July-Aug 2026
Historic Lobby
Reception: Friday August 14, 4-8pm
Artist Talk 6pm
Exhibition Description:
EXTRAS explores how imagery shapes and erases identity. Utilizing a diverse array of painting and drawing mediums, Hanson plays with different modes of depicting the figure; from recognizable portraiture to reducing the body to shapes on a board. With her subjects in various stages of anonymization, Hanson questions the role art plays in forming both the viewer’s sense of self-identity and their ideas of other people.
By employing a mix of found imagery, original compositions, and art-historical master copies, Hanson brings together anachronistic mediums and images to depict the contemporary destruction of the American monoculture. She comments upon and exposes the global flattening of time: with the Internet, all of human history is accessible at once, and her work reveals the impact this overwhelming access has on her visual language. Through a cinema-inspired lens of aesthetics, she explores themes of alienation, contradiction, repetition, and obsession. These themes are particularly exemplified by the unstable and strange relationships her painted figures have with each other.
Hanson’s attention to materials brings an additional conceptual dimension to EXTRAS—beyond questioning the imagery depicted, viewers are invited to consider what materials were used for each piece and why they matter. With her challenging, cryptic, and darkly humorous works, Hanson depicts a world where human connection is fraught with disturbance and identity itself is volatile.
About the Artist:
MacKenna Hanson
MacKenna Hanson is an artist from the United States. She was born in Florida and raised in North Carolina and Georgia, spending a brief period of her childhood living in Sweden. She graduated from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC) with her Bachelor of Fine Arts in 2025, where she made the Dean’s List, worked as a Teaching Assistant, and earned entry into the School’s Advanced Painting Program. While in school, she showed with 310 Art in Asheville, NC, and had a featured profile in Rapid River Magazine Arts & Culture.
After participating in SAIC’s 2025 Spring Undergraduate Exhibition, she held her first solo show, State of Emergency, at Formato Fine Arts in Wytheville, VA. Since then, she has won a Career Development Grant from the Central Minnesota Arts Board (CMAB) and publicly demonstrated how to make traditional paint materials at Last Word Tattoo. She also won the 2026 Individual Artist Award from CMAB and had a solo feature in the St. Cloud Times in 2025. She has worked as a lecturer for the Young Authors/Young Artists conference hosted by the College of Saint Benedict and served on the CMAB’s panel for Student Art Scholarships. She showed work with Avon Hills Folk School (AHFS) in their 2025 Winter Pop-Up in St. Joseph, and taught a drawing class with AHFS. She has been invited to show at the MacRostie Art Center’s 34th Annual Juried Exhibition later this summer.
EXTRAS is Hanson’s first solo show in the state of Minnesota.
Portfolio – https://www.mackennahanson.com/
Social – @korova.art
Location: Historic Lobby
HOURS*
Mon – Sat 10AM – 2PM
*Also open 1 hour before most performances.
Always Free to Attend. Always Inspiring!