ArtSlant - Openings & events

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01/10/12--09:56: Rick Stevens - GALLERY KH - February 24th 5:00 PM - 8:00 PM (chan 1483207)

Rick Stevens: Shaping the Unknown
Opening cocktail reception: Friday, February 24, 2012 5-8PM

Gallery KH is pleased to present Shaping the Unknown a collection of new abstract paintings by the artist Rick Stevens. Shaping the Unknown opens February 24, 2012 through May 1, 2012.  An opening night cocktail reception is scheduled for Friday, February 24, 5-8PM. All gallery events are free and open to the public.
 
“We are thrilled to be hosting Rick Stevens’ new show as his work reverberates with so many people in such an intense way.  His abstracts are mysterious yet uplifting, and this collection of new works will not disappoint his followers and new patrons alike,” states Shannon R. Stoelting, Gallery KH Assistant Director.
 
Looking for ways to surprise himself as an artist and to circumvent being in control, Rick Stevens ventured into the unfamiliar for Shaping the Unknown. “In this body of work I was influenced by listening to jazz fusion, first from a live concert, then playing it in the studio while I work. Bringing it all into harmony with itself is the other challenge,” says Stevens. “My work has always been about the natural world. I think of nature as a continuous flow of shapes and patterns of energy that has, or more precisely is, an intelligent force. That being said, the work is also about the language of art, of painting, the use of materials. There is a zen koan: The greatest intimacy is not knowing. I like to challenge myself by stepping into unknown territory artistically.”
 
About Gallery KH
Located in the heart of Chicago’s River North Arts District, Gallery KH presents an outstanding collection of significant contemporary artists working in a variety of styles and media. For further information on any of our artists, please visit www.gallerykh.com or call 1-312-642-0202.




02/01/12--13:08: - Museum of Contemporary Art (MCA) - February 21st 6:00 PM - 7:30 PM (chan 1483207)

Tuesday Evening programs are artist-led events which directly engage visitors.  Appropriate for a broad range of ages, these events are designed around familiar themes which introduce the audience to artists and other thought leaders and the ideas which inspire them in an entertaining and informal setting.  This Tuesday, visitors can explore the intersection between art and technology along with art theorist and You-Tube sensation, Hennessy Youngman. This series includes one-hour talks, virtual presentations highlighting the most interesting aspects of the internet, and participatory events which celebrate the creativity of the MCA audience.

 

Beer, wine and other beverages available for purchase at Puck’s Café




02/01/12--13:30: - Museum of Contemporary Art (MCA) - February 21st 12:00 PM - 1:00 PM (chan 1483207)

Get the inside view. Walk through current MCA exhibitions with curator Naomi Beckwith and learn about the criteria and ideas that guided the selection of artists and artworks for This Will Have Been: Art, Love & Politics in the 1980s. Curator tour groups meet by the Visitor Service Desk on the second floor.




02/04/12--01:34: Camille Iemmolo - Packer Schopf Gallery - February 24th 6:00 PM - 9:00 PM (chan 1483207)

Camille Iemmolo's art comes from a raw place somewhere inside.  She grew up in a religious household with a complex cast of family members: sailors, painters, crafters, fine furniture makers, radio pioneers, collectors and even Vaudevillian singers.  And then there are the nurses...those that saved with their tall dark tales.  To escape Iemmolo took to riding her horse and recently took it up to escape again.  This past May, she took a very serious fall over a jump and broke her neck, just escaping death, a sure miracle that she walks today.  When she fell from her high horse literally, came this body of work, Secret Society.

Secret Society is an odd body of work using mostly found object materials with drawing elements: Paper, charcoal, trash, tape, staples, wire, band-aids, paint, string and more tape.  There are also large-scale installation elements.  Thousands of packaged band-aids adhered with tape...manifesting in a 10-foot house dedicated to her brother and daughter and metaphorically...the world's condition-human suffering and how we endure.  This body of work is concerned with what you thought your life would become when a child…what your life has become and space in-between.  A place where our minds, not always aware, seem to rest comfortably.  A place of denial.  The secrets we as a society whisper to ourselves.  The difficulty of looking long and hard in the mirror.

The work is clean, simple, childlike, light and airy, yet full of dark human truths.  Though the work is quiet, one hopes the viewer will watch closely….like a ghost passing across a silent movie, stirring loud and in their soul.




