EXHIBITION: THIS MUST BE THE PLACE

Artwork, left to right : Jo Caldwell, Bronze Dog; Milly Reed Red Torso; Stephen Morris, None For You Greedy;

About

Misty Hawkins Center of Eruption;

Artwork, left to right : Honza Chobolitz; Black Petra; Stephen Morris The Universe Smiles Upon Us;

This Must Be The Place takes its title from the Talking Heads song, but its meaning is rooted firmly in lived history. The exhibition reflects on place not only as a physical site, but as a condition shaped by time, community, displacement, and renewal.

Brokers Gallery is proud to present This Must Be The Place, a group exhibition that traces the lineage of artists connected to the original Brokers Building on Market Street. Over a period spanning nearly three decades, that space functioned as a vital incubator for artistic exchange—one that ultimately came to an end with the displacement of its community. The gallery’s subsequent relocation to Bankers Hill marked not simply a move, but a transformation: a period of recalibration, growth, and renewed momentum within San Diego’s contemporary art landscape. It is here, in its current incarnation, that Brokers Gallery has fully come into its own.

The exhibition brings together abstraction and figuration, with works that oscillate between personal narrative and collective memory. A shared undercurrent of transformation runs through the presentation—physical, emotional, and symbolic—mirroring the gallery’s own evolution.

Jo Caldwell’s Mariposa invokes metamorphosis through form and gesture, referencing the butterfly as a symbol of transition and emergence. Milly Reed’s sculptural work Red Torso occupies an ambiguous space between cocoon and human figure, shifting meaning as the viewer moves around it and underscoring the instability of fixed identity. Joanne Barrows’ Fear No Art navigates the space between abstraction and language, merging written word with painterly expression to challenge fear as both subject and barrier. Stephen Morris’ None for You Greedy employs eggs as recurring motifs—symbols of sustenance, life, and tension—suggesting both abundance and withholding.

Together, these works form a loose archive of experience rather than a chronological history. This Must Be The Place is less about nostalgia than it is about arrival—acknowledging where the gallery and its artists have been, while affirming the present moment as one of clarity, confidence, and creative momentum.

Artists

Joanne Barrows

Jo Caldwell

Honza Chobolitz

Misty Hawkins

Ricardo Montalvan

Stephen Morris

Milly Reed

CONTACT: info@brokersbuilding.org

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