A LINE DESCRIBING ETERNITY // new work by JOSEPH RYNKIEWICZ

A LINE DESCRIBING ETERNITY
new works by JOSEPH RYNKIEWICZ
MARCH 11-12, 2012

Opening Reception: Sunday, March 11, 4-8pm
Open Hours: Monday March 12, noon-4pm

ACRE Projects
1913 W 17th Street

Long Life Is In Store For You (detail), 2011, Impression of a Redwood tree on paper, 30x40"

A Line Describing Eternity explores the ephemeral, knowing that sensations can never accurately be conveyed. Through subtle gestures and their resulting artifacts Rynkiewicz attempts to actualize the immaterial with objects, embracing the tension between the two. Much like drawing an endless line, these works aim to picture that which cannot exist.

JOSEPH RYNKIEWICZ is an artist and freelance photographer living in Chicago. He received his BFA in Photography from Columbia College in ’07. When he’s not picking up freelance work or working as Exhibitions Coordinator at Marwen you can find him slinging cocktails as one half of the arts commerce project Hornswaggler Arts.

More information about Joseph Rynkiewicz can be found at www.josephrynkiewicz.com

More information about ACRE can be found at www.acreresidency.org

Prima Sakuntabhai @Cobalt Studio/ Reception Friday, March 2nd 6-9pm

Prima Sakuntabhai 
 3/2/12-3/18/12

RECEPTION

Friday, March 2nd

6pm-9pm

Cobalt Studio
1950 W. 21st St, Storefront
*Right off of Pink Line Damen Stop

Sculpture/Installation/Photography work by 

Prima Sakuntabhai, March 2012

The Mayan temple of Chichen Itza in Mexico is one of the examples of ancient constructions which strove to render a perceptive experience. During the spring and the autumn solstice, the sun casts a form of a serpent on the steps leading to the top of the pyramid. Mathematics and engineering serve the religious purpose of provoking awe.

21st century Chicago, a widely-spread urban architecture of parking lots also
becomes a field of experimentations with perception. The Traders Self Park on Wells
Street, facing the Willis Tower, is composed of two identical buildings linked on the
4th floor by a bridge.
The particular location offers, not the view of the landmark
tower but a construction site that marks the end of the Loop. It is scaled, not to
human but to vehicles, an uninhabited space whose function is only at the service
of technology. It epitomizes the metropolis culture that has developed since the
urbanization imposing a structural similitude between major cities.

The locations or sites, whether actual or imaginative offer parallel constructions
which distort a former view of the space. I either borrow the architectural
vocabulary or create an incision into the space of what is balanced, ordered,
constructed by subverting objects such as tires or mirrors.

My concern for rational, scientific questionings, rendered physical through art
forms may relate to the fact that having no homeland, drifting between Thailand,
England, France and now the United States of America, I seek not diversity but
unity that holds Mankind, a common drive of humanity. In the mental construction
of geometrical space, Man appropriates it for himself and takes profit to build
spaces for his own purposes. At the same time, vehicles, from cars to trains are the
expression of a profound desire to breach the distance in a territory that do not
match his scale. They say that the 20th century has been about the conquest of space
and the 21st century concerns itself with time.
PRIMA (Primsuda Sakuntabhai) 13th March 1989, Bangkok. Studies at the School of
the Arts Institute of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois.

EVERY NOW AND THEN I FALL APART

EVERY NOW AND THEN I FALL APART
new works by ERIN WASHINGTON
MARCH 2-9, 2012

Opening Reception: Friday March 2nd, 7-10pm
Open Hours: By Appointment 

The Plaines Project
1822 S Des Plaines Street, Chicago 60616

ACRE and THE PLAINES PROJECT present an opening reception on FRIDAY, MARCH 2, 2012 from 7-10pm at 1822 S Des Plaines St, Chicago 60618. ACRE has partnered with THE PLAINES PROJECT to host EVERY NOW AND THEN I FALL APART: new works by ERIN WASHINGTON, the next installment in ACRE's year-long series of exhibitions by 2011 ACRE summer residents.