02/04/12--01:38: Dana DeAno - Packer Schopf Gallery - February 24th 6:00 PM - 9:00 PM (chan 1483207)

Artificial landscapes move stealthily throughout Dana DeAno's new work.  In playing with domestic throw- aways, flea market treasures, broken scraps and bits, the borders seem to get fuzzy; often hidden, murky, illusionary.  Ideas of rural spances breed as ambiguities rise and fall throughout the work.  She is continually pushing and pulling, filling and editing, climbing and descending, revealing and concealing through the work.  DeAno calls it all drawing, as this is what she has done for so long; drawing with textiles, drawing through building with controlled chaos, drawing with reusable craft, and all in a casual manner.  It becomes almost a pile of orchestrated randomness, topped with a teaspoon of clarity.  Ideas of space, time, land, dioramas, farm and peek inside panoramic sugared eggs dance in her head daily. 




02/04/12--01:42: Nancy Mladenoff - Packer Schopf Gallery - February 24th 6:00 PM - 9:00 PM (chan 1483207)

Over the past several years Mladenoff has concentrated on mixed-media oil painting, flashe/gouache, and watercolor by delving into ideas of natural history, botany, entomology, ornithology, geography, and history as they relate to contemporary culture. The current research involves the work of early American woman naturalists, earth and animal scientists, explorers, outlaws, musicians and athletes who lived during the 18^th through 20^th centuries.  The paintings are a metaphorical classification of female mentors/alter egos that is grounded in the past but can be relevant to present concerns in contemporary painting. Through the work, Mladenoff learns about the history and lives of American women who were driven to make significant accomplishments beyond wife and mother, against a considerably unsupportive culture. The imagery that is created reflects my conceptual, philosophical, and psychological interests that engage with issues in contemporary art.




02/04/12--02:16: Chi Jang Yin - DePaul Art Museum - February 23rd 6:00 PM - 8:00 PM (chan 1483207)




02/04/12--02:31: - Gallery 400 - February 22nd 6:00 PM - 7:30 PM (chan 1483207)

Season Six includes 13 profiles of artists from four continents gathered into four one-hour thematic episodes. This season features pioneering artists who question tradition, create innovative forms, launch experimental media, explore natural phenomena, publicly test conceptual practices, and are amongst the most active and influential artists working today.

Gallery 400 is proud to screen two episodes from Season 6 of the Peabody Award-winning television series Art in the Twenty-First Century in advance of the broadcast premiere:

Change

This episode features artists who bear witness, through their work, to transformation—cultural, material, and aesthetic—and actively engage communities as collaborators and subjects.

Featured Artists:

Ai Weiwei
El Anatsui 
Catherine Opie

Boundaries

This episode features artists who synthesize disparate aesthetic traditions, present taboo subject matter, discover innovative uses of media, and explore the shape-shifting potential of the human figure.

Featured Artists:

David Altmejd
assume vivid astro focus 
Lynda Benglis
Tabaimo

About Art21: Season 6

Season Six includes 13 profiles of artists from four continents gathered into four one-hour thematic episodes. This season features pioneering artists who question tradition, create innovative forms, launch experimental media, explore natural phenomena, publicly test conceptual practices, and are amongst the most active and influential artists working today.




02/07/12--13:40: Robert Chase Heishman, Brendan Meara, Matias Cuevas, 
Joel Dean, Michael Hunter, Irena Knezevic, Raquel Ladensack - ALDERMAN EXHIBITIONS - February 24th 6:00 PM - 10:00 PM (chan 1483207)

Alderman Exhibitions is reopening to the public in a new West Loop location at 1138 W Randolph (between May and Racine). In anticipation of the first exhibition in the new space, AE will host a celebration on February 24th featuring a preview screening of Robert Chase Heishman and Brendan Meara’s forthcoming feature length film, Long Fuse and artworks by the gallery’s represented artists.




02/10/12--19:11: JAN PETRY, Molly Tarbell - Intuit: The Center for Intuitive and Outsider Art - February 23rd 6:00 PM - 8:00 PM (chan 1483207)

Join co-curators Jan Petry and Molly Tarbell as they discuss themes of heaven and hell found in self-taught art and the challenges of presenting one exhibition at two different locations.






