1/16: Better Favorite // new works by Alex Chitty and Bryan Lear
Better Favorite
new works by Alex Chitty and Bryan Lear
January 16-17/2011
Opening Reception: Sunday, January 16th, 4-8
Open Hours: Monday, January 17th, noon-4
ACRE Projects
1913 W 17th
Open Hours: Monday, January 17th, noon-4
1913 W 17th
Better Favorite: Magnificent for all enthusiasts! Chitty and Lear fully describe their newest developments in-depth to the most glorious magnitude. Better Favorite is convenient and makes good sense, rating excellent in practicality, goodness and family appeal. Pause to wonder the elegant treatments. You’ll discover all-time favorites that make it enjoyable for the guests. Featuring new sculpture, works on paper and printed matter.
Alex Chitty stands at about 5’6, is of average weight and build and has a face you may think you have seen on someone else. BFA = Smith College. MFA = SAIC. Working between the general and the specific, Chitty explores the triumph and fallibility of cognitive mechanisms, the philosophy of language and the push/pull of concept and form.
Bryan Lear was born and raised in the far northern suburbs of Chicago. Lear is interested in reframing the everyday objects, sounds and spaces that surround us. He received his BA in photography from Columbia College Chicago, and his MFA in Photography, Video & Related Media from the School of Visual Arts in New York City. Lear’s work has been showcased in The Collectors Guide to Emerging Art Photography published by Humble Arts Foundation in New York. He currently teaches photography at McHenry Community College.
More information about Alex Chitty can be found at www.alexchitty.com
More information about Bryan Lear can be found at www.bryanlear.com
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What follows is our news from 2010, before we switched formats:
ACRE named best new art residency by NewCity!
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Prodigious Partnershipnew works by Brittany Ransom
December 17-18, 2010
Opening Reception: Friday, December 17, 7-10
Open Hours: Saturday, December 18, noon-3
Roxaboxen Exhibitions
Brittany Ransom is a new media artist that strives to probe the lines between human, animal, and environmental relations. We exist in a culture that is in the midst of a technological revolution. With our society’s existing dependence on emergent technologies comes a conflicted relationship between our culture and the concern for nature. This paradoxical bond between human and nature poses and solicits the need for a joint co-evolution between the living and budding technological innovation.Ransom’s artwork began through the observation of these often strained relationships and came to fruition through the proposition of potential remedies to our constant struggle with co-evolution. She introduces these remedies in the form of interactive sculpture, possible prosthetics, wearable recording devices, and digital manipulations. Ransom’s artwork invites technology, real and imagined, to heighten our awareness of the existence and perspectives of the world from other species point of view. It questions and investigates the constant personification and attribution of human characteristics, lifestyles, and views on animals, insects, and ultimately nature. Though Ransom finds the development of evolving technology to be alluring, many of her pieces comment on our dulled awareness of environmental concerns that our techno-advancements can trigger. Ransom’s work continues to progress into a serious commitment to investigating interspecies relationships and environmental concerns. Ultimately She hope to always invite the viewer to question how technology can concurrently invent, destroy, enshroud and expose itself within our shared environment.
More information about Brittany Ransom can be found at brittanyransom.com
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**This show has been extended due to weather. Additional open hours: Friday, Dec 17, 6-9pm.
Lesson 1: Misanthropy
new works by Daniel Shea
December 12-13
Opening Reception: Sunday, December 12, 4-8
Open Hours:Monday, December 13, noon-4Friday, December 17, 6-9
ACRE Projects
1913 W 17th Street
Lesson 1: Misanthropy is a series of works exploring longing and potential within a misanthropic worldview. The photographs, sculptures, and video work in the show, all made in 2010, combine modern materials and nihilistic sensibility with primitive gestural forms. A 13 year old boy speaking on metaphysics, group performance ritual, and art’s complicated relationship with landscape depiction all come together in a single narrative exploring the mythology of beginning and ending.
