's historic Union Square, the gallery is committed to new and experienced collectors who desire a skillful steward in the acquisition of paintings, drawings, and sculptures that are both timeless and unique.

Images:

Ana Monteiro, Some Hidden Soul Beneath, Oil on linen, 23.75 x 18.25 inches

Sara Gallagher, The Glorious, Irreversible Truth, PanPastel and graphite on paper, 40 x 40 inches

Toni Hamel, Der Blaue Reiter II, Oil on canvas, 36 x 36 inches