Monday, April 19, 2010

BEN RUSSELL : RUBLES

BRYCE DWYER + MATTHEW JOYNT (of InCUBATE)
ANNA SHTEYNSHLEYGER
TONY TASSET
MIKE TAYLOR

1716 S Morgan #2F
Chicago, IL 60608
April 24, 2010 - May 22, 2010
Opening reception: Saturday 6-9 pm, April 24th, 2010

Private viewings by appointment*
 *The performance by InCUBATE will be presented at 7:30 during the opening reception. 

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ABOUT THE SHOW:
And so: as the Great Depression (Redux) becomes ever more depressing and the breadlines grow longer under President Obama's communist administration (32 czars and counting!), your comrades at BEN RUSSELL have taken to the hills with the few thousand kopeks (100 to the Ruble) they still have hidden under their collectively-owned mattress to bring you yet another Thematic Group Art Exhibition (in which all works are equal and sold for the same price) - BEN RUSSELL : RUBLES

Timed to open one week prior to Art Chicago and the NEXT Fair and supported in part by the rubles-for-clunkers program, BEN RUSSELL : RUBLES shines a busted-up coal miner's headlamp on the economic realities of art marketeering (TASSET), stands outside your half-empty skyscraper with posters and pamphlets and silkscreens decrying the false accumulation of value (TAYLOR), teaches you to increase your meager earnings through a family-friendly dice game and other il/legal means (inCUBATE), and concocts a video poultice for the fractured, traumatized, and weary-at-heart (SHTEYNSHLEYGER).  RUBLES is a palette-cleanser for the bling-a-ling days to come, a reminder of where our core values as one-nation-under-art truly lie.  As USSR expat-comedian and Miller Lite Cold War stooge Yakov Smirnoff would have said: "At BEN RUSSELL you do not sell art, art sells you!"

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ABOUT THE ARTISTS:
BRYCE DWYER + MATTHEW JOYNT (InCUBATE) are two members of the Institute for Community Understanding Between Art and the Everyday (InCUBATE), a research group dedicated to exploring new approaches to arts administration and arts funding. They act as curators, researchers, and co-producers of artists' projects.  Their core organizational principle is to treat art administration as a creative practice.  More info can be found here: incubate-chicago.org

Chicago-based artist ANNA SHTEYNSHLEYGER (b. 1977) belongs to a generation of photographers whose work is notable for its formal beauty and technical execution. Over the past several years, Shteynshleyger has had to renegotiate her relationship to Orthodox Judaism, which she had practiced since the age of 16, after moving to the United States from Moscow where she was born. Too personal to qualify as documentary of the Orthodox Jewish community, Shteynshleyger's work spans a variety of genres—portraits, still-life, landscape, and interiors—all of which display a sensitivity that is as questioning as it is knowing of its subjects.

TONY TASSET received his BFA from the Art Academy of Cincinnati and his MFA from The School of The Art Institute of Chicago (1985). He is currently a professor of art and design at the University of Illinois, Chicago. Tasset has exhibited his works at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven; and Camerawork, London, among others.  He has lived and worked in Chicago for over fifteen years.  Tasset will have a one-person exhibition at Kavi Gupta (Chicago, IL) in May 2010 and his "Eye", a 30-foot tall sculptural replica of the artist's eye, will be on display at Pritzker Park from July through October 2010.

MIKE TAYLOR is a Miami-based artist whose work vacillates between text art and absurdist comic-based installation, manipulating the baggage of the screenprint as well as the sentimental unique object. His most recent forays into graphic territory are his own publication, Late Era Clash #22, Smoke Signal comic anthology out of Brooklyn, and Australian journal The Lifted Brow.
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ABOUT THE SPACE:
BEN RUSSELL is a newish art space in the Pilsen neighborhood of Chicago.  Co-curated by artists Brandon Alvendia and Ben Russell and situated around the front two rooms in the apartment of its namesake, BEN RUSSELL began presenting a series of month-long 5-person shows on Memorial Day Weekend in the year 2009.  Participating artists are invited to produce and exhibit work that is in accordance with the title/theme of each show, the name of which will be derived entirely from the 10 letters in the words "ben russell."  Future shows may include BEN RUSSELL : LENS, BEN RUSSELL : REBELS, and BEN RUSSELL : US.  In keeping with the structural conceits of the French Oulipo language group and the spatial and material limits of what is effectively a rented apartment, BEN RUSSELL maintains a set of restrictions for all exhibiting artists by which:

BEN RUSSELL features a rotating roster of Chicago-based and non-Chicago-based artists and will be open for viewings one night a month and by appointment, as needed.