Daniel Shea is an artist and educator based in Chicago. His long-term photographic work about the coal industry, Plume and Removing Mountains, are scheduled to show at The Appalachian Center in 2010 and the Festival Alt +1000 in France in 2011. His sculptural and video installations will be presented at Acre Projects in December 2010 in Chicago and in conjunction with Kelly Kaczynski’s Unnamed Future Space in the Spring of 2011. Previous projects, including Untitled (Baltimore), have been shown nationally and abroad, including a recent show at Umbrage Gallery in Brooklyn and the Philadelphia Photo Arts Center. His work can be found in the Midwest Photographer’s Project at the Museum of Contemporary Photography. Daniel splits his time between working on the road or in the studio, teaching art outreach programs, and shooting for publications such as Dwell, Monocle, W Magazine, and The Wall Street Journal.
More information about Daniel Shea can be found at www.danielpshea.com
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ACRE Winter BenefitCountry in the City(aka ACRE County Fair)
Friday, December 106-11PM
Heaven Gallery1550 N Milwaukee Ave2nd floor
$20 ($10 for students) suggested donationincludes 3 raffle tickets
We’re bringing the country to the city, so get ready for a cozy, down-home night of art, music and fun! Hang out with some sheep and chicks in the Petting Zoo! Deck yourself in plaid and grab a corn cob pipe for the photo booth! Sip some home-made hard cider from our new ACRE mugs! Sign up for thecake eating contest with a spin, led by Industry of the Ordinary. Try your luck on our prize wheel! Get some great deals on art by local and national contemporary artists at the art auction and sale. Pick up some great holiday gifts at the raffle featuring art and gift certificates from local restaurants, shops and museums. And of course musical performances by David Moré and The Stragglin’ Wagons (Billy Joyce & Elspeth Vance with John Bellows).
Eating Contest starts at 8pm, followed by musical performances. Art auction and raffle closes at 10pm. Keep that warm feeling going and join us for an after-party a few doors down at The Crocodile (1540 N Milwaukee Ave) featuring DJs and dancing starting at 11pm.
Art work for sale and auction by:Brandon Alvendia, Brandon Anschultz, Caitlin Arnold, Matthew Austin, Daniel Baird, Mara Baker, Lauren Beck, Thorne Brandt, Jessica Bruah, Tom Burtonwood, Jessica Taylor Caponigro, Emily Clayton, Scott Cowan, Sophia Dixon, Ben Driggs, Paul Erschen, Aron Gent, Myranda Gillies, Drew Griffith, Terry Evans, Ron Ewert, Adam Farcus, Regan Golden and Jeremy Lundquist, Adam Grossi, Elisa Harkins, Thad Kellstadt, Jenny Kendler, Katy Keefe, Michael Kloss, Jason Lazarus, Erin Leland, Elina Malkin, Casey McGonagle, Josh Minkus, Jennifer Montgomery, Aliza Morell, Matthew Nichols, Heidi Norton, Erik Peterson, Grant Ray, Dustin Ruegger, Daniel Shea, Montgomery Perry Smith, Aay Preston-Myint, Greg Stimac, Scott Whipkey, Krista Wortendyke and Nicholas Wylie
Funds raised at this event will go toward ACRE’s 2011 Residency Program and 2010-11 Exhibitions Program. ACRE relies on your support to continue to provide resources for emerging artists. If you can’t make it to this event, please consider donating via the PayPal donate button on the right hand side of this page.
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Feature Article about ACRE in NewCity!
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Copse
a performance and installation by Coppice (Noé Cuéllar & Joseph Kramer)
with sculptures by Alex Miller
Opening Reception: Friday, December 3, 6-9
Performance at 7:30
Open Hours: Sunday, November 5, 4-7
ACRE Projects
1913 W 17th Street
Copse is a three-movement composition for performed multi-channel sound installation, based on the atomization and dispersal of instrumental aspects. The products/by-products of the instrumentation are separated and shuffled spatially and temporally, in an effort to present the parts-to-the-whole relationships as fluid and continuous.
Coppice (Noé Cuéllar & Joseph Kramer) is a Chicago-based duet of bellows and electronics. Formed 2009, they have produced original compositions for stage, fixed media, and performed installation settings, with a focus on adhering textural attenuation, processed gradation, the contours of instrumentation, and their multiple aspect highlights.
