PLATO

CURRENT EXHIBITION

Cindy Bernhard

Broken Vessels

June 4 – July 11, 2026

PLATO is honored to present Broken Vessels, a solo exhibition by Chicago-based artist Cindy Bernhard, featuring a new body of paintings that explores spiritual rupture, transcendence and the relationship between the human body and the divine. It will be on view in the gallery’s ground-floor space from June 4 through July 11.

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At the center of the exhibition is the metaphor of the vessel: the body as a container for spirit and belief. Drawing from archetypal associations between gold and divinity, Christian mysticism and contemporary existential anxiety, Bernhard’s monumental six-foot paintings depict fractured golden forms that stand in for humanity itself — wounded, imperfect, yet still capable of transformation.

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The exhibition emerged after what the artist describes as a profound spiritual awakening, an experience connected to the concept of the ‘Dark Night of the Soul,’ articulated by the 16th-century Spanish poet and theologian St. John of the Cross. During a period of emotional hardship, Bernhard underwent an intense feeling of joy and “unity with the cosmos.” “I was flooded with images of these gold vessels reminiscent of the body,” Bernhard explains. “Seven paintings representing the seven deadly sins, and one that stands for this feeling of wholeness.” The eighth painting, reminiscent of an overexposed photograph and devoid of the colorful exuberance that defines the others, was inspired by the Shroud of Turin, which many believe to be the burial cloth of Jesus.