untitled, unknown
1948 Division St., 2nd Floor
Detroit
Feb. 7-Mar. 28, 2026
Abstract art is some of my favorite because it makes me feel everything and nothing all at once.
An upcoming exhibition titled untitled, unknown by local multifacets Mat Larimer and Sandi Bache takes that feeling to a new level. Featuring over 200 collaborative pieces installed in a massive white space, the show feels almost meditative, like stepping out of time for a moment.
The pair of artists have been working on the pieces for this show since August, sort of by accident. What started as Larimer placing small blue dots on postal stickers around Hamtramck turned into something unexpected. One day, Bache spotted one of the blue dots in the wild, now layered with graffiti. She took a photo of it and sent it to Larimer, telling him it looked really cool. The next time she was at his apartment, they decided to mark on more of them together and see what would happen.
That moment turned into months of passing work back and forth, each artist responding to what the other had left behind.
“To me it felt like a conversation that was going back and forth between us,” Bache says. “I would receive these paintings with all these marks, and I feel like my paint would just start talking to the paint on the page already. And it just felt like a really long ongoing conversation to me, which is really fun.”
She adds that she had never collaborated on visual art this way before, especially not with the freedom to hand something off and let the other person do anything they wanted with it. Larimer connects the process to how he makes music with other people. You need something to start with, he says. Without that, the possibilities are so infinite that nothing happens.
The work grew through response, back and forth, one mark leading to another — ultimately growing into something that feels like a reflection on “transformation as a shared, often unknowable process.”
Stylistically, the two artists come from different but overlapping places. Bache, who is an owner of metro Detroit coffee shop chain Red Hook, says her creative work leans toward abstract expressionism. Larimer’s approach is more minimal and process-based, with an interest in repetition, systems, and how multiple works connect to each other in a broader search for meaning. Alongside his visual work, he is also a music producer, audio engineer, and sound designer, often merging his work across disciplines.
Over time, the artists’ approaches begin to blur.
The pieces themselves use a wide range of materials, including pastels, cyanotype, acrylic paint, pencil, graphite, and crayons. Somewhere along the way, Larimer also began making his own ink from beets, rust, turmeric, and coffee. It is one of the quieter details of the show, something you might miss if you are not looking closely, but it adds another layer to the sense of experimentation.
For a long time, there was no intention other than making the pieces for fun.
After a while, there was enough for a show, and the vision didn’t fully come to life until the pair started setting up in the space, which helped guide the layout of the exhibition.
“I feel like, in a very positive way, this feels like what I would imagine a version of purgatory to be,” Larimer says. “You come from downstairs, where there’s lots of businesses and people, and then you come up here, and it’s very quiet. It’s very different.”
Seeing all of the work together made the relationships between the pieces clearer. Now grouped into loose collections, the marks begin to speak to each other across the room too.
Most of the works are white with soft splashes of color, which made the few pieces that resist blending into the whole stand out to me even more. A row of darker, dreamier works were some of my favorites. These contrasting pieces felt almost nocturnal, like a starry night tucked into the gallery.
Another odd one out sat low in a bottom corner of the room: a display of near-perfect squares. While still abstract, with marks pushing beyond the edges of the shapes, this piece introduced a sense of order in the chaos.
Both of these instances made the title untitled, unknown click for me in a deeper way, and I love that it leaves room for viewers to interpret not only the work, but the reasoning behind the title itself. This theme feels central to the show.
“The thing I like about abstract art and ambient music is that it’s not prescriptive,” Larimer says. “It doesn’t say ‘this is the meaning.’ It puts ownership on the viewer to engage with it and find their own meaning.”
“I feel like prescribing a title to something, you’re automatically telling someone how to think about that piece,” Bache adds. “I would rather people just look at it and summarize it themselves.”
The exhibition risks visual sameness at times, and to some, its abstraction may be too much to process or know what to make of. To me, its power lies in the moments that interrupt it. Those deviations anchor the experience, giving the viewer something to return to as they move through the room.
untitled, unknown is less about individual works and more about what happens not just within the collection of pieces, but between creatives who work together to make something beautiful yet uncertain, not only for themselves, but for others.
An opening reception for the show will be held on Feb. 7 from 12-5 p.m. Gallery hours after that will be Fridays from 1-5 p.m., Saturdays from 9 a.m.-4 p.m., and Sundays from 12-4 p.m.
This article was published in conjunction with the Detroit Metro Times.
