Wednesday, December 05, 2012
CHRIS CUELLAR and BRENDAN MEARA @ ACRE Projects
Tuesday, October 16, 2012
Pilsen Open Studios
Extending from Western Ave. to Halsted (16th St. to 24th St.), the event will largely feature the work of artists residing in the Pilsen area, as well as other local, national and international artists invited to exhibit at select galleries. Last year, over 4,000 people descended onto Pilsen to enjoy a celebration of art, culture and community. This yea
There are special events to commemorate the 10th edition. They include:
• A book that includes past and current participants, a history of the Pilsen Art Movement, press over the years and special contributions by key artists and individuals from the neighborhood.
• A student showcase of art from youth at Pilsen-based CPS schools in the lobby of the Center for Performing Arts at Benito Juarez Community Academy (1450 W. Cermak Road) on Thursday, October 18 from 4-6pm.
• A Pilsen Open Studios group show reception, which will kick off the entire weekend, at Prospectus Gallery (1210 W. 18th St), called “Made in Pilsen VII” on Friday, October 19 from 5pm to 10pm, that will feature a performance by the Chicago Sinfonetta.
The weekend will carry a special theme: The Fabric of Pilsen"
Pilsen Open Studios will take place Saturday, October 20 from 12 noon to 8pm, and Sunday, October 21 from 12 noon to 6pm. Over 75 artists are expected to participate. Colibri Studio/Gallery (2032 W. 18th Street) will be the central location for maps, tours and information of the event, as well as the boarding and departing point for guided tours to a selected group of studios as well as mural tours guided by Jose Guerrero and Roberto Ferreyra, seasoned community artists.
For maps and more information, visit http://
Friday, August 31, 2012
Form is secondary to function: new works by Odie Rynell Cash
found polaroid and greeting card; 2010
detail of work from installation
8in x 4.5 in
Opening Friday September 7 from 6pm-10pm
September 7- October 6, 2012
In formalist criticism, the criterion for progress remains in one direction: the treatment of the whole surface as a single undifferentiated field of interest. The goal of the site specific installation Form is Secondary to Function is to explore abstract and absurd(ist) relationships and the discontinuities of foreground and background of the kind we employ through class and creative expression.
Antena
1755 S. Laflin, St.
Chicago, IL 60608
antenapilsen (at) gmail.com
Hours: by appointment
(773) 340-3516
Beer donated by Indio Beer.
Friday, June 29, 2012
Texploitation: Art, Guns, Girls, and BBQ

“Texploitation: Art, Guns, Girls, and BBQ”
Artists: Cirkit of Mythos: Steve Cruz, Omar Hernandez, Eddy Rawlinson,
Ryder Richards
Opening Friday July 27 from 6pm-10pm
July 27- August 25, 2012
Dallas artist group examines Texas clichés and big egos at Antena, Chicago.
“We can’t help it. Living in Texas makes us better than you. Just look at the art. We deal with real issues, like chicks, engines, guns, and sex. None of this political pantywaist, hand wringing, and whining about ourselves or crying about the earth or any of that hippy shit. We make work about real stuff. Like how men jump in head-first, breaking shit and fucking anything, and how lame it is that people get all caught up in power when all you need is a warm hole to holster your gun in and some wind in your hair.”
Or not…
Exposing the dialectic of hypocrisy entrenched in stereotype, the Dallas based art group Cirkit of Mythos presents “Texploitation: Art, Guns, Girls and BBQ,” an examination of cliché as the ambiguous prophet of truth. Focused on personal mythology as environmentally determined, the Texas artists take on the icons of the West and modern masculinity as politically charged and contentious while heralding a warning of extremity and romanticized notions of power. Held at Antena in Chicago on July 27- Aug 24 , 2012 the exhibit will feature a series of small paintings and drawings proving that not everything is bigger in Texas, ya’ll. Please join us for the reception on Friday, July 27 from 6-9 PM.
Cirkit of Mythos (est. 2008) formed as a collaborative exercise to increase dialogue between Dallas based artists. “Texploitation” developed from conversations about importing culture as an exotic penchant for the locals. Embracing our inescapable origins, Cirkit of Mythos revels in the Texas commonplace as highly undervalued and over scrutinized. Shrinking our work size to accommodate tourism style gifts, we display our works as the quaint other embalmed in political incorrectness and rebellious turmoil.