EVERY NOW AND THEN I FALL APART
Embracing materiality and labor, Erin Washington examines themes of vulnerability and permanence. Questioning how time structures transition in ephemera, EVERY NOW AND THEN I FALL APART features mixed-media paintings and sculptures which unravel time through the performance of their belabored making, and their subsequent degradation. Washington employs fugitive and charged materials (fire, ash, moss, bones and  saliva) to depict natural phenomenon. Colors fade or pigments are burned: the objects emulate the cycles they describe. The artists’ actions and products are in a constant state of flux, highlighting the disharmony between meaning, beauty, and a fundamentally messy universe. However, the temporality of the work’s making counters ambivalence; the immediate process and present-ness the work demands eclipses uncertainty... for the moment.

Dead Alive Found object installed at ACRE, dimensions variable, 2011

ERIN WASHINGTON, Continuing Studies and Special Programs Faculty at School of the Art Institute of Chicago (2011-present). BA, 2005, University of Colorado, Boulder; MFA, 2011, School of the Art Institute Chicago. Exhibitions: NEXT fair, Chicago; Zola Lieberman, Chicago; Julius Caesar, Chicago; Heaven, Chicago; No Globe, NY; Murdertown, Chicago; Zrobilli Gallery, Chicago; School of Fine Arts, Xochimilco, Mexico. Bibliography: Time Out Chicago, Make Space, Composite Magazine. 

More information about Erin Washington can be found at www.erinwashington.com

THE PLAINES PROJECT, established in 2006, is a collectively run alternative space which seeks to provide artists, musicians and cultural organizers with a venue to exhibit, perform, and hold events that strengthen social bonds, nurture creative practices, and encourage important cultural and political conversations.  It is the goal of the Plaines Project to accommodate Chicago’s creative communities by providing an open, safe, and supportive atmosphere that is constantly redefining itself in relation to those who utilize and occupy the space.

More information about The Plaines Project can be found at:plainesproject.wordpress.com

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 www.acreresidency.org

I'M WATCHING THE SUN COME UP NOW

I'M WATCHING THE SUN COME UP NOW

new works by AIDAN FITZPATRICK

MARCH 4-5, 2012

Opening Reception: Sunday, March 4, 4-8pm

Performance at 5:45pm

Open Hours: Monday March 5, 11am-3pm

ACRE Projects

1913 w 17th Street, Chicago 60608

ACRE Projects hosts an opening reception on Sunday, March 4th, 2012 from 4-8pm at 1913 West 17th Street, Chicago, IL. ACRE Projects is proud to present AIDAN FITZPATRICK : I'M WATCHING THE SUN COME UP NOW, the next installment in ACRE's year-long series of solo exhibitions by 2012 ACRE summer residents.

I'M WATCHING THE SUN COME UP NOW features a photography and audio installation exploring the nature of perception and the passing of time. Fascinated by the complication of past and present, Fitzpatrick photographs transient moments in which she isolates the mystery that makes up our lives. Conscious of the passing of time and the experience of the present, she investigates the reality of days that quickly and almost immediately vanish as we make revolutions around the sun. This collection of days is documented through fleeting clarity and recognition, emphasizing our own internal experience and the way we find ourselves sharing this subjective experience with others. In addition to photographs, Fitzpatrick presents an audio piece that is created from cassette tapes that were recorded by her grandmother in Chicago and mailed to her while she lived as a child in Virginia.

Fog on the First Day, 2011

AIDAN FITZPATRICK is a photographer and teaching artist living and working in Chicago, IL. She received a BFA in Photography from Columbia College Chicago in 2009 where she was awarded the Presidential Scholarship. Her work investigates issues of perception, loss, and mysteries of the natural world. She teaches through CCAP’s Arts Integration Mentorship Project, the Lill Street Art Center, and After School Matters at Gallery37.

