Maximillian William is pleased to announce its participation in EXPO Chicago with a solo presentation of works by Jaylon Israel Hicks, marking the artist’s first presentation in Chicago.

In EXPO, Hicks interrogates the promises and pitfalls of synthetic substances - most notably expanded polystyrene (EPS), a material emblematic of modernity’s disposable culture. To Hicks, EPS becomes both a symbol of human ingenuity and a critique of its consequences: playful yet corrosive, resilient yet inherently fragile.

Untitled (File Cabinet) (2024) confronts Major League Baseball’s delayed acknowledgment of Negro League statistics as part of its official record. The cabinet form, a symbol of archival authority and institutional memory, is reimagined as a monument. Hicks critiques the bureaucratic mechanisms of exclusion and the fragility of memory within sports institutions. The sculpture honors not just the data now being added, but the generations who made history without recognition.

Matter: An inherent offering (2025) is a digitally crafted AI artwork depicting a luminous gift box formed from a field of particles. The familiar shape of a box with a bow reflects on the idea that material existence itself is a gift. It frames matter as a sacred offering, a gesture from God, in which even the smallest particles carry intention and grace. 

The heavy textures of Ex (red, black, green) (2025) are formed by layers of scorched black, deep red, and hints of green, bleeding through one another like weathered surfaces exposed to time and trauma. Hidden within the sedimented surface are two quietly potent symbols: the partial “Ex” from the FedEx logo and a doorbell from Hicks’ childhood home. “Ex” speaks to movement, capitalism, or perhaps something that has been lost—ex-communication, ex-home, ex-self. The doorbell, by contrast, is intimate and domestic, a portal to memory and origin. Together, these forms suggest a collision between public systems and private histories, between corporate circulation and still, personal moments.