Wednesday, December 05, 2012

CHRIS CUELLAR and BRENDAN MEARA @ ACRE Projects


CHRIS CUELLAR
BRENDAN MEARA
_______________

ACRE PROJECTS
DEC 16 — JAN 14
_______________
On page 40 of ARTnews issue 68.4 a contribution by editor Scott Burton titled Time On Their Hands can be found. The review covers two exhibitions mounted in May of 1969—Anti-Illusion: Procedures/Materials at Whitney Museum of American Art and Nine Young Artists at Guggenheim Museum. Burton gleans from each an equivocal air surrounding the fleeting nature of any durational encounter, prompted by a common anxiety that, “after it is completed, there is nothing left to quantify." Temporalized platforms develop a dependency upon documentation and archival practice even when centering their own dispositions toward the transient or quotidian. “Not to aspire to an impossible permanence,” Burton concludes, “is at once audacious and humble.”

On December 16, 2012, ACRE Projects presents an exhibition of works by Chris Cuellar and Brendan Meara addressing—widely—practices of archiving the everyday, the material disintegration of archival supports, and the impossibilities of representing temporality. The exhibition is curated by Pat Elifritz and will remain on view through January 14, 2013.

Chris Cuellar (artist, Los Angeles) works with writing, sound, performance, and digital media. He earned an MFA in Writing from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2010 and recently completed residencies at ACRE in Steuben, Wisconsin and Summer Forum for Inquiry and Exchange in New Harmony, Indiana. He has made work for the Austin New Music Co-op in Austin, Texas, Ground Floor at the Hyde Park Art Center in Chicago, Illinois, and Diapason Gallery in Brooklyn, New York. He has contributed writing to Art:21 and DINCA. You can find more work on his website (yoursmountain.com), find him on Instagram (@firstperson), follow him on Twitter (@yoursmt), and/or Key Party with him on Facebook.

Brendan Meara was born in 1980 in Fort Scott, Kansas. His conceptually based, itinerant practice incorporates film, photography, sculpture, and installation. Solo and two person exhibitions include Bcc: (with Frank Heath) at Roots and Culture, Chicago, University of the Americas Puebla, Mexico, and Review Incorporated, Kansas City. He received his BFA from the Kansas City Art Institute in 2004 and MFA from the University of Illinois at Chicago in 2012. He lives and works in Chicago.

Pat Elifritz is a writer and exhibition-maker living in Chicago. He holds positions at the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts and the Museum of Contemporary Photography. He curates independently and contributes exhibition reviews to Newcity Art.

ACRE (Artists’ Cooperative Residency and Exhibitions) is a volunteer-run non-profit based in Chicago devoted to employing various systems of support for emerging artists and to creating a generative community of cultural producers. ACRE investigates and institutes models designed to help artists develop, present, and discuss their practices by providing forums for idea exchange, interdisciplinary collaboration, and experimental projects. ACRE enacts its mission primarily through an annual summer residency program in rural southwestern Wisconsin. Throughout the rest of the year, ACRE offers opportunities for exhibition to each of its residents.
Image: Brendan Meara, Fiji Fuji.

ACRE Projects1913 W. 17th St.Chicago, IL 60608acreresidency.org

Tuesday, October 16, 2012

Pilsen Open Studios

The 10th annual edition of Pilsen Open Studios will take place the weekend of October 20-21, 2012 in various locations along Pilsen’s 18th Street Corridor.

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
r, over 75 artists will be showcasing their work in more than 35 studios, alternative spaces, galleries and cafes.

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://pilsenopenstudios.net/ or call (312) 545-8579.

Friday, August 31, 2012

Form is secondary to function: new works by Odie Rynell Cash




Image: We wish you every success
found polaroid and greeting card; 2010
detail of work from installation
8in x 4.5 in

Form is secondary to function: new works by Odie Rynell Cash

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

CHROMA PHOBIA
new works by TONY BALKO & BENJAMIN FUNKE
July 1-2, 2012

Opening Reception: Sunday, July 1, 4-8pm
Open Hours: Monday, July 2, noon-4pm

ACRE Projects
1913 W 17th Street, Chicago 60608
CHROMA PHOBIA
Color ain’t nothin’ but a numba… or a temperature, or a perceptual phenomenon. However you want to think about it, or whatever it means to you, put that business on hold and indulge in an evening of chromatic freak outs! Allow Ben Funke and Tony Balko to horrify/please you with some prismatic vibes, courtesy of film loops and computer programs.

