ACRE Projects is pleased to present “Glossolalia,” a duo exhibition presenting works by Chicago-based artists Jeff Prokash and  David Sprecher.

Glossolalia is structured by the phonetic patterns in a section of Franny Choi's poem How to Let Go of the World. Through a process of mold-making that mirrors how language is shaped by the oral cavity, a collection of found objects and cast plaster iterations become a spatial, material translation of the poem.

Glossolalia

ˌɡlɑsəˈleɪliə

Fffffffffllllllll…  Like a leaf, limp, a line, the floorplan of 2439 S Oakley lands in How to Let Go of the World, a poem, a pome. The poem begins on the 73rd page of The World Keeps Ending and the World Goes On, Poems by Franny Choi. It ends on page 82. The line falls on the 77th page here: In other words: I beach myself. / Other words: I leech bleakly. Breathe sleet, a wreath of it. I flinch at the leaves, / anticipating their reek, the graves of reefs. I bleach and bleach and watch the / chlorine slip clean from my teeth…  and stages the sounds as things. Voiceless bilabial fricatives and such are performed on the Drama Club floor by a company of receptacles and their duplicates. Tongues! Loops! …Oooooo… A stump, a Bumbo, a chimp's bobbin, bobbin, pisspot, neck rest, rocks, water, a flute of dust, pigeon spikes, panes of glass broken and all again in white and again. …Ooooooorrrrr. A pome is a fruit with a fleshy enlarged receptacle and a tough central core containing seeds, e.g., an apple or pear. You bite it. A voice box. Your tongue.


In tongues:


ɪn ˈʌðər wɜrdz: aɪ biʧ ˌmaɪˈsɛlf.

ˈʌðər wɜrdz: aɪ liʧ ˈblikli. brið slit, ə riθ ʌv ɪt. aɪ flɪnʧ æt ðə livz,
ænˈtɪsəˌpeɪtɪŋ ðɛr rik, ðə ɡreɪvz ʌv rifs. aɪ bliʧ ænd bliʧ ænd wɑʧ ði 
ˈklɔrin slɪp klin frʌm maɪ tiθ.

Jeff Prokash

Jeff Prokash is an interdisciplinary artist and educator in Chicago, IL. He received his MFA in Sculpture from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC) and his BFA in Art and Art History from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Jeff Prokash attended the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in 2015 and has received awards and fellowships, including the Eldon Danhausen and Edward L. Ryerson Fellowships and the International Sculpture Center Outstanding Student Achievement in Contemporary Sculpture Award. He currently teaches in the Sculpture department at SAIC. His work navigates the territories of architecture, design, archival practices, materiality, and contextual histories through the lens of sculpture. As a collector and orchestrator of material-based information, his work draws upon the conventions of preservation, appropriation, and the historical archive to produce sculptural installations and interventions that embody the connectivity between people, places, objects, and events while embracing the freedom of reinterpretation in order to suggest new relationships and potentialities within the built environment. 

David Sprecher

David Sprecher is an artist, writer, and educator based in Chicago. He received his MFA from the Art Theory and Practice program at Northwestern University and a BFA in printmaking from The Maryland Institute College of Art. He's published writing in the Brooklyn Rail and Chicago Artist Writers and has poems forthcoming in Columbia Journal. Through exhibitions of sculpture, written exhibitions, and sculptural meditations, he smears words into things muddling distinctions between architectural and literary interiors. He teaches sculpture at the Chicago Academy for the Arts and integrates art education into primary schools through the Chicago Arts Partnership in Education. 

 

Opening Reception:

–

ACRE Projects @ Drama Club
2439 S Oakley Avenue
Chicago , IL 60608

Not Wheelchair Accessible

ACRE Projects Gallery is located on the ground floor of the Drama Club building. There is a single step up to access the gallery. Bathrooms are accessible via a staircase on the lower level of the building. ACRE is working to secure a ramp for the front entrance and an accessible bathroom in a neighboring business. Your accessibility coordinator for the opening event is Programs Director Tiffany Johnson, who can be reached at exhbitions@acreresidency.org.

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