“Have You Seen a Lost Idea?” is a collection of Luke Dohner’s works created on the Lower East Side from 1995-2024. “Lost idea” has a deep resonance because this past spring, we lost Luke to cancer.

Many will remember Luke as the lanky guy with the unmissable white curls and cheery personality who was a fixture of the Educational Alliance community since 2016. This exhibition celebrates all aspects of his life as an artist. His body of work mirrors his personality - humorous, subversive, compassionate and always curious.

Luke was a conceptual artist (B.F.A. School of the Art Institute of Chicago) whose work goes far beyond the ceramics he created in the Educational Alliance studio. This exhibition invites you to find the wonder hidden below the surface of the everyday through works crafted in ceramic, glass, paper, plastic and pixels. Often juxtaposing functional and cast-off objects with materials you could get at a dollar store, he wrote about his art, “I want to give the viewers and myself a feeling of ‘soothing agitation. To push and form my ideas and materials into a state of ‘normal wonderment’.”

Download press release