With a cast of rotating members this exhibition features works from four artists: Steve Cruz (Director of MFA Gallery, Dallas), Omar Hernandez (Professor at El Centro College), Eddy Rawlinson (Dean of Arts and Sciences at El Centro College) and Ryder Richards (Gallery Director at Richland College). Cruz’s paintings present a series of characters humorously struggling with sin and the consequences of spiritual and sexual stagnation. As a moral corollary, Hernandez offers a series of constructed pieces featuring retro-pop imagery reanalyzed in light of current global and community values. Rawlinson’s vivid paintings of cultural icons re-examines the plight of outlaw and outcast as the sacrificial hero necessary for the continuation of spirit amidst a civilized bureaucracy. Concerned with the subliminal influences embedded within Western culture, Richards gunpowder drawings examine the romance of violence.
Antena
1755 S. Laflin, St.
Chicago, IL 60608
antenapilsen (at) gmail.com
Hours: by appointment
(773) 340-3516
Monday, June 25, 2012
7/1: CHROMA PHOBIA // new works by TONY BALKO & BENJAMIN FUNKE
Custom Software and Video Projector.
Exploits one of the ways computers can represent color to dubious effect, asking if you can ‘name that hue.’
More information about Benjamin Funke can be found at www.benjaminfunke.com.
Monday, June 11, 2012
6/17: MAY OR MAY NOT // new works by LEE DELEGARD & ALLISON WADE
details of may or may not, 2012, mixed media, dimensions variable
6/15: A LONG TIME COMING // works by COLE ROBERTSON, ELINA MALKIN, ELISA “POOPER” HARKINS, MARVIN ASTORGA and VIRGINIA ABERLE
ELISA “POOPER” HARKINS, MARVIN ASTORGA and VIRGINIA ABERLEJUNE 15 – JULY 8
Opening Reception: Friday, June 15, 7-11pm Open Hours: Friday, Saturday + Sundays, 2-6pm
ELISA “POOPER” HARKINS is a Native American composer and artist originally hailing from Miami, Oklahoma. In 2010 she had a life-threatening bike accident, and during her recovery she was mostly bed-ridden and turned to electronic music as a creative outlet. Her music, animation, paintings and paper mache sculptures investigate Native American stories, rituals, and spirituality through a the lens of someone raised on pop culture and computer games. She has shown her work at the MCA Chicago, Andrew Rafacz Gallery, Club Nutz, ACRE Projects, Secret Project Robot Room, Design Miami, and Locust Projects Miami. She is currently bailing out NYC. Pooper wants to be your friend. BFF ’til the very end.
MARVIN ASTORGA is a Chicago-based artist originally from El Paso, TX, and part of the band/collective Xina Xurner. His work embraces the pathetic, worthless, absurd, and abject, and uses the language of failure and futility to cast a critical eye on the value systems in place in contemporary art practices and discourses on identity. His interdisciplinary practice uses futility as a starting point for creative reinvention of the artist’s identity. Marvin received his BFA from Yale University in 2004.
Monday, June 04, 2012
6/10: CONSTRUCTING PLACE // new works by KRISTEN NECESSARY
Monday, May 28, 2012
6/2: ARTIFACTS FROM THE BASEMENT OF THE CHURCH OF CONTEMPORARY ART new works by ANGELA WATTERS
Wednesday, May 23, 2012
Fundraiser for Cobalt Studio
What to expect:
- Art, Music, Drinks & tons of fun
- Support us by getting raffle tickets to win original artwork by talented Chicago artists / Raffle tickets: $2 or (3/$5)
- Have a blast making your own collage work. Materials will be provided but you are welcome to bring your own
Monday, May 21, 2012
5/27: PACKING HEAT // new works by TIFFANY FUNK
5/27: FAITH MADE // new works by ADAM FARCUS + ALLISON TRUMBO + MICHAEL A. MORRIS
Faith Made examines the balancing act that takes place between the rational and emotive faculties, between the desire for the consolation that belief provides and the need to question accepted narratives. As William James observed in his lecture on “The Reality of the Unseen”, “our impulsive belief is here always what sets up the original body of truth, and our articulately verbalized philosophy is but its showy translation into formulas. The unreasoned and immediate assurance is the deep thing in us; the reasoned argument is but a surface exhibition. Instinct leads, intelligence does but follow.”
Though the three artists in Faith Made begin from a place of personal narrative, the resulting work is evidence of a variety of different approaches that attend to notions of family, faith, sentimentality, and the esoteric. The works presented here originate from a place of hope as much as from one of cynicism.
Adam Farcus’ Penny Hex creates a spiritual seal on viewers which grants them the luck of hundreds of lucky pennies, while Entry challenges the mystical power that we give to such objects and rituals. It’s Just Meant To Be, a film installation by Michael Morris, presents an incantatory collection of platitudes that fail to provide solace at the loss of a loved one. In other works such as Blue Movie and Wheel and Axle Machine, Morris addresses the technologies that preserve some part of a person: their body, their voice, or their gaze. Allison Trumbo’s video installation, which includes both Visualization Exercises That Work Like Magic and Creating Abundance in 10 Minutes Flat, parallel personal and media induced visions of romance and spirituality with the crudeness of superficiality perpetuated by pop culture.