Their variable instrumentation departs from bellow and reed instruments (accordion, pump organ, shruti box, harmonica), custom electronics (reproduction, transmission, spatialization, interference and gentle feedback), and multi-channel systems adapted in ways responsive to location, audience flow, and aural perspectives.
They have recently presented their work at Spark Festival of Electronic Music and Arts (Minneapolis), Dragonfly Festival (Göthenburg, Sweden), New Music at the Green Mill (Chicago), and several live radio performances. They have also composed for dance, in collaboration with choreographer Rachel Damon (Synapse Arts Collective).
Alex R. Miller is an artist living and working in Chicago and a 2010 BFA graduate from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago with a focus in sculpture, fiber and material studies. His current body of work, beginning as an investigation in self-portraiture, bases itself around the themes of artifact, the act of discovery and the unearthing of objects. Other works focus on simplified forms; utilizing limited materials and color palettes to create objects that carry inexplicable weight in their presence.
More information about Coppice can be found at futurevessel.com/coppice
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Eating Without A Face
&
Death Rites
new work by Young Joon Kwak
Opening Reception: Sunday, December 5, 7-10
Performance begins at 8:30
Open Hours: Saturday, December 11, 12-3
Roxaboxen Exhibitions
2130 W 21st Street
Eating Without a Face features new sculpture, photography and installation. The works in this show grew out of Kwak’s experience working in the kitchen at Acre Residency and learning about composting this past summer. Compost, a dinner table, and kitchen scraps are featured materials in these new works. Themes of decay, regeneration, and the desperate search for the possibilities contained within a dying self impelled the creation of these works.
Death Rites, featuring performances by a variety of artists working in different disciplines, curated by Kwak continues to deal with themes of death and decay. The ceremony draws from various ritual practices including Kwak’s experience growing up in a Korean-American Christian church, but the participating artists produce a multiplicity of pathways, connections, and possibilities for transformation, that destabilize common expectations of the church-going experience.
Young Joon Kwak is an artist working in a variety of disciplines, including drag performance, video, sculpture, installation, critical writing, and his involvement with several idiosyncratic art spaces in Chicago over the years. Much of Kwak’s work revolves around his desire to explore the affective possibilities and pitfalls for generating new subjectivities, however, he is most noted for his furry mounds, pooey clumps, and orifices. He grew up in New York and New Jersey, and has a BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and an MA in Humanities from the University of Chicago.
More information about Young Joon Kwak can be found at www.youngjoon.com
More information about Roxaboxen Exhibitions can be found at www.roxaboxenminicastle.com
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ACRE is proud to present two exhibitions opening this Sunday, November 21. Chelsea Culp at ACRE Projects and Thorne Brandt & Elisa Harkins at Roxaboxen Exhibitions. These galleries are located just blocks from each other, so make sure you check out both!
Dream On Hair Salon; Heraclitian Topologies of Value
new works by Chelsea Culp
Opening Reception: Sunday, November 21, 4-8
Open Hours: Monday, November 22, noon-4
ACRE Projects
1913 W 17th Street
Dream On Hair Salon; Heraclitian Topologies of Value includes works that are inspired by a visceral and animate quality of meaning that is created by the mercurial relationships between form, function, desire, and transformation.
The work exhibited is a selection of flat and sculptural pieces from a larger body of work completed in the last two months. It includes, collage, drawing, painting, and photo.
Chelsea Culp is an interdisciplinary performance, sculpture, and installation artist, she also makes drawings and paintings. She graduated from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2007 with a BFA in Art History, Theory, and Criticism. She has continued her education at both national and international residencies. Her art practice is influenced by experience in the contrasting work environments of both construction sites and night clubs. Much of her art addresses the performance of gender via garment, movement, and speech, and the collapse of performance when a universal and timeless human experience breaks through artifice. This break is often expressed by abstracting symbols (and materials) from a recognizable and oppressive syntax. Her performances and sculptures are often made collaboratively, involving concepts or people from outside of the art community.
She is currently working on projects with the pseudo-hippie-lumberjack-fairie-ghost-glitch-art band collective Mrs.Hound, and running the project space New Capital with Ben Foch.
