Shifting Ego Awarded Best in Show at Wausau Museum of Contemporary Art

I’m honored to share that my painting Shifting Ego has been awarded Best in Show at the 10^th Annual National Juried Exhibition held at the Wausau Museum of Contemporary Art.

This recognition is particularly meaningful to me because Shifting Ego is part of my ongoing Fragmented Echoes series, which explores identity, memory, and perception through my painted mosaic technique. Thousands of individually painted squares of color come together to form a recognizable figure from a distance, while closer viewing breaks the image apart into fragments of color, creating a tension between recognition and uncertainty.

The work reflects my interest in the way our sense of identity is continually constructed and reconstructed through memory, experience, and perception. In Shifting Ego, the figure becomes both present and elusive, suggesting that the self we recognize may itself be fragmented and constantly changing.

I’m deeply grateful to juror Philip Salamone for selecting the work for this honor, and to the staff at the Wausau Museum of Contemporary Art for their thoughtful presentation of the exhibition and their generosity toward the participating artists. It was a pleasure to meet members of the museum team and spend time with the exhibition in person.

This award follows several important milestones for my work this year, including Best in Show for Multiplicity of Self at the Gilpin Arts 79th Annual Juried Art Show and the selection of Gotham for the 78th Midwestern Biennial at the Rockford Art Museum.

I’m grateful for the opportunity to have my work seen in these museum and juried exhibition settings, and I’m excited to see where this continuing body of work leads next.

First Place at Acrylic International Biennial

I am pleased to announce that my painting Warrior Archetype: Guerrera has been awarded First Place in the 2026 Acrylic International Biennial Juried Exhibition at the Kenosha Public Museum in Kenosha, Wisconsin.

The exhibition features contemporary paintings created primarily in acrylic and was juried by Dan Simoneau, AWS, ISAP, NWS, SDWS, an award-winning acrylic and watercolor painter with more than four decades of experience working in the medium.

Simoneau's recognition of Guerrera is especially meaningful to me because of his extensive involvement with acrylic painting and his leadership within the International Society of Acrylic Painters.

Guerrera is part of my ongoing exploration of identity, perception, fragmentation, and the ways individual elements can come together to create a larger image. The painting was created using my painted mosaic process, in which thousands of individually painted squares form the finished image. From a distance, the figure comes into focus. Up close, the image breaks apart into color, pattern, and individual fragments.

The Acrylic International Biennial is on view at the Kenosha Public Museum from August 15 through November 8, 2026.

I am grateful to the Kenosha Public Museum, juror Dan Simoneau, and everyone involved in organizing the exhibition for this recognition.

Acrylic International Biennial
Kenosha Public Museum, Kenosha, WI 
August 15 – November 8, 2026
First Place Award

Recent Recognition

Multiplicity of Self has been awarded Best in Show at the 79th Annual Gilpin Arts Juried Exhibition in Central City, Colorado.

Selected from a competitive field of artists, the work continues Roy Cacek's exploration of perception, memory, and the fragmented nature of identity through a distinctive mosaic-based visual language. This recognition follows the inclusion of Architectures of Memory: Gotham in the Rockford Midwestern Biennial and reflects growing institutional interest in Cacek's psychologically driven contemporary painting practice.

Studio Visit Magazine vol. 54

I am pleased to announce that several of my mosaic paintings have been accepted for publication in Volume 54 of Studio Visit Magazine, a nationally distributed publication featuring the work of contemporary artists from across the United States.

The selected works continue my ongoing exploration of identity, memory, psychological fragmentation, and the layered nature of human perception. Through mosaic construction, portraiture, and symbolic imagery, these paintings investigate how personal and collective experiences shape the evolving self.

It is an honor to have this work included alongside so many accomplished contemporary artists and to share these pieces with a broader audience of curators, collectors, and arts professionals.

Studio Visit Magazine is published by Open Studios Press and is widely circulated to galleries, curators, and art institutions throughout the country.

More updates and publication images will be shared soon.

Cacek's Work Selected for Midwestern Biennial

Architectures of Memory: Gotham by Roy Cacek has been selected for inclusion in the 78^th Midwestern Biennial, a juried exhibition highlighting significant contemporary artists working across the Midwest. The exhibition will be on view May 22 through September 27, 2026 at the Rockford Art Museum.

Cacek’s painting is one of 98 pieces chosen by juror Laurie Hogin from a competitive pool of submissions, recognizing the strength of his ongoing exploration of perception, fragmentation, and identity. His mosaic-based paintings investigate how images — and by extension, the self — are constructed through the accumulation of discrete visual elements over time.

Through a grid of hand-painted units, Cacek destabilizes the immediacy of representation, requiring the viewer’s active participation to resolve the image. Images emerge gradually, never fully fixed, reflecting a psychological and perceptual tension between coherence and disintegration.

An opening reception will be held on Friday, May 22, 2026.