ANDREW RAFACZ is thrilled to announce Sophia Heymans, Xiaohan Jiang, Ann Toebbe, an exhibition of new and recent paintings from the three artists, in Galleries One & Two. The exhibition opens Thursday, September 17th and continues through Saturday, October 31st, 2026. The gallery will host artist-led tours of the exhibition with Xiaohan Jiang and Ann Toebbe on Saturday, September 19th and Sophia Heymans on Saturday, October 31st.

Sophia Heymans, Xiaohan Jiang, Ann Toebbe surveys the work of three contemporary painters who are connected by their dedication to world-building, through unique approaches to composition and a focus on material. Each has a practice centered on the occupation of place, and the way it is captured and explored in the painting’s frame.

Sophia Heymans’ paintings explore the relationship between the land and its human occupants, illuminating the personal, meaningful, and mystical relationship we have with the landscapes that we inhabit. Incorporating both natural and disparate elements such as prairie grass seeds, mop strings, moss, and molding paste, their subtly sculptural surfaces are built up to create a visceral sense of immersion. Her interstitial figures exist in two worlds at once, conjuring simultaneous feelings of connection and solitude, while also often occupying the liminal space between seasons.

Xiaohan Jiang reconstructs landscapes shaped by her memories and experiences with migration. Rooted in her childhood in rural northern China, Jiang depicts dry fields, low hills, shifting light, and distant horizons, allowing familiar and unfamiliar terrains to overlap between recollection and invention. Poetry informs the associative structure of her images, while the horizontal picture plane brings fragments of different places and moments into a shared space. Working in oil on jute, velvet, grass fabric and wood, she builds her layered surfaces in which forms emerge, disappear, and return.

Ann Toebbe creates intimate domestic interiors through a diaristic approach to detail. Incorporating freehand painting, flat geometry, geometric abstraction, and intricate patterning, her multimedia works often include objects collaged on the surface, cut from paper that she paints in her studio. Drawn from both personal memory and cumulative research, Toebbe’s paintings explore themes of family and class, speaking to our relationships with the places where we live and how they shift and become more complex over time.

The gallery will release a bifold publication on occasion of the exhibition, with interviews from each participating artist, in conjunction with Chicago Exhibition Week, September 14-20, 2026.

SOPHIA HEYMANS (American, b. 1989) lives and works between Saint Joseph, MN and New York, NY. She received her BFA from the Rhode Island School of Design in 2012. Recent solo and group exhibitions include The Valley (Taos, NM), Shrine (New York, NY), Visions West Contemporary (Livingston, MT), Monya Rowe (New York, NY), Meyer Reigger (Berlin, Germany), Martha’s Contemporary (Austin, TX), 1969 (New York, NY), Nino Mier (Los Angeles, CA), Fortnight Institute (New York, NY), and the Berkshire Botanical Garden (Stockbridge, MA). She has participated in art fairs in New York, Dallas, and Austin. Heymans is represented by The Valley (Sante Fe, NM).

XIAOHAN JIANG (Chinese, b. 1998) lives and works in Chicago, IL. She received her BFA in 2022 and an MFA in Painting and Drawing in 2025, both from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Recent solo and group exhibitions include Août Gallery (Beirut, Lebanon), Nguyen Wahed Gallery (New York, NY), Bonian Space (Beijing, China), Riverside Arts Center (Chicago, IL), Patient Info (Chicago, IL), Unveil Gallery (Irvine, CA), Washington Studio School Gallery (Washington, DC), Art Clvb (Detroit, MI), and 4C Gallery (Los Angeles, CA).

ANN TOEBBE (American, b. 1974) lives and works in Chicago, IL. She received her BFA from the Cleveland Institute of Art in 1997, and her MFA in painting from Yale University in 2004. She also completed a DAAD Scholarship at the Universität der Kunst, Berlin in 2004-05. Recent solo and group exhibitions include Sikkema Malloy Jenkins (New York, NY), Nicelle Beauchene Gallery (New York, NY), Steven Zevitas Gallery (Boston, MA), Tibor de Nagy (New York, NY), Wasserman Projects (Detroit, MI), Fleisher Ollman (Philadelphia, PA), Corbett vs. Dempsey (Chicago, IL), and Allouche Benias Gallery (Athens, GR). Institutional exhibitions include Hyde Park Art Center (Chicago, IL), Sarah Lawrence College (Bronxville, NY), Nassau County Museum of Art (Roslyn Harbor, NY), The Arts Club of Chicago (Chicago, IL), Institut Valencià d’Art Modern (Valencia, Spain) Fralin Museum of Art (Charlottesville, VA) and the Museum of Contemporary Art (Chicago, IL). She has participated in art fairs in New York, Chicago, and Miami. Toebbe is represented by Nicelle Beauchene Gallery (New York, NY) and Steven Zevitas (Boston, MA).