Gallery Exhibitions

Decrepitude

8.22.26 — 10.11.26
Matt Cobaugh Max Palmer Noelle Whitaker

LVL3 is pleased to announce Decrepitude, a three-person show featuring Matt Cobaugh (Chicago, IL), Max Palmer (Brooklyn, NY), and Noelle Whitaker (Seattle, WA). 

Decrepitude invokes the modernist ethos embodied in T.S. Eliot’s heap of broken images: to live amongst the ruins and refuse of a broken world is to create new forms, new lifeways, new worlds from its wreckage. Rather than purely imitating or recreating the world they inhabit, Cobaugh, Palmer, and Whitaker each transmute found and discarded objects into new assemblages of form and material. The spirit of their practices is a life-affirming creativity with which we can navigate an ever-changing social landscape and imagine new ways to resist domination and subjugation.

Cobaugh’s surfaces invest abstract forms with an immense intensity and weight, simultaneously recalling decay and growth. Palmer’s pairing of recovered objects with construction materials interrogates the connections between the city, the body, and the natural world. Whitaker’s works combine a vast array of materials and histories, both personal and parasocial, speaking in a patois suspended between the lived and the digital. 

The opening reception will be held on Saturday, August 22nd, 2026 from 6-9pm. The exhibition will remain on view until October 11, 2026.

Gallery hours are Sundays 1-4 pm and can also be made by appointment. Please email or call/text 312-469-0333 to reserve a time outside of gallery hours.

Installation view of Sad Meal (Whitaker, 2026), Untitled (Palmer, 2025), Hunting John (Cobaugh, 2026), and Create Mode Prophet (Whitaker, 2026).
Noelle Whitaker, Sad Meal, 2026. Image transfer, acrylic, and house paint on board. 26 x 42.5 inch.
Max Palmer, Untitled, 2025. Concrete, found metal, nails, wire, pigment. 8 x 8 x 2 inch.
Matt Cobaugh, Hunting John, 2026. Acrylic on canvas. 19 x 19 inch.
Noelle Whitaker, Create Mode Prophet, 2026. Image transfer and acrylic on ceramic. 6.5 x 4.5 inch.
Installation view of Untitled (Palmer, 2024), Distressor (Cobaugh, 2025), Telling My Children This Is Grass (Whitaker, 2026), iDeation (Whitaker, 2026), Untitled (Palmer, 2022), Element None (Cobaugh, 2025), and Untitled (Palmer, 2026).
Max Palmer, Untitled, 2024. Concrete, found metal, epoxy, paint, plastic mesh. 8 x 8 x 2 inch.
Installation view of Distressor (Cobaugh, 2025) and Telling My Children This Is Grass (Whitaker, 2026).
Matt Cobaugh, Distressor, 2025. Acrylic on canvas. 27 x 38 inch.
Noelle Whitaker, Telling My Children This Is Grass, 2026. Street cleaning bristle, air dry clay, ruby in sterling silver setting, dirt. 10.5 x 7.5 x 7.5 inch.
Max Palmer, Untitled, 2022. Concrete, found metal, pigment. 8 x 8 x 2 inch.
Matt Cobaugh, Element None, 2025. Acrylic on canvas. 36 x 36 inch.
Max Palmer, Untitled, 2026. Concrete, found metal, nails, pigment. 12 x 12 x 3 inch.
Installation view
Noelle Whitaker, Housewarming (for hank), 2026. Image transfer, plaster, and acrylic on drywall in artist’s frame. 10 x 10 inch.
Max Palmer, untitled, 2022. Concrete, found metal, pigment. 17 x 11 x 2 inch.
Matt Cobaugh. Kuklinski, 2018. Acrylic, graphite, oil stick, and concrete on board. 19 x 21 inch.
Installation view of Kuklinski (Cobaugh, 2026) and Heaven Realm/Human Realm (Whitaker, 2026).
Noelle Whitaker, Human Realm/Heaven Realm, 2025. Image transfer on canvas, speaker. 53 x 33 inch.
Installation view of iDeation (Whitaker, 2026, foreground), Heaven Realm/Human Realm (Whitaker, 2026, background), Built Like This (Whitaker, 2026, background), shrapnel (Whitaker, 2026, background), Atrophy Order (Cobaugh, 2026), and Wait, come back (Whitaker, 2026).
Installation view
Noelle Whitaker, Built Like This, 2026. Image transfer on salvaged bricks. 2.25 x 2.5 x 3 inch, 3 x 5 x 3 inch.
Noelle Whitaker, shrapnel, 2026. Image transfer on canvas inside holderbat, steel shells, acrylic medium, paint. 4.25 x 2.5 x 1 inch.
Installation view of Atrophy Order (Cobaugh, 2026), Wait, come back (Whitaker, 2026), and Holy Earth (Cobaugh, 2026).
Matt Cobaugh, Atrophy Order, 2026. Acrylic, sawdust, dirt on masonite. 24 x 26 inch.
Noelle Whitaker, Wait, come back, 2026. Image transfer and charcoal on brick. 5 x 5 inch.
Matt Cobaugh, Holy Earth, 2026. House paint, sawdust, gravel, rock salt on masonite. 24 x 27 inch.
Max Palmer, Untitled, 2026. Concrete, found metal, chain, epoxy, pigment. 10.5 x 8 x 4 inch.
Installation view
Installation view