Eye to Eye: new work in clay, wood, photography, and video
Jim Schatz and Peter Souza Jr., 2026
On view November 13 – December 13, 2026
Opening reception Friday, November 13, 4–7 PM
Eye to Eye: new work in clay, wood, photography, and video
Jim Schatz and Peter Souza Jr., 2026
About the Exhibition
Eye to Eye is about looking: connection, surveillance, self-reflection, and what we make of what we see. It is what we do to stay relevant to each other and to ourselves — finding our place in the world, in the reality in front of us and in the one now presented to us as artificial. It is about being watched and watching back. And it is about sexuality, hidden and expressed, as memory, reflection, seduction, and being seduced.
The mural is the eyes of the artist and the lover. Eye to Eye Mural is more than 2,000 glazed ceramic tiles in eight colors, hung as two panels: Jim’s eye on the left, Peter’s on the right. Jim opened the door to the Ramrod and Peter was standing there. Eye to eye, the connection was sealed, and Jim chased him around the bar until they were eye to eye for life. From across the room each panel reads as a photograph. Walk toward it and it comes apart into glaze, color, and grid.
Eye to Eye Mies and Eye to Eye Gardner put that eye in the world the artists live in. Mies is the view from their apartment: the towers Mies van der Rohe designed in their backyard in Detroit, at dusk, an eye in every window, surveilling the city. Gardner is the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, where people look in at the work and at who else is looking, and photograph each other in front of a Sargent — here replaced by the eye — in the rooms of a famous robbery whose empty frames still hang on the wall. Each is printed at 28 by 42 inches.
Hole In The Wall Tribute Part 1 is twelve gay male artists — Andy Warhol, David Hockney, Derek Jarman, James Baldwin, Jasper Johns, Jean Cocteau, Jean Genet, Keith Haring, Pedro Almodóvar, Robert Rauschenberg, Sylvester, Wolfgang Tillmans — each one eye in sepia photographic transfer on a white stoneware disc, framed by the hole in the wall that gay men used in the back rooms and video booths of another era as part of their expression. A tribute that is both sexual and sincere, hung as a group.
Diva Eyes: Dolly, Donna, and Madonna is a tribute to the divas who drive us to dance: three pairs of white glazed domes, one eye on each dome in photographic transfer, their soulful eyes mirroring the songs we grew up with and danced to together, as a tribe of gay men and women.
Anything Else? is about being monitored and watched, and about being scared and excited by AI at the same time — the freedom and the terror of what it might do. Six screens set deep in mirrored, platinum-coated ceramic tubes on wood.
On each, in white type, real questions strangers typed to a chatbot — sorted into six buckets, one to a panel: the body and the self on the picture, asking the world on the running, addressing the machine on the vacuuming, study on the laughing, work and money on the dishes, and everything else on the dancing. Then the flip: a man alone in his apartment, cleaning, dancing, reflecting, looking at the things he adores in real life.
The promise is that the machine takes the drudgery so we are free to live. So here is the life. It is vacuuming. It is the dishes. It is running to clear the mind, dancing for meditation and joy, laughing at nothing. The freedom is arbitrary and the activities are not a reward — they were already there.
Eyes On You is about being watched all the time, and about what that awareness is and what you do with it. Nine videos of Jim’s eye, each inside one of his fired ceramic spheres, hold what he sees each day: the drive to work through Detroit, the mantras he repeats to keep moving forward, the headlines of doom and desire promoted by AI. The eyes stare straight ahead until someone enters, then turn together and follow. Step closer and you hear a headline or a mantra, or catch a glimpse of what you just sped past on your way through life.
Most of what is in this room is looking at you. Look back.
Stoneware, Glaze, Photographic Transfer, Photograph, Wood, Video
Text in Anything Else?: unedited user prompts from WildChat (Zhao, Ren, Hessel, Cardie, Choi & Deng), a consented, de-identified corpus of ChatGPT conversations. Licensed ODC-BY.
The Third Exhibition at Take Me Home
Eye to Eye is the third exhibition at Take Me Home, the gallery and design space founded by Jim Schatz and Peter Souza Jr. at the Cadillac Arts Centre in Detroit’s Little Village. It follows Radical Presence, which took the body as its subject, and Surface, which took the material. This one takes the look that passes between a work and the person in front of it, and has the work look back.
It is the first exhibition at Take Me Home to include video, shown alongside glazed tile, photographic transfer on stoneware, and two large photographs. Everything here was built and finished by hand in Detroit.
Eye to Eye opens Friday, November 13, 4–7 PM. The artists will be present. The gallery is open Saturday and Sunday, 12–6, and by appointment, through December 13.
Press Contact and Release
Jim Schatz at hello@detroittakemehome.com or 313-454-1777
Eye to Eye, photos by Jim Schatz.Eyes On You, video by Jim Schatz.About the Artists
Jim Schatz founded J Schatz Studio in 2004. The studio creates modern ceramics, lighting, vessels, and sculptural works, combining refined craftsmanship with bold experimentation to produce work that is tactile, luminous, and deeply human. In 2026, Schatz and Peter Souza Jr. — a partner in the studio — opened Take Me Home, their gallery and design space at the Cadillac Arts Centre and the public-facing extension of their studio practice.
By Jim Schatz and Peter Souza Jr.
One work in two panels. More than 2,000 glazed ceramic tiles in eight colors, hung side by side: Jim’s eye on the left, Peter’s on the right. From across the room each panel reads as a photograph. Walk toward it and it comes apart into glaze, color, and grid.
Jim opened the door to the Ramrod and Peter was standing there. Eye to eye, the connection was sealed. The mural is the eyes of the artist and the lover, built and finished by hand in Detroit.
Questions? Terms & Conditions