The Darkness

The Darkness

OCTOBER 6th – DECEMBER 12th, 2025

The Darkness is an exhibition of recent works by Wake Forest University studio art faculty Rudy Shepherd and Molly Kaderka. This two-person exhibition brings together drawing, painting, sculpture, and performance, offering a dialogue between the artists individual artistic practices.

The exhibition also marks the grand reopening of Hanes Art Gallery following a summer of renovations.

In The Darkness, Molly Kaderka and Rudy Shepherd present two distinct yet resonant approaches to making sense of the world around us.

Kaderka’s large-scale paintings and installations reimagine the language of landscape by collapsing ground and sky into circular compositions. Drawing on geology and astronomy, her immersive works invite viewers to reflect on awe, mystery, and our place within vast natural systems.Her recent works include monumental fabric installations created with the centuries-old technique of Ebru marbling, in which she hand-marbles sheets of paper and fabric to evoke geological strata, cellular textures, and cosmic phenomena. By integrating drawing and collage with this endangered craft, Kaderka creates surfaces that feel simultaneously terrestrial and celestial, bodily and cosmic. Her practice reconsiders landscape not as distant scenery but as an immediate, enveloping field that repositions the viewer within the continuum of earth and sky.

Shepherd’s contribution centers on 46 new watercolor drawings based on media images focused on events that have taken place over from the past three years. This series also includes portraits of world leaders, perpetrators and victims of crime, and tributes to artists like Faith Ringgold and Sly Stone. These works are presented alongside his sculptural Black Rock Negative Energy Absorbers and ceramic works entitled Healing Devices, which symbolize healing and transformation and are activated through performance.

Together, their works explore darkness as both a place of disorientation and of renewal, offering opportunities for reflection, connection, and healing.

This exhibition engages viewers in profound explorations of the world around us, from global events and cultural memory to the cosmic and ecological, offering moments of reflection, connection, and transformation.

Please join us for the Opening Reception for this exhibition and Grand Reopening Celebration for Hanes Art Gallery on October 16, from 5-8 pm. The evening will feature a special live performance by artist Rudy Shepherd titled The Induction Ceremony. More information here.