 Tony Balko, Color Wheelie, 2012
Custom Software and Video Projector.

Exploits one of the ways computers can represent color to dubious effect, asking if you can ‘name that hue.’

TONY BALKO is an artist and educator from Smithton, Pennsylvania, USA. He works primarily in the moving image, dealing in crushing grooves, heavy psychedelia, and transcendental rainbows. His work has shown throughout the United States and internationally in museums, galleries and micro-cinemas including the Museum of Modern Art (New York), Milwaukee Art Museum, Institute of Contemporary Art (Boston), 21C Museum (Louisville), Jefferson Presents… (Pittsburgh), Green Lantern Gallery (Chicago), New Nothing Cinema (San Francisco), and Stereo Underground (Seoul, South Korea).

BENJAMIN FUNKE (British, b. 1980) is an image and audio producer living in the state of Indiana.  He received his B.F.A. from Columbia College, Chicago in 2005 and his M.F.A. from the University of Notre Dame in 2012.  Past exhibitions include “ISLANDS IN THE STREAM” at Johalla Projects in Chicago, IL, “Transient” at the Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington D.C., “Ethnographic Terminalia” at the Eastern Bloc for New Media, Montreal, Quebec, “Imaginary” at the Simutan Association, Timisoara, Romania and “New Prints” at the International Print Center, New York City, New York.
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

MAY OR MAY NOT
new works by LEE DELEGARD & ALLISON WADE
JUNE 17-18, 2012

Opening Reception: Sunday, June 17, 4-8pm
Open Hours: Monday, June 18, noon-4pm

ACRE Projects
1913 W 17th Street, Chicago 60608
 
 left: Lee Delegard, right: Allison Wade
details of may or may not, 2012, mixed media, dimensions variable
In MAY OR MAY NOT, everyday objects and materials—paper, ceramic, fabric, surveyors string, concrete and gum—are neither transformed nor transcended.  Rather, they are used for what they are, evoking a material logic that thwarts definitive coherence or resolution.
Both Delegard and Wade juxtapose disparate found materials with haptic sculptural elements.  Each cultivates a visual language that traffics in contingent opposites; objects are industrially handmade, precariously stable and aesthetically functional, familiar yet foreign, meticulously haphazard, and exist simultaneously as both image and object.
By exploring the blurred boundaries between spaces, materials and objects, the artists invite viewers to negotiate their own subjective position amongst these various contradictions.
Lee Delegard received her MFA from UNC Chapel Hill in May 2012 and her BA from Beloit College.  She has completed residencies at Artspace Studios in Galway, Ireland, and ACRE Projects.  Delegard grew up in Minneapolis Minnesota.
More information about Lee Delegard can be found at www.leedelegard.com
Allison Wade is an artist based in Chicago.  She received her MFA from the Fiber and Material Studies department at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago this spring and earned her BA in English literature from Stanford University. She has been awarded residencies at ACRE, Mustarinda (Finland) and the Vermont Studio Center.  Wade was born in Dallas, Texas.
More information about Allison Wade can be found at www.allisonwade.com

6/15: A LONG TIME COMING // works by COLE ROBERTSON, ELINA MALKIN, ELISA “POOPER” HARKINS, MARVIN ASTORGA and VIRGINIA ABERLE