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Pocahontas vs Predator
new works by Thorne Brandt & Elisa Harkins
Opening Reception: Sunday, November 21, 7-10
Performances by Pooper and Pizza Dog: Wednesday, November 24, 8pm
Open hours: Saturday, November 27, noon-3
Roxaboxen Exhibitions
2130 W 21st Street
Pocahontas vs Predator is thematically based on inter-dimensional travel. The works combine Harkins’ interest in Native American culture and Brandt’s influence of time travel and pop culture. The result is a peyote ritual in a Delorean. Works in this show include paintings, paper mâché sculpture and wood cut-outs.
Thorne Brandt was born in a haunted bookstore in St. Louis, MO in 1984. He moved to Chicago in 2002 where he attended the School of the Art Institute. A classically trained painter turned animator; Brandt now lives and works in Chicago. Performing under the name “Pizza Dog”, he plays the drums with music and animations. He is also a host of “Art Games” which is a collaborative game experience played with strangers and friends alike.
Elisa Harkins, aka Pooper, was born in Miami, Oklahoma in 1978. She has been working and living in Chicago, Il since 1998. Her artistic practice stems from the ancient art of myth-making and ritual. Using the world around her to create myths, she sometimes places these spiritual creatures and characters in the public eye of the streets as well as on the gallery walls. She uses digital forms (animation, electronic music) as well as analog forms (singing, drumming, wood cut outs) to create her own version of native ritual in the present day.
More information about Thorne Brandt can be found at pizzadog.org
More information about Elisa Harkins can be found at pooptronica.com
More information about Roxaboxen Exhibitions can be found at www.roxaboxenminicastle.com
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Art Of The Material
new works by Justin Block
Opening Reception: Sunday, November 14, 4-8
Open Hours: Monday, November 15, noon-4
ACRE Projects
1913 W 17th Street
Art of the material is a reaction to the outpacing of culture by high technology. It extrapolates an actual presence for an art object through the methods of self-projection, emergent behavior, and the exploitation of physical laws. Through sonic art, electronics, found object sculpture and drawing, Block attempts to create something not infinitely copyable and thus allow it to maintain its solidarity of existence.
Justin Block is a 2009 MFA graduate of the School of the Art Institute of Chicago whose focus was experimental technological works and electronic hardware. He is experienced in many art forms from printmaking to sonic art.
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Walking At Night
new paintings by Aliza Morell
Opening Reception: Sunday, November 7, 4-8Open Hours: Monday, November 8, noon-4
ACRE Projects1913 W 17th Street
Sidewalk, 2009 Acrylic on paper
Walking at Night is a body of recent paintings that use landscapes in and around Chicago’s Ukrainian Village to address the theme of searching in everyday life. Initially the paintings read as familiar scenes from a walk alone after dark. However, with longer viewing, the environments become unsettling. The vertical format and scale of the paintings reference the viewer’s physical presence. Pathways lead to passages, to shadows, or off the page entirely. Color drives a tension between familiarity and mystery. The mood is unclear, both inviting and suspenseful. The more you enter the image the more you wonder, what am I doing here?
Aliza Morell is a painter who lives and works in Chicago, IL. She works in both abstract and representational modes; outdoor light and color have been a theme connecting several recent projects. Aliza received her BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2005. Aliza has been an artist in residence at ACRE, Steuben, WI; Harold Arts, Chesterhill, OH; Oxbow School of Art and Artists’ Residency, Saugatuck, MI and The Cliff Dwellers Club, Chicago, IL. Aliza has exhibited her work in Chicago, San Francisco and Ann Arbor, MI.
More information about Aliza Morell can be found at alizamorell.com
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Enigma of Time
new works by Ben Driggs
Opening Reception: Sunday, October 31, 4-8
Open Hours: Monday, November 1, noon-4
ACRE Projects
1913 W 17th Street
Enigma of Time considers the relationships between science and psychedelia. In sculpture, video and photography, Driggs explores the abstract nature of our conceptions of time, space and the infinite. How does a strictly ‘true’ description of reality contrast to the one we carry with us in our everyday lives? By making analogies, documenting extant strategies, and inciting wonder,Enigma of Time hypothetically shows how we can get there from here.