More information about Aidan Fitzpatrick can be found at www.aidanphotography.com

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 www.acreresidency.org

Artist snapshot: Alex Cohen

Alex Cohen

Standing with a plastic red cup in hand, a furry winter hat and a shirt adorned with a flock of flamingos,Alex Cohen is hard to miss.


The 22-year-old student at the Art Institute was the embodiment of everything that last week’s “Short Court: Tropical Aesthletics” stood for – funky art, indoor summer sports and sand galore even as a blizzard raged on outside Antena Gallery.
  

Cohen, whose friend Chris helped to curate the event, was invited to take part in the show, which displayed work by some of the city’s young and up-and-coming artists. Inspired by ancient totem poles, Cohen’s work was in keeping with the show’s tropical theme and result was an impressive life-sized cardboard installation that instantly dominated the room.

The Pilsen Project caught up with Cohen to talk art and the inspiration behind his work.

Where did you get the idea for the piece?

I was thinking tropical and I was also thinking about totem poles stacked on top of each other so that was the tropical lure.

What art do you interested in?

All the different types: figurative, non-representational, just everything really.

What’s your favorite medium?

I like to use acrylics, any water-based mediums and ceramics.

What was it like to create the piece?

It was a lot of fun. I went to the Field Museum to look at their totem pole and I drew inspiration from that.


Check out the rest of Alex Cohen's work here.


- Irish S.

http://thepilsenproject.blogspot.com/

Artist Snapshot: Jeriah Hildwine

Jeriah Hildwine | photo by Irish S.

We took a few minutes to chat with Chicago artist Jeriah Hildwine: a figure artist, outdoorsman, self-professed "nerd" and wearer of excellent kilts.

Hildwine, a native of San Diego Calif., has not lived in Chicago for a very long time, but he found very quickly that Chicago was an ideal place for a young artist.

“It’s fantastic,” Hildwine said of the city. “There is no better place to start your career [than Chicago].”

And he has been busy since arriving. Hildwine paints, writes articles for various arts publications, and teaches drawing and painting at various schools around the city. He says that while Chicago does not have the best market to sell art, “opportunities for…do-it-yourself stuff [art showings, galleries, etc.] are everywhere”, creating a strong network for local artists.

For his own art, Hildwine draws inspiration from a number of places, though one love of his actually does not play a huge role.

“I love the outdoors,” he said. “But it doesn’t feature in my art.”

Instead, Hildwine likes to focus on pop culture, particularly “nerd culture”: Dungeons and Dragons, horror and action movies, and similar. He likens artists and nerds to the archetypal “band and theater geeks” of high school; that, by stepping outside of the mainstream culture, they are in fact shaping it.

“There is something to be said for the outsider culture,” he said of his inspirations.

Eventually, Hildwine hopes to maintain a gallery in Chicago and live and create art somewhere outside the urban jungle, where, as he puts it with a grin, he can “live in the woods… and raise goats.”

For now, though, he is happy to be in the city he says is “absolutely a great place to be an artist.”

For more about Jeriah Hildwine, click here 

Katherine H.

http://thepilsenproject.blogspot.com/

Artist Snapshot: Saul Aguirre

Artist Snapshot: Saul Aguirre

Saul Aguirre | Photo by Irish S.

We took a few minutes at "Short Court" to speak with Pilsen artist of many mediums, Saul Aguirre. 

Aguirre has been quite a force in the Pilsen art community since arriving there, and is currently helping to organize a show for some local artists in New York this summer.

"I've been making art since I was young," Aguirre said of how he got his start in art. If he had to fix it to a number, he believes he started creating when he was around seven years old, a young boy in Mexico City, Mexico.

In 1986, Aguirre moved to Chicago, where he has lived ever since. It was here where Aguirre "really opened doors" to his art career. He went to the Art Institute, where, as a student, he "was almost like being an apprentice."