A LONG TIME COMING works by COLE ROBERTSON, ELINA MALKIN,
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 
Heaven Gallery1550 N Milwaukee Ave Chicago 60622
A LONG TIME COMING“Alchemy. Creation. Beginning. Mastery of the four elements of fire, earth, air and water. The Magician is the Master Creator with her ability to forge a new path with seeming effortlessness. The magic of the Magician in that she uses all the tools in her possession to create what she wants and the elements bend to her will. With the universal symbol of infinity over her head the Magician’s power is endless.”
As the world theoretically draws to its oft-projected conclusion, the need for new realities presses on our collective unconsciousness. Whether these predictions are true or not, the possibility that the world will end presents the opportunity to fall in love with your world again, turn language inside out, and revel in the absurdity of experience.
A LONG TIME COMING presents an alchemical vision of hidden histories, trash culture, and synchromysticism.  This group show aims to dispense with the austere and the hyper-analytical. We are asking the hidden realms of the mind to come out and play. Create your own reality, open yourself to possibility, and embrace the unimaginable.
COLE ROBERTSON was born in sunny Arizona, and moved to frigid Chicago in 2003. He received his BFA in Photography from Arizona State University, and a Photography MFA from Columbia College Chicago, and has exhibited nationally and internationally. Working in practically every type of photographic medium, including 19th century processes, type-C, digital imaging, and video, he often attempts to seduce his viewers with beauty and humor, sometimes subtly playing with their brains (as so many seductions do). His work explores the spaces between, before/after, around, or attendant to the photographic image. Through transmutation, alteration, animation, destruction, etc., he disrupts the transaction between viewer and image, hoping to provoke analysis and hinder absorption. He currently teaches at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in the Photography and Art History, Theory, and Criticism departments.
More information on Cole Robertston can be found at www.colerobertsonphoto.com
ELINA MALKIN is a Pennsylvania based artist who creates multimedia works spanning the mediums of video, photography, collage, sculpture, performance, and installation. Her most current work examines spiritual pseudoscience, including Wilhelm Reich’s Orgone theory, Plastic Shamanism, or the inauthentic New Age appropriation of Native American and other rituals, as well as her own spiritual background, which includes practices of Judaism, Quakerism, Tibetan Buddhism, and other more occult and mystical interests encouraged by family and studied academically through the lens of ethnography. She experiments with different forms of divination as tools for personal insight, eking out gems of genuine enlightenment from illusion and abstraction. Her works hover emotionally between a sincere desire to trust in the power of these tools and a rational view of their actual effectiveness. Elina received her BFA in Industrial Design from Carnegie Mellon University in 2005, and and MFA from the University of Pennsylvania in 2011.

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.
More information about Elisa “Pooper” Harkins can be found at www.pooper.co

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.
More information about Marvin Astorga can be found at www.marvinastorga.tumblr.com
VIRGINIA ABERLE was born in Miami, Florida, and currently lives and works in Chicago, IL. Her work combines painting, sculpture, sticks and trash to make talismans, exploring object-making to fulfill desires both extraterrestrial and trivial. She received her BFA from the University of North Carolina in Asheville in 2010. She is co-director of Roxaboxen Exhibitions, a 6,000 square-foot facility in Chicago.

Monday, June 04, 2012

6/10: CONSTRUCTING PLACE // new works by KRISTEN NECESSARY

CONSTRUCTING PLACE
new works by KRISTEN NECESSARY
JUNE 10-11, 2012

Opening Reception: Sunday, June 10, 4-8pm
Open Hours: Monday, June 11, noon-4pm

ACRE Projects
1913 W 17th Street, Chicago 60608
CONSTRUCTING PLACE is a search to find the elegance, the humor, and the humanity in our constructed environments. Necessary explores the ways people structure place and how, in turn, a place can shape a people. Investigating this interdependent relationship of place and identity, with a focus on domestic space and vernacular culture, is the foundation of this exhibition and her artistic practice.

An acute awareness to the influence of place on identity developed as a direct result of Necessary's upbringing in the coalfields of Central Appalachia. This background in an area that is heavily stereotyped and otherwise constructed by the assumptions of both locals and outsiders has proven to be an influential presence. Now, as she travels in and through vernaculars, the digital camera assists in collecting the traces of an experience in a place. In the studio, photographic notes and bodily memories create compositions that catalogue, conflate, and distill images of the everyday. In this process, representation becomes re-presentation with the intent of provoking awareness to the quotidian core of life experience.

The work is constructed by combining various methods of printmaking, drawing, photography, and collage. Merging traditional fine art techniques with the language of decorative craft culture, these explorations exhibit as installation, works on paper, and artist books. 

Support for this event has been provided by the Iowa Arts Council and the National Endowment for the Arts.
KRISTEN NECESSARY can presently be found Iowa City, Iowa. Born and raised in the coalfields of southwest Virginia amidst the cultural region of Central Appalachia, this experience continues to exert a strong influence on her artistic work and conceptual awareness to the influence of place on identity. Kristen spent several years living in Richmond, Virginia where she earned a BFA from Virginia Commonwealth University. She then studied Printmaking and Drawing at The University of Iowa and was awarded an MFA in 2011. Her work is shown in national and international exhibitions and located in many collections, including the Denver Art Museum. Kristen Necessary is currently in Iowa City working with Public Space One, a progressive non-profit arts space, to establish a new open-access workspace and print shop dedicated to fostering a divergent community of makers and thinkers. 