Ben Driggs was born in rural Illinois and recently returned to Chicago from a two year stay in California. After receiving his BFA from Columbia College Chicago in 2004, he made props and special effects for television and film. His work instigates, documents and critiques transformational moments on a range of scales, from the study of human consciousness in a general sense to a solitary individual’s lived experience. Using a variety of media and tactics, he is interested in exploring and demonstrating how fluid our consciousness can be as it shifts between perspectives.
More information about Ben Driggs can be found at www.bendriggs.com
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I Feel The Earth Move
new works by Latham Zearfoss
Opening Reception: Saturday, October 23, 6-9Open Hours: Sunday, October 24, 4-8
ACRE Projects
1913 W 17th Street
In I Feel the Earth Move Zearfoss uses unconventional materials (watermelon, used underwear collected from friends) to create temporal, site specific installations. Sculpture and photographic work will also be presented.
In the artists’ words: The works in this show seek to map out the possibilities for flat representations of identity to claim mortality as their own process. Vying for melancholia and merriment, Simulacra rebel their own paradigms of mediocrity. Loaded objects dress in the drag of self-reflexive subjects. But the question remains: can a symbol, in time, make the arduous journey back to the privileged realm of the organic?
Latham Zearfoss is an artist and cultural producer living and working in Chicago. His creative work often centers on reclaiming historical and mythological texts, and revising them to incorporate radical notions of love and sex, possibility and probability. His commitment to art and activism has also manifested in the creation of sporadic, temporary utopias like Pilot TV and Chances Dances. He is also a contributing editor to the new online quarterly Monsters and Dust.
More information about Latham Zearfoss can be found at www.lathamzearfoss.com
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Hidden Spaces and What is Found in Between
Tara Hills
ACRE Projects – 1913 W 17th Street
Opening Reception: Sunday October 17, 4pm – 8pm
Open Hours: Monday, October 18, 11am – 4pm
“Hidden Spaces and What is Found in Between” explores how the accumulation and layering of materials, movements and sound come together to shift perspective. Featuring an installation evoking hiding places made from man-made materials, the balance of this exhibition lies in the intersection of experience and object. Hills’ collected materials activate the history of inhabitance by placing the viewer in an amalgam of nature and modern architecture.
Tara Hills is originally from New England and now lives and works in Chicago. She received her MFA from The School of The Art Institute of Chicago in 2010. She has participated in solo shows, and collective exhibitions, in Connecticut, New York and Chicago. With a background in Textiles and large scale installations, her work questions the nature of material and its relationship to everyday experiences, investigating the meaning created by seemingly fleeting and innocuous moments of intimacy.
______________________________________________________________________________Uncharted Territories
Rebecca Mir
ACRE Projects1913 W 17th Street
Opening Reception: October 3rd, 4-8pm
ACRE is proud to announce the opening of its storefront gallery space, ACRE Projects at 1913 West 17th Street in the Pilsen neighborhood of Chicago. Every Sunday ACRE will host a solo show or event by one of its 70+ 2010 summer residents.
Please join us for the first show of ACRE’s first season the first weekend in October.Rebecca Mir, the first explorer of the Nation of RUBACCAQUON, will be presenting findings from her explorations at the ACRE Residency Program. The installation will include wall and floor maps, photographs, artifacts and expedition gear.
RUBACCAQUON is a nation/notion of one, with temporary and ever changing borders. It can exist in multiple time zones and eras at once. Its identity is fluid. For the first weekend in October, RUBACCAQUON can be found at ACRE Projects. At other times, it is located on a beach, mountaintop, city apartment, and/or a field.
ACRE Projects is a new space in Pilsen presenting weekly art events every Sunday evening. Each of ACRE’s 70+ residents are given the keys to the space for one week to do with it what they will. Additional exhibitions will be hosted by a number of local galleries and alternative spaces.
Stay tuned for a full schedule!