"I would ask, 'how do you use that?'" Aguirre said of the various tools and media his teachers used. "'What is that?'"

Now , Aguirre does it all, a "multidisciplinary artist," who likes to work with all kinds of media. He uses his art to express ideas about the current social and political landscape, and to "visualize what's going on in the world," Aguirre said.

Aguirre has maintained an active presence in the local Chicago art community since moving into the Pilsen neighborhood. Chicago, he feels, suffers a lack of recognition by the larger art world. The more conservative tastes of collectors who are used to art-producing giants like New York City and Miami mean that they are not buying from Chicago artists as much.

"For an artist to be here and work [only on art] is hard," Aguirre said, "there is no support system."

As such, the artists have created their own support system, and are working to bring the rest of the world up to speed on the kind of art Chicago creates. It is up to the community, Aguirre believes, to decide to put Chicago on the map as an artist's city.

Until then, Aguirre continues to do what he loves best: creating art, and helping build the art community.

"I am not exclusive," he said. "I am for the community. Anyone needs me, I'm there."

To learn more about Saul Aguirre, or learn more about his upcoming projects, clickhere!

Katherine H.

ACCIDENTS OF GRAVITY @ ACRE PROJECTS

ACCIDENTS OF GRAVITY
new works by MICHELLE ANNE HARRIS
FEBRUARY 19-20, 2012

Opening Reception: Sunday, Feb 19, 4-8pm
Open Hours: Monday Feb 20, noon-4pm

 ACRE Projects
1913 w 17th Street, Chicago 60608

ACRE Projects hosts an opening reception on Sunday, February 19, 2012 from 4-8pm at 1913 West 17th Street, Chicago, IL. ACRE Projects is proud to present MICHELLE HARRIS: ACCIDENTS IN GRAVITY, the next installment in ACRE's year-long series of solo exhibitions by 2011 ACRE summer residents.


ACCIDENTS OF GRAVITY is an exhibition of prints and sculptures invoking anxieties over trauma and loss, both past and present.  On the wall are a series of wax transfer prints based on a photographic series destroyed in a house fire.  The prints distort the original works into variations of black and white noise or static suggesting deteriorating vision, fading memories, and absence.  The theme of gravity as a force is approached both in the physical sense and in describing the weight of experience.  On the floor, an arrangement of objects pairing found and raw elements collected while traveling, sit precariously on top of minimally constructed tables.  The materials of wood, porcelain, stainless steel, and coral are repeated as variable elements that present a range of relationships from the intended to the actual function, signifying the roles of observer, collector, and traveler.

Elkhart 02.20.2002, 9x12, silver gelatin print

MICHELLE ANNE HARRIS, Associate Professor Photography and Art Education (2011). BFA, 2008, School of the Art Institute of Chicago; MFA, 2010 Cranbrook Academy of Art Bloomfield Hills, MI. Exhibitions:  Roots and Culture Contemporary Arts Center, Chicago; Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit; Buckham Gallery, Flint.Publications:  Shots Magazine; Chicago Reader. Bibliography:  Hour Detroit, Art Beat; James Madison University Literary and Arts Journal. Collections:  Marriot Inc., Sherine Marzouk. Awards:  Community Arts Assistance Program Grant,  Steketee Scholarship, Ox-Bow Residency Program.

More information about Michelle Anne Harris can be found at www.michelleanneharris.com

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 www.acreresidency.org

AUNTIE EM'S MOBILE HOME

AUNTIE EM'S MOBILE HOME
new works by MAGGIE HAAS + TJ PROECHEL
FEBRUARY 25 - MARCH 17, 2012

Opening Reception: Saturday, February 25, 6-9pm
Open Hours: Saturdays noon-5pm or by appointment

 SLOW
2153 W 21st Street, Chicago 60608

ACRE and SLOW present an opening reception on SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 25, 2012 from 6-9pm at 2153 W 21st Street, Chicago 60608. ACRE has partnered with SLOW to host AUNTIE EM'S MOBILE HOME: new works byMAGGIE HAAS + TJ PROECHEL, the next installment in ACRE's year-long series of exhibitions by 2011 ACRE summer residents.

