Curated by Ellen Hackl Fagan

ODETTA Gallery founder and curator Ellen Hackl Fagan expands the concepts in Ghost Town, a liminal group exhibition opening February 11, 2026, at the LIC-A Art Space in Long Island City. This meditation on abandoned, vacant, or deserted places and objects evokes profound feelings of desolation, melancholy, and nostalgia. Part homage to overlooked remnants of the past and part cautionary tale about transience and neglect, the artworks invite viewers to reflect on familiar signs, surfaces, and locations encountered during travels and in everyday life.

The pieces transform the ordinary into a rich tapestry of personal and collective memory, expanding the endless scroll of possible narratives hidden within the mundane.

“The attraction I personally have to these works is about a deep wistfulness for the remnants of the ghosts of the past—captured in the cruddy, faded colors, peeling paint, and shattered glass,” says Fagan. “I have a long-standing fascination with the Moderne Design of the 1930s through the 1960s, evident in both the architecture and the bold lettering on these old storefronts and signs, which once signaled velocity, ambition, and effortless style. What’s left behind is both sad and undeniably beautiful. Jonathan Richman’s of The Modern Lovers song about a cruddy little chewing gum wrapper perfectly sums it up for me: ‘I love the faded colors like would end up at the dump, My heart goes bumpety, bumpety, bumpety bump.’ There is a frailty implied in this type of work, often tinged with a dry, understated sense of humor.”

To deepen the thematic exploration, Fagan has invited two distinguished guest artists, Patrick Sansone and Richard Klein, whose works serve as poignant anchors for the exhibition. Drawing from extensive road trips and ongoing personal research, Sansone and Klein meticulously document the emptiness and decay found in iconic roadside signs, forlorn window displays, and transient commercial enterprises. Through the precision of photography and the tactile intimacy of assemblage, they transform the poetics of abandonment into compelling visual narratives, navigating complex emotions of loss, memory, and the passage of time with wistfulness, quiet reverence, and occasional wry amusement.

Their contributions highlight the aesthetic beauty inherent in deterioration and invite participating artists and viewers to engage with the layered stories embedded in these spectral remnants of American vernacular culture. The exhibition creates a dynamic dialogue between the established visions of Sansone and Klein and the fresh interpretations submitted through the open call, fostering a nuanced and expansive meditation on Ghost Town.