Wednesday, April 07, 2010

Antena@NEXT Art Fair

Antena participates in this year's NEXT Art Fair as part of GOFFO:

NEXT: The Invitational Exhibition of Emerging Art
April 30 - May 3, 2010
http://www.nextartfair.com

2010 Show Hours
Friday, April 30: 11am - 7pm
Saturday, May 1: 11am - 7pm
Sunday, May 2: 11am - 6pm
Monday, May 3: 11am - 4pm

Next art fair will take place on the 7th floor of the Merchandise Mart, located at 222 Merchandise Mart Plaza, Chicago, IL 60654. Click here for directions and a map.


Goffo, a special section at NEXT, focusing on multiples, editions, artist books, prints and handmade objects, will host an exceptional curated selection of presses, artist collectives and small galleries. The 2010 edition of Goffo is curated with Swimming Pool Project Space.

ABOUT NEXT: 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.

ANTENA@NEXT ART FAIR: BOOTH # 9054

Featuring new works by:
Saul Aguirre
Yong Choi
Miguel Cortez
James Jankowiak

About the Artists:
Saul Aguirre was born in Mexico City, Mexico in 1974, he is a Chicago based artist. The themes of his work are personal and social criticism; some are almost magical realism dream like. He began his career at age 15, exhibiting at a National Juried Art Exhibition at the Museum of Science and Industry. He studied at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Past exhibitions include Escuela Superior de Formación Artística, ANCASH-Huaraz, Perú, West Chicago Museum, Imce General Consulate of Mexico in Chicago,Embassy of Argentina, Washington, DC, American States Organization, and Washington, DC Future shows in 2010 include an exhibit at Gallery 414 in Fort Worth, Texas and at VanBrabson Gallery in Minnesota. http://www.saulaguirre.com

Yong Choi is a Korean artist and sculptor currently residing in Chicago. He was born in Jinju, Korea, and joined Korean Army in 2002. He was a sergeant when he was discharged from the service. He moved to NewYork in 2005 because of baseball. And he accidently went to art school and moved to Chicago because of baseball. He got a BFA degree from  School of Art Institute of Chicago in 2008. He is just seeking each day’s happiness, and want to express his feeling, and celebrate and remember some specific moments. Making art is the best way to express himself, and continue growing through the process.

Miguel Cortez is an artist living in Chicago and born in Guanajuato, Mexico. He has studied filmmaking at Columbia College and has a BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Future shows in 2010 include an exhibit at Gallery 414 in Fort Worth, Texas and at VanBrabson Gallery in Minnesota. Past exhibitions included shows in Champaign, IL at the Krannert Museum and at the National Museum of Mexican Art in Chicago, as well as, in Bridge Art Fair in Miami. Other shows included exhibits in Dallas at Mighty Fine Arts Gallery, “Lo Romantico” at Glass Curtain Gallery and “Lies that Bill Gates told me: Exploring the Digital Divide” at VU Space in Melbourne, Australia. http://www.mcortez.com

James was born and raised in the Back of the Yards neighborhood on the south side of Chicago. Although his early forays in the Chicago graffiti scene proved to be influential upon several generations of spray can artists, he always took risks with his art and continues to evolve as a painter and installation artist. His work has been exhibited at several notable institutions such as the MCA, Northwestern University and the SAIC’s Roger Brown Gallery. Plus he just had a solo show at De Zwarte Ruyter in the Netherlands. This summer he will be doing an installation at CoSphere and in October will have a solo show at The Architrouve. http://www.jamesjankowiak.com/

About Antena:
"Antena" is a new project space located in Chicago's Pilsen neighborhood. The spanish word "antena" means a device that is a transducer designed to transmit or receive electromagnetic waves but in this case it is meant to define it as a cultural space that transmits/broadcasts symbolically art ideas, new media and installation projects on a local and global scale.