This exhibition explores the art of surrender through the work of John Cage and Ilona Golovina, two artists who embrace unpredictability as a guiding principle. 

Best known for his radical composition 4’33”, Cage used chance operations to relinquish control over his music and visual art alike. Later in his career he began to make prints at Crown Point Press. Cage merged traditional techniques with unconventional materials and methods—branding paper with hot metal, using foam in place of plates, even setting fires in the press bed. In the end, he really didn’t care about the product. He just wanted to see what would happen. Cage once remarked that some people “think I use chance as a way of giving up making choices. But my choices consist in choosing what questions to ask.”

Ilona Golovina, originally from Stavropol, Russia, is a Brooklyn-based ceramic artist known for her fearless approach to form, texture, and material. Self-taught in ceramics, she draws on traditional vessel shapes while pushing their limits through experimental surfaces and gravity-defying structures. Golovina often incorporates found materials—such as broken glass and metal salvaged from city streets—creating works that are both visually arresting and environmentally conscious.

Like Cage tracing stones without imposing order, Golovina allows clay, fire, and gravity to shape her sculptures. For both artists, unpredictability is not a flaw but a method—a means of letting the material, the moment, and chance itself become the true collaborators.