Dunes

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

SHED Projects Presents Dunes by Jon Gott
A One-Night-Only occupation of the Historic Brooklyn Centre Firehouse
Curated by Gabrielle Banzhaf

CLEVELAND, OH — SHED Projects presents Dunes, a one-night-only presentation of new work by artist Jon Gott, opening Thursday, May 14, 2026, from 5–9 PM at the historic Brooklyn Centre Firehouse, adjacent to SHED Projects.

Curated by Gabrielle Banzhaf, Dunes is both a presentation and an invitation—a gesture toward proximity and time that brings interlocking systems within an empty structure into relation, including those already present and those introduced, reorienting ideas of home, city, and belonging. With the firehouse currently listed for sale, the project stages what the artist describes as “a poetic hijacking of a real estate showing.”

As the artist notes: “Dunes are dynamic geological features: stable ones can be mapped for years, while others function as kinetic systems, rapidly altering their morphology overnight. They have in common with orchids this formation by wind.”

Within the vacant building, Gott introduces live tropical orchids—organisms that spread, attach, and take hold without permission, carried by wind, environment, and human hands. With their ability to root in crevices and sustain themselves through unseen fungal relationships, the orchids operate as both material and metaphor. Their presence registers a condition of dislocation: held within the space, yet fundamentally out of place. Suspended between survival and displacement, they exist in a state of protected exposure. The architecture offers refuge but not belonging.

Dunes explores exposure across multiple registers: the opening of the building’s interior, the presence of living forms within it, and the ways their interactions become legible—or not. The firehouse is treated not as a backdrop, but as a body we are invited to pass through, its layered biological and architectural systems encountered in varying states of legibility and mystery. These systems do not resolve into a single reading; they press against one another, at times aligning, at times remaining indifferent.

Here, flowers operate as both seduction and signal—drawing people in as live bait while quietly complicating relationships between nature, architecture, and desire.

Extending outward from SHED Projects, Dunes continues an ongoing inquiry into how domestic space can expand, seep, and reframe its surroundings—testing the boundaries between private and public, interior and exterior, built and organic.

Concurrent open hours will be held at SHED Projects during the event.

Opening Reception:
Thursday evening

May 14, 2026 from 5 - 9 PM

Location
Brooklyn Centre Firehouse | 3723 Pearl Rd, Cleveland, OH 44109

Parking
Lot located on Willowdale Ave., directly behind SHED Projects

Public Transit
Buses 51 & 53 stop at Pearl & Broadview
Bus 71 stops at Pearl & Denison

Admission
Free and open to the public