02/16/12--12:46: Alex Ebstein, Nathan Green, Clay Hickson, Samara Scott, Kaylee Rae Wyant - LVL3 Gallery - February 25th 6:00 PM - 10:00 PM (chan 1483207)

LVL3 presents Three Vertices, a group show in honor of our two year anniversary. Three Vertices focuses on the abundance of triangular shapes appearing in contemporary artworks. This investigation into the shape and form of the triangle seeks to understand its functionality throughout the artists’ work. Alex Ebstein examines modernism and abstraction through a hybrid of painting, drawing and collage, using non-traditional and found materials. Nathan Green illustrates the intuitive nature of contemporary creative techniques and processes while employing methods of craft and construction that explore the formal and structural qualities of abstraction. Clay Hickson’s work explores the intersection between various post-modern influences and the positive sentiments that were central to the attitudes of 1960’s counter culture in order to produce topical manifestations focusing on shape and pattern. Samara Scott demonstrates an interest in texture, pattern and decor, pairing unlikely surfaces, both manmade and natural, with references to icons and symbols of everyday life. Lastly, Kaylee Rae Wyant utilizes the self-conscious nature that is inherently central to the inspiration and expression of most contemporary art, channeling both emotion and cynicism in order to produce works that are concurrently sentimental and carefully constructed.

In conjunction with our two year anniversary exhibition, LVL3 is excited to premier our new publications MRKT, where visitors can acquire artist books, limited editions and ephemera.
http://lvl3gallery.com/threevertices/

Open Sundays 1:00-4:00pm
*Private viewings by appointment
info@lvl3gallery.com | (312) 469-0333




02/17/12--06:17: William Conger - Roy Boyd Gallery - February 24th 5:00 PM - 8:00 PM (chan 1483207)




02/17/12--07:08: Joseph Seigenthaler - Carl Hammer Gallery - February 24th 6:00 PM - 8:00 PM (chan 1483207)

Carl Hammer Gallery welcomes back from a self-imposed hiatus far too long in time the wizardry and multiple talents of sculptor/animation genius Joseph Seigenthaler.  We are all familiar with the past mechanisms this artist has employed to make us identify with characters both twisted and often macabre.  Seigenthaler’s work has endlessly struck a chord of appeal to our fascination with his employment of devices of grotesqueness in his production of human creatures.  Sparking an atmosphere of curious voyeurism, the artist was successful in creating a kind of “There but for the grace of God . . .” flicker of self-recognition by the public.

In this newest installment of work, Seigenthaler has made a decided departure from the iconic tortured-looking, imprisoned, character studies we have come to expect encountering.  This new body of work relies upon, instead, a more realistic portrayal of personalities which have either well or lesser known identities to us, the public at large.  Inspired by the work of French caricaturist, Honore Daumier, who was imprisoned in 1832 for his satire of King Louis Philippe, Seigenthaler’s newest work seems to serve likewise as commentary on issues and group identities like “the status quo” or “societal antagonists” or even as an examination of the creative spirit that resides within any given individual.  Each “portrait” is symbolic representation of a larger world view.  And it is with that vein of thought that each subject for the exhibition Portraits was selected, not only for the unique physical characteristics any one of them possessed, but, more importantly, chosen instead for the varied ideologies they represent. 

A man of few words when it comes to analyzing his own work, Seigenthaler nevertheless speaks loudly and with full understanding when it comes to the execution of his craft.  In this, his most recent body of work, the artist boldly blazes a new trail while never deserting the skillfulness and insightfulness of earlier passage-making.  Like the twisting, capering creatures he earlier created, these too are so like us, telling us much about ourselves. 

 




02/17/12--12:56: - Gallery 400 - February 23rd 6:00 PM - 7:30 PM (chan 1483207)

There is a formidable history of exhibiting and collecting contemporary art at the Art Institute of Chicago, which necessarily informs how the curators approach exhibitions and collection building today. With the focus series and the oversight of the Department of Contemporary Art's film and video collection, Lisa Dorin strongly considers what has come before, and attempts to anticipate what may come next as she make choices about how to highlight what is happening now.

Dorin is Associate Curator of Contemporary Art at the Art Institute of Chicago where she curates one-person contemporary art exhibitions as part of the museum’s focus series. Recent projects featured artists William Pope.L, Monica Bonvicini, Richard Hawkins, and Sharon Hayes. She also programs the Art Institute’s Donna and Howard Stone film, video and new media gallery, and recently edited a catalogue of the museum’s time-based media collection. She received a BA from the University of California at Santa Cruz in Studio Art and Art History and earned an MA from the Williams College Graduate Program in the History of Art, specializing in contemporary video art.




