FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Christo Allegra Everything* so far Pencil and paint meet computational experimentation Gallery 198 · November 7–29, 2026 · Opening reception Saturday, November 7, 7 pm 198 24th Street (between 3rd and 4th Avenues), Brooklyn, NY 11232 R to 25th St; D, N or R to 36th St Gallery 198 presents Everything* so far, a two-part solo exhibition by Brooklyn artist Christo Allegra, on view November 7–29, 2026, with an opening reception Saturday, November 7 at 7 pm. The show gathers ten years of paintings and drawings made with MARCO, Allegra's custom software for programmatic painting, then turns the gallery into an open studio, with visitors drawing and painting alongside the artist and collaborators, plus a conversation led by Giorgia Lupi. At the close, the work made together in the gallery is distributed to the people who helped make it. Bringing together a decade of work, Everything* so far offers an unusual meeting point between traditional painting and computational experimentation, inviting visitors to discover the expressive possibilities of technology whether they're drawn to creative coding or simply to the pleasures of looking at paintings. Part I — Everything* presents ten years of paintings and drawings, including Schizoplicity, a recent series of nine paintings exploring fragmentation and spatial systems. Across all the work, the pictures move between figuration, landscape and abstraction, built from photographs, film stills and art history. "There's something of Impressionism in the flickering surfaces of Christo's paintings, where flowers, landscapes, and figures emerge and dissolve in a kind of psychic free fall," says Billy Merrell, Curatorial Director of Gallery 198. "Learning to paint means learning to unsee, to become an instrument of light, a reporter of shapes rather than objects. MARCO takes this a step further, introducing another act of seeing between the artist and the world. Christo is interpreting an interpretation, improvising between machine, mind, and hand. And the paintings invite us to do something similar: to discover images for ourselves rather than simply be told what to see." Part II — So far turns the gallery into a working studio and its visitors into collaborators. Joined by artists Banyan Fierer and Julie Gitlin, Allegra invites anyone who walks in to draw, paint and try MARCO during open studio hours and demonstrations. The exhibition extends Gallery 198's commitment to artist-led experimentation and direct public participation, turning a place to encounter artwork into a space where visitors help create it. MARCO NXT, a new browser-based version of the software, is available now for desktop browsers at eschatological.services/MARCO. About the work Each composition works with a program, written in Processing and projected onto canvas or paper, and ends in pencil and paint. MARCO doesn't tell a painter how to paint; it shows where painting could happen. The software reads a source image as shifting regions of light and shadow and offers them one target at a time; Allegra answers each, steering the program from a MIDI controller, so a misstep can be folded into the picture rather than erased. The order of marks matters as much as where they land, which makes painting, in Allegra's words, "a time-based medium." Allegra's practice extends a lineage of painters who built systems that stayed open to the hand: Alma Thomas, whose mosaic dashes followed grids and color maps but moved with a loose, decisive hand; Agnes Martin, whose ruled grids hold a taut line; and on through the conceptual, instruction-based and generative artists working today. It reaches further back, too, into painting's own organizing systems, from the Gothic paratactic field to Bacon's cage, which Allegra treats not as styles to quote, but as spatial logic to inhabit. "I made MARCO because I wanted to understand how a computer could help me learn to paint," Allegra says. "MARCO says where. And my mind says 'huh,' then the hand decides how, over and over again." Public programs Painting is Movement Tuesday–Thursday, November 10–12; 12–6 pm Talk: Wednesday, November 11, 7 pm Open studio with Banyan Fierer. Painting Visualizations Sunday, November 15, 5:30 pm Giorgia Lupi leads a conversation with Christo Allegra, Julie Gitlin and Banyan Fierer. Recorded; RSVP required. Drawing Energy from Sound Tuesday–Thursday, November 17–19; 12–6 pm Talk: Thursday, November 19, 7 pm Open studio with Julie Gitlin. Closing Distribution Saturday, November 28, 1–6 pm Works made during the exhibition go home with visitors. About the artist Christo Allegra is a Brooklyn-based artist, born in rural western Pennsylvania, who approaches technology from a queer, humanist position. Allegra holds a BA in Writing Seminars from Johns Hopkins University and an MFA in Design Media Arts from UCLA, and studied at the School for Poetic Computation. MARCO has been presented at Westbeth Gallery and at the SFPC Artists Fair at Pioneer Works, and Allegra's residencies include Hospitalfield in Scotland and DesignInquiry at Fallingwater. Allegra was a visiting artist at Maine College of Art in 2021. The monograph MARCO was published by The Light of the Forest Press in 2022. About Gallery 198 Gallery 198 is a Brooklyn-based contemporary art space dedicated to the artists next door and the visionaries across the bridge. Funded by a not-for-profit family foundation, the gallery operates outside traditional commercial pressures, supporting an experimental, artist-driven program of exhibitions, performances and participatory events. Operating as both a gallery and an artist-activated event space, Gallery 198 brings audiences into direct engagement with art and the people who make it. Press contact Christo Allegra · christoallegra@gmail.com · www.christoallegra.com Instagram: @christoallegra · @gallery198_brooklyn · @giorgialupi · @j.ess.g Press images, MARCO demonstrations and private walkthroughs from November 7 are available on request. Images, video, the artist statement, a curator's note and a MARCO fact sheet are in the press kit at christoallegra.com/everythingsofar. — END —