More information about Rebecca Mir can be found at
www.rebeccamir.com and www.rubaccaquon.com
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Summer Press Coverage:
Industry of the Ordinary’s Tug of War project at the 2010 residency
ACRE profiled in a feature article in Issue 7 of Jettison Quarterly
Local coverage of softball game at ACRE’s 2010 Summer Residency
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Remembering the Future: a group show by ACRE
Opening Reception: Friday, June 18th – 8-11p
The Hills Esthetic Center
128 N Campbell St
Remembering the Future includes new photographs, drawings, sculpture, moving image and sound bythe founding members of ACRE. In addition, a collectively built sculpture inspired by the Tower of Babel will be on view; this twelve foot tower is equal parts monumental sculpture and optimistic trash heap. Assembled from found detritus, personal items, texts, houseplants, and artistic flourish, the installation speaks to the practice of creating and operating an organization or collective by making use of what’s at hand, incorporating diverse visions, tirelessly reaching toward constructing utopias, and willfully ignoring their improbability.
Artists include:
Caitlin Arnold
Olivia Ciummo
Kyle CronanMelissa Damasauskus
Rachel Ettling
Aron Gent
Henry James Glover
John Paul Glover
Emily Green
Brieanne Hauger
Jason Lazarus
Greg Stimac
Nicholas Wylie
Then join ACRE immediately following the reception for an after party hosted by Roxaboxen Exhibitions(2130 W 21st Street). The Dance MASS-ACRE will feature short sets by experimental musicians and end with DJs spinning dance favorites.
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Kickstarter
As ACRE prepares for the first residency program this summer we are using Kickstarter.com to help raise funds to provide our residents with nutritious and locally grown food. Please visit our Kickstarter project here.
Our goal for Kickstarter is to raise $3,000 by July 10. If we don’t meet our goal by then we won’t receive any donations and donors will not be charged. Funds raised through Kickstarter will go specifically toward our food and kitchen budget. We have a team of experienced chefs creating menus for each meal, feeding 35-40 people at a time for a length of 36 days. Our hope is that with the money raised by Kickstarter we can make it so that all meals are prepared from scratch using organic, locally grown produce, dairy, meat and grains to not only provide healthy meals for our residents and staff but to also contribute to the sustainability of the local economy.
Kickstarter offers a new way to raise funds; donors make pledges and we only receive the money if our goal is met. To encourage donations, we are offering a number of rewards at various levels of support, featuring unique items made or designed by Chicago artists.
ACRE on Kickstarter
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ACRE Director Nicholas Wylie Interview on Bad at Sports
Check out this great interview on the BaS Blog.
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ACRE at The NEXT Art Fair in Chicago April 30 – May 2
The NEXT fair, part of Chicago’s Artropolis is this coming weekend. ACRE will be participating at Gallery 400’s UIC MFA GOLD booth (BOOTH 7-9121) on Fri + Sat + Sun. Come by the 7th floor of the Merchandise Mart to learn more about our program or to introduce yourself. We’d love to meet you!
Make sure to catch some of our talented volunteer staff, who will be showing at NEXT too.
Caitlin Arnold and Scott Cowan will be exhibiting photographs at Proximity‘s booth organized by Aron Gent (BOOTH 7-9054)
Jason Lazarus and Greg Stimac will be showing new work with Andrew Rafacz Gallery.
Nicholas Wylie and Olivia Ciummo will be participating in the Gallery 400 – UIC MFA GOLD booth (BOOTH 7-9121).
More about NEXT: The Invitational Exhibition of Emerging Art
More than an art fair, NEXT is a showcase for the world’s talents and an adventure in cutting-edge culture. An opportunity to redefine the relationship between art and its public, NEXT is a portal to seeing contemporary art in new, innovative, eye-opening ways. NEXT will include works from both commercial and non-commercial arts organizations–galleries, project spaces, art publications and key private contemporary collections from around the world.
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Peace Party for ACRE Monday, March 8!!
ACRE’s the proud recipient of a Danny’s Peace Party! The peace party is a monthly event to raise money for worthy causes via inebriation and celebrity DJs.
Come show us that you’re interested, ask us to dance, and drink as much as you can, as a portion of the drink sales will go to the development of ACRE’s 2010 residency program.
Monday, March 8
10p-2a
Danny’s
1951 W Dickens
DJs: Naomi Walker, Jocelyn Brown, Jeff Parker, and Josh Abrams