No One Remembers Alone: A Material Study

March 5th - April 13th, 2026

Opening Reception: First Thursday, March 5, 5-8PM
Second Reception: First Thursday, April 2, 5-8PM
Gallery Hours: By Appointment on Saturdays, 12-3PM

Specialist presents No One Remembers Alone: A Material Study, new works by Darrell McKinney Jr. 

Far from being a verbatim record of the past, memory is fallible and best understood as a reconstructive process replete with inaccuracies. An authentic rock is an exploration into memory and material with stone and concrete as conduit presented as a collection of composite rocks. Concrete and stone are both found in abundance within the modern landscape. A stone can serve as an index for time anchored in the environment it came to be. In contrast concrete almost does the opposite. It is lacking in time imbued with a quality of a timelessness in its physical appearance. The unreliability of memory produces, often subconsciously, an idealized version of the subject. An amalgam made of every iteration of said subject one may have encountered in their lifetime. A genuine article is thought to be produced where authenticity is a state of being rather than a fixed point. The work seeks to create a tangible representation of this phenomenon with the rock as subject: a too smooth stone, an uncanny boulder, an authentic rock.

Darrell McKinney Jr. is a Tacoma-based interdisciplinary artist. His practice explores the intersections across design, art, and architecture. The work speaks to how design can be utilized to explore the complexities of politics, race, and social infrastructure through the interconnectedness of history, people, and places.

He received a Master of Design from the School of the Art institute of Chicago. His work has been featured in exhibitions at The Tacoma Art Museum and at EXPO (Chicago), then internationally at Salone Del Mobile (Milan), Spazio Rossana Orlandi, and the Venice Architecture Biennale. Most recently, he has been featured at the Tacoma Art Museum as the inaugural recipient of The Current, An Artist Award (2022). He was also the recipient of awards such as the Greg Kucera & Larry Yocom Fellowship Award (2022), A Tale of Today Emerging Artist Fellowship for the Richard H. Driehaus Museum (2019), and the Hilltop Lasting Legacy Fellowship (2020).