Alt Projects presents Yi Gao & Pilar Wiley: Spring and All, opening on Sunday, April 19, 2026. Curated by Sean Arenas and hosted by emerging neighborhood platform Alt Projects in Arcadia, Calif., this exhibition pairs paintings by Yi Gao with ceramic sculptures and vessels by Pilar Wiley.

Named after a poem by William Carlos Williams in which life slowly reemerges after a harsh winter, the exhibition reflects the artists’ shared interest in exploring states of transformation and becoming.

Gao primarily paints on rice paper, whose delicate, absorbent nature allows for the slow accumulation of color. Her large-scale, dreamlike landscapes and grids function as interior perceptual spaces in which structure and dissolution remain in active negotiation. Boundaries soften and reconfigure as the image develops. Her brushstrokes vary in opacity and pressure, creating a sense that shapes gradually surface rather than being imposed upon the paper.

Wiley’s ceramic sculptures similarly embrace instability and metamorphosis. Evolving from nearly two decades of work as a potter, her bulbous and biomorphic forms precariously balance on spider-like legs or erupt into tendrils. Her textured and glaze-spattered vessels are handbuilt through coiling and enriched with materials such as raw quartz, decomposed granite, and, most recently, paper pulp.

Together, the two Los Angeles-based artists evoke a natural world in flux: structures dissolve, forms mutate, and new configurations gradually emerge.

Yi Gao (b. Nanjing, China) is a Los Angeles–based artist. She received her MFA in Painting and Drawing from the University of California, Los Angeles, and her BA from Otis College of Art and Design. Gao’s work has been exhibited at The Mistake Room, New Wight Gallery, LADIES’ ROOM, and Reena Spaulings Fine Art in Los Angeles, as well as Connoisseur Art Gallery in Hong Kong. She held a solo exhibition at LAN Art Gallery in Shenzhen. Gao is the recipient of the Martha Alf Foundation Grant, the Helen Frankenthaler Scholarship, and the Edna and Yu-Shan Han Award.

Pilar Wiley (b. Tacoma, Washington) makes ceramics in Los Angeles. Her work has been exhibited with Sotheby’s in New York, Los Angeles, Aspen, East Hampton, and Palm Beach. Solo exhibitions include A Push Can Make Falling at Alto Beta, Los Angeles, and Whitesnake at Orthodox, Los Angeles. Her pieces have been featured in group shows in Los Angeles, New York, and internationally, as well as at art fairs including NADA, Miami, and Paramount Ranch, Los Angeles. She has been a resident artist at the Wexner Center for the Arts at The Ohio State University and the Expressive Computation Lab at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Her work has appeared in Dwell, Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Wallpaper*, W, Harper’s Bazaar, and M le Magazine du Monde.