For EXPO Chicago 2025, ILY2 is thrilled to announce a presentation of work by Morgan Buck, Melanie Flood, Timothy Yanick Hunter and Amanda Ross-Ho. Working across painting, sculpture, installation and photography, the artists employ disparate means to explore the nuanced relationship between image culture, memory and personhood.

A large-scale installation by Amanda Ross-Ho titled “Untitled Prop Archive (THE PORTFOLIO)” culls inspiration from the photo archive of her father, Ruyell Ho, who immigrated to California from Shanghai in 1955. The sculpture is composed of dozens of distinct objects from this archive, placed systematically on an enlarged replica of the wooden table from Ross-Ho’s childhood home. Hovering above the table is a water-damaged portrait of Ruyell, enlarged to life scale and presented in an austere yet seductive lightbox. This striking reproduction reveals the limitations and failures of photographic portraiture to adequately capture the essence of time. Yet, we also witness its powerfully alluring capacity to generate desire and a sense of near magical connection across generations.

Morgan Buck aggregates and alters found images culled from the virtual firehose of some of the weirder corners of the internet, pop cyberculture and social media to produce his airbrushed paintings. Excavating a wide-range of source material from this digital glut, Buck’s work reflects a deep engagement with the aesthetics of glitch, simulation, and post-human presence, often toying with the thresholds of authenticity and replication.

Melanie Flood uses photography to examine femininity, aging, and societal beauty standards. Her practice incorporates elements of vernacular photography and experimental manipulation to challenge perceptions of vulnerability and power. Flood’s unflinching self-portraits and irreverent still lifes invite viewers to reconsider notions of femininity and self-care. Flood’s photography practice has long been concerned with relentless auto-documentation. At the heart of this enterprise is a probing of the mythologized “ideal” female body. Her resolute, artistic eye coyly reveals the ridiculous and unobtainable standards women are made to strive towards.

Timothy Yanick Hunter uses self-led research and methodologies of remixing and sampling to explore the experiential and aesthetic dimensions of the Black diaspora. References culled from a range of sources suggest shifting proximities, novel interactions between material and provenance. Historical photographs from museum archives meet ephemera from obscure corners of the Internet. The resulting works are living mélanges, invested in decolonial modes of making and thinking about memory, temporality, and the unknowable facets of existence.

Morgan Buck (b. 1985, Portland, Oregon) holds an MFA from Oregon College of Art and Craft and a BFA from Pacific Northwest College of Art. He was awarded a 2023 Golden Spot Residency by Portland Institute of Contemporary Art and the Pilotenkueche Residency in Leipzig, Germany in 2017. Buck as had solo exhibitions at False Front (Portland), Upfor Gallery (Portland), Kunstraum Ping Pong (Leipzig), White Gallery (Portland), and Private Places (Portland), and has been included in group exhibitions at ILY2 (Portland), Museum of Museums (Seattle), Hoffman Gallery (Portland), Pilotenkueche (Leipzig), Salon Similde (Leipzig), 511 Gallery (Portland), and Blackfish Gallery (Portland). He will debut his first New York solo-exhibition in late 2025. Buck lives and works in Portland, OR.

Melanie Flood (b. Queens, NY) has had recent solo and two-person shows at ILY2, Portland, OR; Ruschwoman, Chicago, IL; Fourteen30 Contemporary, Portland, OR; and Ditch Projects, Springfield, OR. In 2024, her work was included in a comprehensive exhibition of contemporary photography at the Schneider Museum of Art, Ashland, OR. Flood’s work and projects have been featured in Art in America, The New York Times, and New York Magazine, among others. She is the recipient of numerous grants and awards, such as the Regional Arts and Cultural Council Grant, Precipice Fund Award, Oregon Arts Commission Artist Fellowship, and two Ford Family Foundation Visual Arts Exhibition Grants. Her work is included in the permanent collection of the Portland Art Museum, Portland, OR where she lives and works.

Timothy Yanick Hunter (b. 1990, Toronto, ON) is an artist and curator. He received his BA from the University of Toronto and has been an Artist in Residence at the Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto; The Museum of Contemporary Art Toronto; and Black Rock Senegal, Dakar. Yanick Hunter was included in the 2022 Toronto Biennial of Art, What Water Knows, The Land Remembers, curated by Candice Hopkins, Katie Lawson, and Tairone Bastien. He has exhibited nationally and internationally at The Museum of Contemporary Art, Toronto (2024); ILY2, Portland (2024); The Center for Art, Research and Alliances (CARA), New York (2023); Gallery Kendra Jayne Patrick, Bern, Switzerland the Center for Art (2024); Centre Clark, Montreal, CA (2023), Research and Alliances, New York (2023); Cooper Cole, Toronto (2022); Bamako Encounters – The African Biennial of Photography, Mali (2022); Gallery 44, Toronto (2021); and A Space Gallery, Toronto (2020), among others. Yanick Hunter was the recipient of the Canadian Council for the Arts’ Explore and Create, Research and Creation award (2020)and the Toronto Arts Council’s Visual Artists Grant (2021). He lives and works in Toronto, ON.

Amanda Ross-Ho (b. Chicago, IL) has presented solo exhibitions at ILY2, Portland, OR; Abroms-Engel Institute for the Visual Arts, Birmingham, AL; Mitchell-Innes & Nash, NY; Bonner Kunstverein, Bonn, DE; the Vleeshal Center for Contemporary Art, Middelburg, NL; The Approach, London; and the Museum of Contemporary Art, LA, among others. Select group shows include: Bel Ami, LA; the Museum of Modern Art, NY; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; Kunsthall Stavanger, NO; Aargauer Kunsthaus, CH; EXILE, Vienna, AT; Museum Kunstpalast, Düsseldorf, DE; Institute of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (ICALA); Henry Art Gallery, Seattle; and the Orange County Museum of Art, CA. She was also featured in the 2008 Whitney Museum of American Art, NY, and in the 33rd Ljubljana Biennial of Graphic Arts, Slovenia. Public art commissions include the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago; the Public Art Fund; Art Basel Parcours; and Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA. Ross-Ho will participate in the 2025 Made in L.A. Biennale, opening October 5 at the Hammer Museum, curated by Essence Harden and Paulina Pobocha. A major career monograph of Ross-Ho’s work, produced by the Vleeshal Center for Contemporary Art, will be published later this year. She lives and works in Los Angeles, CA.