More information about Kristen Necessary can be found at  www.kristennecessary.com

Monday, May 28, 2012

6/2: ARTIFACTS FROM THE BASEMENT OF THE CHURCH OF CONTEMPORARY ART new works by ANGELA WATTERS

ARTIFACTS FROM THE BASEMENT OF THE CHURCH OF CONTEMPORARY ART
new works by ANGELA WATTERS
JUNE 2-4, 2012

Opening Reception: Sunday, June 3, 4-8pm
Open Hours: Saturday, June 2, 1-4pm
Monday, June 4, noon-4pm

ACRE Projects
1913 W 17th Street, Chicago 60608
 
 
ARTIFACTS FROM THE BASEMENT OF THE CHURCH OF CONTEMPORARY ART
Church of Contemporary Art co-founder, Angela Watters, will be sharing the sculpture, painting, and photography from CoCA’s permanent collection for the exhibition, Artifacts from the Basement of the Church of Contemporary Art.  CoCA pairs the rituals and relics of religion with the seductive allure of contemporary art.  Our communion ceremony consists of a diet of gourmet-cubed marshmallows and Kool-Aid spiked with vodka (the body and blood of art). No matter what you identify as, “We are what you need.” On June 2nd and 3rd there will be sliding scale counseling sessions given by CoCA members in the gallery in conjunction with the exhibition and CoCA’s June 1st performance at Defibrillator Gallery for the Rapid Pulse International Performance Art Festival at 7PM. Please contact info@angelawatters.com to schedule your counseling session. 

ANGELA WATTERS is a multi-disciplinary artist and educator. She is a 2012-2013 recipient of a Terminal Award for new media for The Poor House, a participatory project about the student loan debt problem. As founding member and lead organizer of The Foster Collective she organized a collective response to the 2010 Gulf oil spill on gas station paper towels, which has been exhibited in several cities across the country. She received her BFA in Photography from New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts and her MFA from Columbia College Chicago. This summer she will be artist-in-residence at the Luminary Center for the Arts in St. Louis.
 
More information about Angela Watters can be found at www.angelawatters.com
 
 

Wednesday, May 23, 2012

Fundraiser for Cobalt Studio

COLLAGE COLLAB for COBALT 
Fundraiser

Friday, May 25th / 6-9pm
Cobalt Studio
1950 W. 21st St, Storefront
Chicago IL

Cobalt Studio needs your help to keep our doors open. We'd like to keep things Going, Growing and Evolving at Cobalt with shows and events that engage and stimulate the Pilsen community. The theme for the night will be on Collaboration & Collage works paper.

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
Artists:Contact us if you'd like to make a donation of artwork for the raffle or in any other way!cobaltartstudio@gmail.com Deadline to submit is 5/18/12

Monday, May 21, 2012

5/27: PACKING HEAT // new works by TIFFANY FUNK

PACKING HEAT
new works by TIFFANY FUNK
MAY 27-28, 2012

Opening Reception: Sunday, May 27, 4-8pm
Open Hours: Monday, May 28, noon-4pm

ACRE Projects
1913 W 17th Street, Chicago 60608



PACKING HEAT
Tiffany Funk’s work explores the fallout of the proliferation of military technology in everyday life.  So much of the technology we use provokes feelings of anxiety and dread despite appearing – or being marketed – to calm and protect us.  Funk investigates how the violence endemic to our prosthetics – the ubiquitous software and hardware that entertains, educates, preserves and protects – reifies a power structure that feeds off wartime anxiety.  This war begins at the permeable border of the body, where the ability to visualize, reconstruct, and extend ourselves is surrendered to powers that continually abstract, capitalize, and militarize.
 
TIFFANY FUNK is an artist based in Chicago.  She makes use of diverse technological mediums in order to explore how we invent, mobilize, and navigate the troubled symbiotic relationships we share with our technological tools.  She received her MFA this spring from the University of Illinois at Chicago in New Media, and is currently researching and writing her dissertation entitled The Prosthetic Aesthetic: An Art of Missing Parts.
 
More information about Tiffany Funk can be found at www.tiffanyannfunk.com

5/27: FAITH MADE // new works by ADAM FARCUS + ALLISON TRUMBO + MICHAEL A. MORRIS

FAITH MADE
new works by ADAM FARCUS, ALLISON TRUMBO & MICHAEL A. MORRIS
MAY 27 – July 8, 2012

Opening Reception: Sunday, May 27, 4-7pm

Adds Donna
4223 W Lake Street, Chicago 60624

FAITH MADE questions the surface manifestations of those things deep within us, how ritual, tradition, and objects endowed with magical properties have the power to console, motivate and mystify our lives.