ALLISON TRUMBO is a violin teacher and co-director of a music school on the north side of Chicago. Her work is often prompted by her experience as a nurturing motivator accompanied by the childlike fantasies that are often required to inspire her classes.
ADAM FARCUS is a Chicago (soon to be Baltimore) based artist, writer, and teacher. Through subjects such as death, joy, poetry, identity, and belief, his work elevates the banal to unexpected heights while simultaneously placing the magical in an accessible, even common, realm.
MICHAEL A. MORRIS is an artist and educator based in Dallas, Texas. His works in film, video, installation, and performance draw on personal narratives and experience to explore the implications of recording technologies for belief, interpretation, and perception.
Monday, May 14, 2012
HOW THINGS STAND
Friday, May 11, 2012
Amelia Winger-Bearskin
video presentation
Friday, June 1, 2012 @ 7pm
FREE ADMISSION
Amelia Winger-Bearskin is currently an Assistant Professor of Studio Art and Cinema Studies at Vanderbilt University in the area of Time Based Media Arts and Performance, in Nashville, Tn. She was classically trained as an Opera Singer in Rochester NY at the Eastman conservatory of music, and then finished her Undergraduate degree at George Mason University in 2000. While at GMU she studied sculpture and time based art and received her BAIS in Performance Art. She went on to do her MFA in Transmedia (time based art) at University of Texas at Austin in 2008. She was in the group show Art in the Age of the Internet at the Chelsea Art Museum in 2007 and was a featured video and performance artist at Basel in Miami, Scope at the Lincoln Center and other art fairs consistently since 2007 as an artist at large for the perpetual art machine [PAM]. She has been focusing her performances primarily on Asian performance festivals this year as she finds that regionally Asia has created a unique method of support for Performance Art, she has performed at the 10th Annual OPEN ART Performance Art festival in Beijing, China, The Performance Art Network PANAsia '09 in Seoul, South Korea, the TAMA TUPADA 2010 Media and Performance festival in the Philippines. She recently spent a month in Sao Paulo Brazil where she performed as the first American performance artist to be invited to the Verbo Performance Art Festival and was part of an international scholar exchange sponsored by University of Sao Paulo and Vanderbilt University VIO and Art Department. Spring /Summer 2012 she will have a sound/video/multimedia installation throughtout the Nashville International Airport and will be in Tasmania, Australia to do an artist in residence at the University of Tasmania.
Chicago, IL 60608
antenapilsen (at) gmail.com
Hours: by appointment
(773) 340-3516
The Road to Candyland: NICK BLACK

The Road to Candyland: NICK BLACK
May 18- June 9, 2012
I've roamed the thrift stores, discount dollar stores, and alleys of Chicago and burbs in vain search of the fallen icons from the glorious golden age of consumption now come to a shattering end. These new sculptures will hold no bars in slamming together every cheep, cheesy, sexist, office male humor, misogynistic, homophobic, racist cliché in the book in a personal attempt to come to terms with a guilt ridden past, towards the neurotic reality of a failed future. As usual, I'll be laying on the satirical self-depreciating humor thick and heavy.
Hope you can make it." -Nick Black
Antena
1765 S. Laflin, St.
Chicago, IL 60608
antenapilsen (at) gmail.com
Hours: by appointment
(773) 340-3516
Monday, April 30, 2012
5/6: COOKBOOK SHUFFLE @ ACRE PROJECTS
A party to celebrate the release of
Sunday, May 6, 1-5pm
1913 W 17th Street

Monday, April 16, 2012
It ain't over....

Civil disobedience. Maybe it doesn’t always stay so civil. Maybe we’re not so civic minded.
There is no way for me to play Switzerland in this one—this is me taking one for the team. This is illuminating the comings and goings in my bed. This is a power f**k. These gestures are direct and directed at me. This is the wrong people speaking out, having their say. This is singing like a canary at the top of your lungs. This is sidestepping the dirty laundry; this is just dirty. Laughing in your face. Going for blood. Putting your cards out on the table.
The works of Barbara DeGenevieve, Brent Garbowski, and Joe Mault challenge the rules; up end structures. But not every challenge is militant. You may change the way you think about that other person’s body, the things that come in or go out of your mouth, or your relationship to power. But you might just sit a while and laugh.
The exhibition continues through May 26.
To make an appointment call 773/645-8803.
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