Exhibition walkthrough with the artist: 4-5pm prior to the reception 

The Pit is pleased to present Life on Earth, a solo exhibition of new paintings by Chase Biado, on view from September 12 through October 22, 2026. An opening reception with the artist will be held on Saturday, September 12, from 5–7 pm.

Life on Earth introduces a new chapter in Biado's practice. The fantasy realms of his previous works have morphed fully into the psychic and sensorial, with moody characters caught suspended in half-memories and almost-metaphors. 

Each painting begins with an observed moment, a remembered place, or an ordinary scene from everyday life, transforming the familiar into something quietly enigmatic. We glimpse a figure reading the morning newspaper, another reclining during therapy, a drive through smoke-filled air, an embrace with a tree, a solitary walk through an orchard, and the stillness of a beach. Rendered with Biado's characteristic sensitivity, these everyday scenes become subtly uncanny, suggesting that mystery resides not in invented worlds but within ordinary experience itself.

Through a lens of subtly desaturated hues, Biado’s paintings never relinquish ambiguity. Existing somewhere between portrait and archetype, the figures remain psychologically elusive, while landscapes are remembered rather than documented.  The artist’s atmospheric compositions are explorations of the mark of the brush. A deliberate stroke is a raindrop, a dab is a pebble, a moving car is a blur—one swipe over wet paint. Biado is not just painting the subject, he’s painting the air between things.

Life on Earth is a meditation on what it means to move through contemporary life while remaining attentive to its quieter emotional currents. News cycles, environmental change, intimacy, memory, and the natural world coexist, each becoming part of the same human experience.