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

HOW THINGS STAND
new works by JANINE BIUNNO
MAY 20-21, 2012

Opening Reception: Sunday, May 20, 4-8pm
Open Hours: Monday, May 21, noon-4pm

ACRE Projects
1913 W 17th Street, Chicago 60608
HOW THINGS STAND
Janine Biunno's body of work exhibited in How Things Stand is visually informed by the continual gathering of images, both via photographing her daily commute across New York City and by simultaneously searching the internet for existing imagery of the same spaces. These reference images, equal parts original and digitally sourced, investigate the relationship between representation and interpretation in the built environment. As an artist Biunno is primarily interested in the often overlooked in-between spaces and physical boundaries of the structures that comprise cities. The work presented here is a distillation of the dense visual information of urban space. How Things Stand includes thirty Constructivist-inspired paper cutouts and an accompanying take-away zine of a selection of the reference materials, intended to provide context to the minimalist works.



JANINE BIUNNO is an interdisciplinary artist currently based in Brooklyn, NY. Her work typically interprets the subjective view of the city dweller, addressing how the architecture and infrastructure found in the cities we inhabit function as signifiers for location, identity and economy. Janine earned her MFA from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston / Tufts University and BFA from Carnegie Mellon University. She currently works for architect Steven Holl, as the Director of Publications. 

More info about Janine Biunno can be found at www.janinebiunno.com

Friday, May 11, 2012

Amelia Winger-Bearskin

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.


She is the Editor-in-Chief of Art Art Zine a new online publication of art and society for the South and the Director of the Women's Art League of Tennessee (W.A.L)

ANTENA
1755 S. Laflin, St.
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
Opening Friday May 18 from 7pm-10pm
May 18- June 9, 2012

"Dear Friends
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

Nick Black was born in Chicago in 1958. He has attended the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, DePaul University, the University of Illinois at Chicago, and the Massachusetts College of Art. Recent exhibitions include Byron Cohen Gallery, Kansas City, Uncle Freddy's Gallery, Highland, IN, and Joymore, Buddy Space, and Klein Art Works, all in Chicago. Nick has had key works at Art Chicago, the Stray Show, Version Fest, and the New Chicagoans.http://www.flickr.com/photos/nbtoy/sets/72157607672560085/

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Monday, April 30, 2012

5/6: COOKBOOK SHUFFLE @ ACRE PROJECTS

COOKBOOK SHUFFLE
A party to celebrate the release of 

KADABRA VOL II
Sunday, May 6, 1-5pm
 
ACRE Projects
1913 W 17th Street


ACRE’s COOKBOOK SHUFFLE will be an afternoon of treats and libations featuring performances and happenings to celebrate the release of Kadabra Vol II. Donate $5 to feast on a buffet prepared by the ACRE kitchen witches or just feast your eyes on our new collection of recipes and artwork out of the ACRE kitchen. Performances include an experimental operatic violin and voice conversation between Meg Leary and Allison Trumbo, the synchronized dances and theatrical anger of Forced into Femininity, and a quiet set from the always dramatic electro-dance group Xina Xurner.

KADABRA VOL II pairs delectable recipes from the ACRE kitchen with artists’ renditions of those recipes in a set of 25 cards packaged in a limited edition screen-printed tea towel designed by Ciara Ruffino. Contributing artists include: Zacharias Abubeker, Caitlin Arnold, Matt Austin, Becca Brown, Emily Clayton, Caleb Cole, Ben Driggs, Emily Green, James Green, Maggie Haas, Ashley Hudson,  Matthew Lane, Bryan Lear, David Moré, Kristina Paabus, Joseph Rynkiewicz, Erin Washington, and Nicholas Wylie. Plus some extra special entries from 2011 visiting artists Selena Abbott & Ariel Diamond, Jenny Kendler, Lora Lode, and Courtney Nulicek. Compiled and edited with love and care by ACRE chefs Melissa Damasauskas and Rachel Ettling.

ACRE (Artists’ Cooperative Residency and Exhibition) was founded in 2010 with the ambition to provide the arts community with an affordable, cooperative, and dialogue-oriented residency program. The residency itself takes place each summer in rural southwest Wisconsin and brings together artists from across disciplines and levels of experience to create a regenerative community of cultural producers. Over the course of the following year ACRE endeavors to further support its residents by providing venues for exhibitions, idea exchange, interdisciplinary collaboration, and experimental projects.


More information about ACRE can be found at acreresidency.org