02/17/12--14:45: John Opera - Gallery 400 - February 23rd 6:00 PM - 7:30 PM (chan 1483207)

John Opera is a Chicago-based photographer whose work combines a singular fascination with the visual properties and beauty of natural and scientific phenomena, and a rigorous exploration of the techniques and processes by which photographs are made. He has exhibited with Andrew Rafacz Gallery, Chicago; the Contemporary Art Museum, St. Louis; Shane Campbell Gallery, Chicago; Macalester College Art Gallery, St. Paul; the Burchfield-Penney Art Center, Buffalo, NY; the Buffalo Arts Studio, NY; and the CEPA Gallery, Buffalo, NY. Opera has taught at the Art Institute of Illinois; The School of The Art Institute of Chicago; Wilbur Wright College, Chicago; and Daeman College, Amherst, NY. He is currently a part-time faculty member in the Photography Department at Columbia College, Chicago. He received a BA from SUNY New Paltz and an MFA from The School of The Art Institute of Chicago.




02/17/12--20:18: Trew Schreifer, Nancy Kim, David Corbett, Timothy Bergstrom - 65GRAND - February 24th 6:00 PM - 9:00 PM (chan 1483207)

65GRAND is pleased to present The Long Cut, a group exhibition organized by the gallery. Featuring the work of Timothy Bergstrom, David Corbett, Nancy Kim and Trew Schriefer, this exhibition brings together artists related not by style or form as much as through process and their approach to making.

We take a short cut to get where we're going as fast as possible. And rather than taking the "scenic route" and getting lost, "The Long Cut" somewhat humorously implies a willfully drawn out methodology. No less intentional, no less developed, but not as concerned with forming a plan and executing it, the long cut is a way to make time for discovery. What connects these artists working in painting, sculpture and mixed media is an approach to exploration through-and of-material and means. Some people are commuters on their way to work, some are flaneurs.

Timothy Bergrstrom lives and works in New York, NY. Recent solo exhibitions include Sound and Vision at Deveing Projects + Editions (Chicago) in 2011; and Design, Drama and Discord at Hungryman Gallery (Chicago) in 2010. Group exhibitions include A Table Big Enough for Company at The Suburban (Oak Park) in 2011; and oil, foil, WALLS, and toil at Robert Bills Contemporary (Chicago); Laughing As A Young Man, curated by José Lerma, at Southfirst (Brooklyn, NY) and New Insight, curated by Susanne Ghez, at Art Chicago (Chicago) all in 2010. His work has been written about on Artnet.com and Chicago Art Review.

David Corbett lives and works in Portland, OR. Recent solo exhibitions include New Work at Linfield College Gallery, McMinnville, OR in 2010; Change makes it new at 65GRAND in 2009 and Light Brings Dark Brings Light, also at 65GRAND, in 2007; and Mixed Media at McHenry College Gallery, Crystal Lake, IL also in 2007. Corbett is also included in the group exhibition Southern Pacific, organized by Homeland Gallery, which is travelling from Houston to Marfa, TX and to Portland, OR. His work has been featured in Flavorpill, New American Paintings, New City, The Oregonian and Portland Modern.

Nancy Kim lives and works in Chicago, IL. Recent exhibitions include B.A.D. curated by Larry Lee at the Beverly Arts Center (Chicago) which closed earlier this month; Ha__&__lf at Sound Art Space for Contemporary Art (Laredo, TX) which travelled to the Centro Cultural Nuevo Laredo (Tamaulipas, Mexico) in 2007; and watershed, a solo exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago in 2006. In 2011 Kim contributed to Texture.txt, published by Regina Rex (New York).

Trew Schriefer lives and works in Moline, IL. Recent solo exhibitions include I Know I am, But What Am I at Heavy Brow Gallery (Bloomington, IL) in 2011 and Perceptions of Reverie at Ebersmoore Gallery (Chicago) in 2010. Selected group exhibitions include the upcoming Robots Will Keep Us As Pets at Alderman Exhibitions (Chicago); Ruptures at Hoffman LaChance Contemporary (St Louis, MO) in 2011; All New and Exciting at McLean County Art Center (Bloomington, IL) in 2010; and Bitch'n at Bad Dog Gallery (DeKalb, IL) in 2008.