Stretch
Misc
Shad Mode
ILY2 Portland
September 20 - December 20, 2025
925 NW Flanders St, Portland, OR 97209
info@ily2online.com
Press
Sasha Fishman '24 Fixates on Fish in Solo Exhibition at ILY2 Gallery
ILY2 is proud to announce Shad Mode, an exhibition of recent work by New York-based artist and researcher Sasha Fishman. The show is a continuation of her interest in biomaterials, toxicology, and energy harvesting as points for critical analysis and mechanisms for sculpting. Driven by a fascination bordering on fixation with fish as both subject and object, Fishman’s practice prods the relationship between fish, their ecosystem, and their caretakers, asking the question: How do humans direct the evolution of a species, and how does a species exist beyond itself?
Fishman has been an ILY2 Artist in Residence for the summer of 2025, with the exhibition Shad Mode as the current culmination of her working research in the Northwest region. Shad Mode will be on view at ILY2 from September 20 through December 20, 2025, with an Opening Reception on Saturday, September 20 from 5:00 to 7:00 PM
Often described as “living fossils,” lamprey and sturgeon exist in a liminal space as markers of the past in an ever-changing present. Fishman reflects on this temporal ambiguity by making the gallery a site of collapse, merging media and mediums to present the tenuous lineage of these species with modern mechanisms of control, and experiments in preserving them after death.
Born out of three months of research in the Pacific Northwest, immersing herself in the varying practices of the Army Corps-run Bonneville Lock and Dam, and the tribal run hatcheries of the Yakama Nation, Fishman uses the complicated history of lamprey and sturgeon de-population, restoration, and education as a point of entrance.
Sculptural components mimic the architectural vernacular of information guides, replacing dated educational language with the tautly stretched skin of sturgeon, a tongue-in-cheek nod at how ecological information is presented in soft, digestible ways that create distance between human and animal. Encircling the exhibition is a fish cannon, a modern method of transporting species over the dams that have altered their million-year-old movements. Ceramic wall works mirror the skeletal structure of sturgeon (or, in the case of lamprey, allude to their lack of one), while aluminum prints documenting Fishman’s research are future relics of our present ecological knowledge.
Shad Mode teases at the ephemeral nature of systems—those natural, and those fabricated. Underlying is an exploration of the indulgent desire to manipulate them, and the paradoxical necessity and futility of doing so in an inherently entropic world.
Sand cast aluminum, ceramic, glass, solder, copper, stainless steel hardware, inkjet photographs of visits to Bonneville Hatchery, Bonneville Lock and Dam, Yakama Nation Fisheries
81 ½ x 89 ¾ x 82 inches
Ceramic, slough sand, copper, ceramic pressed sturgeon scute, UV print on aluminum, epoxy clay
12 ½ x 10 ½ x 2 ¾ inches
By Whoosh Innovations, Seattle, Washington
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Ceramic, glaze, egg yolk tanned rockfish skin, fish glue, UV print on aluminum, epoxy clay, slough sand
16 ¼ x 16 ¼ x 4 inches
Cleared and stained beta fish from lab, glycerin, vial, wood, shellac, aluminum, stepper motors, arduino, UV print on aluminum of weeki wachee mermaids
44 x 35 x 9 ½ inches
Cleared and stained beta fish from lab, glycerin, vial, wood, shellac, aluminum, stepper motors, arduino, UV print on aluminum of weeki wachee mermaids
44 x 35 x 9 ½ inches
Cleared and stained beta fish from lab, glycerin, vial, wood, shellac, aluminum, stepper motors, arduino, UV print on aluminum of weeki wachee mermaids
44 x 35 x 9 ½ inches
Cleared and stained beta fish from lab, glycerin, vial, wood, shellac, aluminum, stepper motors, arduino, UV print on aluminum of weeki wachee mermaids
44 x 35 x 9 ½ inches
Ceramic with slough sand and glaze, egg yolk tanned sturgeon skin, waxed cord
19 x 11 ¾ x 5 ½ inches
Ceramic with slough sand and glaze, egg yolk tanned sturgeon skin, waxed cord
16 x 13 ¾ x 7 inches
Ceramic with slough sand and glaze, egg yolk tanned sturgeon skin, waxed cord
24 x 18 x 6 inches
Ceramic with slough sand and glaze, egg yolk tanned sturgeon skin, waxed cord
15 x 16 x 5 ¾ inches
Ceramic with slough sand and glaze, egg yolk tanned sturgeon skin, waxed cord
15 x 9 x 5.5 inches
Ceramic with slough sand and glaze, egg yolk tanned sturgeon skin, waxed cord
17 ½ x 15 x 5 ¼ inches
Egg yolk tanned sturgeon skin, waxed cord, sand cast aluminum
9.5 x 7.5 x 3 inches
Ceramic with slough sand and glaze, egg yolk tanned sturgeon skin, waxed cord
16 ¾ x 9 ½ x 5 inches
2025
Hexagonal glass block, tubing, river water, lake water, unknown freshwater algae, UV print on aluminum, bubbler, minerals, lamprey teeth, slough sand
7 3/4 x 7 3/4 x 4 1/2 inches
2025
Hexagonal glass block, tubing, river water, lake water, unknown freshwater algae, UV print on aluminum, bubbler, minerals, lamprey teeth
7 3/4 x 7 3/4 x 4 1/2 inches
Acknowledgments this work could not have been possible without the tremendous support of ILY2 and the following:
Murphy Welch
David Boeckelheide
Zoe Hays
Topher Sinkinson
Adam Kostiv
Allison Fonder
Hana Rucker
Freddi Wyss
Tanner
Trisha Fischer
Whooshh Innovations
Martie Kilmer + Steven Romero
Miranda Jesse Garcia Karson
Ralph Lampman
Dave’y Lumley
Jake Macdonald
John Morgan
Dan Green
Bonneville Lock and Dam
Bonneville Hatchery
Yakama Nation Fisheries
Sasha Fishman © 2025