AUNTIE EM'S MOBILE HOME

There is the bleak and the before.

A place in between. Until it gets better. We know the assumptions that go along with the trailer park. Perhaps they just moved into the smaller apartment, or have a home whose toilet functions only by pouring a bucket down the hatch to imitate a flush. They may still host a really awesome dinner party. Even trashy homes embellish; there is decor. There may be pejorative terms like lipstick on a pig, but there is something about improving upon the meager, the ugly and the compromised. Finding beauty where it is. Or making beauty with what you have.

Stories have a way of beginning with few resources, uncertain characters, and unremarkable ethics. There are certain kinds of stories that begin with a character’s hard work. Perhaps the hero will find something from within that will drive her toward a cause, a choice. The act of deciding will better the circumstance. Perhaps the outcome is less clear than better. Good guys enter the adventure out of desperation as often as by choice. Surviving the eye of a storm. And the after.

TJ Proechel and Maggie Haas both tell stories that leave out trivial things like the plot, or even distinguished characters. There are whispers of getting things done—accomplishing. There are raw spots and signs of struggle, and limitation. Subjects are vaguely old school, but could just as easily be the hipster re-make. Theirs are stories of our times. Ultimately relatable, but not triumphant or redeeming.

TJ and Maggie enter the fray at different points—Maggie is perhaps more interested in compromised normalcy, coping with uncertainty and failure. TJ flirts with becoming a criminal or superhero, maybe both at the same time.

images by Maggie Haas(top) and TJ Proechel(bottom)

MAGGIE HAAS works in drawing and sculpture, with an interest in objects and spaces that provoke a conflation of the functional and the ornamental.  She  emphasizes the transitory value of both everyday things and art materials, constructing objects and environments that appear to make and unmake themselves.  She holds an MFA from California College of the Arts, and a BFA from Carnegie Mellon University. She lives and works in San Francisco. She has exhibited and curated projects in Pittsburgh, Boston, Berlin and the Bay Area.

More information about Maggie Haas can be found at maggiehaas.com.

TJ PROECHEL is a Minneapolis based photographer. Born in Saint Paul, Minnesota, he graduated from the Maryland Institute College of Art in 2008. Proechel draws from his personal experience working as a foreclosure contractor to create work that explores themes of loss, identity and fraud within the context of foreclosure crisis. His most recent body of work, Finding Adam Buroughs, documents Proechel’s efforts to track down a man who conned him and several others out of a large sum of money, while working on a foreclosure renovation.  Proechel’s work has been featured in the New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and on NPR’s On the Media.  In 2012 his work will be shown at Alice Austen Museum and the Beijing Film Academy.  

More information about TJ Proechel can be found at tjproechel.com.

SLOW is an alternative exhibition venue for contemporary art. Not quite an apartment gallery, not commercial. Art that leans away from hipster toward introspective and vulnerable (read slightly nerdy).

More information about SLOW can be found at paul-is-slow.info

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 www.acreresidency.org

Anthony Marcos Rea: The Ones I Remember

Reception// Saturday, February 11th, 2012 // 6pm-9pm
Cobalt Studio// 1950 W. 21st St, STOREFRONT, Chicago IL 
Cobaltartstudio.blogspot.com

My artwork extends itself from an internal investigation of memories, male role models and the location of men in both urban and rural spaces that influenced how I perceived what it means to be a man. Through photographic portraiture I have attempted to catalogue the locations where I witnessed these men (together) in working-class, cultural and queer groups. By merging these sites of contention I am attempting to recreate the ongoing tension between my desires in men as a queer man of color and the vulnerabilities within my identity developed by these early constructions of masculinity.


Anthony Marcos Rea, 2011
http://anthonymrea.com/home.html//