22 is an art and design gallery just west of downtown Chicago, located on 6910 Cermak Road in Berwyn, IL.  The multi-use space is dedicated to exploring the overlap between art and design, highlighting the work of emerging and established artists and designers. Modular22 is the gallery’s most ambitious project to date, a large-scale installation featuring work from over one hundred artists, designers, and architects.
  
The entire structure measures 8 feet tall and 25 feet long, with the artwork displayed on interlocking wooden panels. The artists included in the show are from Chicago, the U.S., as well as internationally. The color palette for the artwork, done only in black and white, is intended to keep the project visually cohesive while featuring work by such a variety of artists and styles. A participatory component of the work is evident on the chalkboard panels that ask for visitors to leave their own mark. The gallery is considered new and upcoming, and the directors believe that art and design are inseparable, as evidenced by Modular22. “The project brings the infrastructure of a gallery display system to the foreground, treating it as equal to the artwork it’s used to display,” stated Calek.
                       
The gallery owners are recent MFA graduates from Cranbrook Academy of Art. Jessica Calek, architect and director of 22, designed the Modular22 Project. Dan Streeting, graphic designer, painter, and creative director of 22 built the infrastructure with Calek, and their intern Erin McGuire, a recent graduate & painter from SAIC. The Modular22 project was funded by a successful Kickstarter campaign over the past summer. The wooden panels were lasercut by Advanced Laser Cutting Technologies in Grand Rapids, Michigan.
 
MODULAR22 opened on Saturday, October 13, and the work is on display until December 22, which is also the closing reception. Make sure to check out this exciting, innovative installation! The gallery is open to the public six days a week. Check 22’s website for more details. Note: the gallery is also accessible via the CTA.

View from the entrance of the Modular22 installation , photographer: Dan Streeting

View of the Modular22 installation from the back of 22's gallery space, photographer: Dan Streeting

close-up of a lasercut panel, and some artwork in Modular22, photographer: Dan Streeting

close-up of some artwork in Modular22 installation, photographer: Dan Streeting

Attention art (and sculpture) enthusiasts:

Have you registered yet for the 23rd International Sculpture Conference?  We know that you appreciate art, but you may not know about the 23rd International Sculpture Conference in Chicago this October 4th – 6th.  We want to invite you to dive deeper into the world of sculpture, the arts, and to meet other like-minded people!  This year’s multi-track conference, Process, Public, Patron offers something for everyone, whether you are a working artist, teacher, administrator, collector, patron, or simply love sculpture!

Conference events include:

• 7 networking parties and social events
  

• Skill workshops, demonstrations, talks + activities
  

• Intimate mentor sessions

• ARTSlams – share your work with your colleagues and get instant feedback!

• Panels on current topics in the sculpture / art field (including The Transformative Nature of Sculpture on an Urban Community;  Public Art: Alternate Models;  How Can Architects and Sculptors Work Together?;  Relevance of the Gallery System: Galleries, the Internet and Art Fairs in a Changing Market)
  

• Keynote addresses by Sanford Biggers, Sophie Ryder, and Ed Uhlir

• Hundreds of people and professionals who share your interest

 
Conference panels and keynotes will be held at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC) and the Chicago Cultural Center, and the week of activity promises to be packed with lots to see and do.  Register now as optional tours, workshops and activities are also gauging interest levels – either they fill to capacity or will be cancelled.  Don’t miss out on this experience.  Register today!

Depth, humor, deception, and a whole lot of color are what you will find at Kipper and the Corpse opening this Friday, April 20th at Robert Bills Contemporary Gallery. These works of art created in a variety of different mediums, including sculpture, photography, drawing, collage, and animation will play tricks on you, abstracting spatial relationships and disguising images and materials as if it were a game. Flipping through the preview images on gallery's website, it's no wonder why this group was put together. Visually you can see parallels between form, texture, color combination, and technique. It's not until you investigate a little bit further into the artists' work where you begin to read into a clear dialogue happening between the themes and context of these crafted works as well.

(Montgomery Perry Smith)

The show features the works of four highly talented conceptual and skilled makers, Lauren Anderson, Mike Andrews, Jessica Labatte, and Montgomery Perry Smith. The three, Anderson, Labatte, and Smith are all former students at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC), while Mike Andrews, is a current faculty in the Fiber and Material Studies Department, making this a show that I personally am definitely anticipating and looking forward to. The show will be on view from April 20th until June 2nd.

(Mike Andrews)

(Lauren Anderson)

(Jessica Labatte)

Take a look at the full press release at:
http://robertbillscontemporary.com/

One of the great advantages to living in our culturally rich city is the number of colleges and universities we have here. These institutions offer an abundance of resources to those who attend, as well as to those who do not (most of us). A significant portion of Chicago’s creative vibrancy is due to its academic communities.

The School of the Art Institute of Chicago’s terrific lecture series is one that any member of the public can take advantage of - for free!

Stay up to date on who will be speaking by visiting here 

Expect to see more than just the name of respected artists on the line up – SAIC’s visiting artist program brings scholars, professors, professionals, designers, and artists together on a regular basis. Some recent guest speakers have included director of the Star Wars films, George Lucas, Berry Mcgee, Richard Tuttle, Wangechi Mutu, Terry Eagleton - one of the world's leading literary critics, and Homi K. Bhabha, director of the Humanities Center at Harvard University.

Wednesday November 2 at 6pm SAIC will welcome Professor Jenni Sorkin, professor of Critical Theory, Media, and Design at the University of Houston, as part of their Distinguished Scholars lecture series. Sorkin’s lecture is titled Ancient Modernisms. She has written several catalog essays on feminist art and material culture topics, which have appeared in sources such as Art Journal, Art Monthly, Freize, and Third Text. She has lectured at a number of institutions including CalArts, Museum of Contemporary Art, Miami; Textile Museum of Canada and School of Visual Arts, New York.

Sorkin’s lecture is sure to bring good discussion in the follow-up Q&A.

2 weeks later on November 16 SAIC is hosting two events for filmmaker Amar Kanwar.

You can also catch his lecture at 6pm on 11/16. On 11/17 there will be a screening at the Gene Siskel Film Center at 164 N State Street.

         Q&A at the Gene Siskel Film Center

 Amar Kanwar’s “films explore the politics of power, violence, sexuality, and justice.

His multi-layered installations originate in narratives often drawn from zones of conflict and are characterized by a distinctly poetic approach to the social and political. In retracing history through images, ritual objects, literature, poetry, and song, Kanwar creates lyrical, meditative film essays that do not aim to represent trauma or political situations as much as to find ways through them. Kanwar's work looks deeply into the causes and effects and how they are translated into everyday life and cultural forms (saic.edu/art_design/vap/).”

Remember that at chicagogallerynews.com we have a calendar page where we post events including other institutional events such as the Block museum, Smart museum, Columbia College, University Chicago, SAIC, and more.

All lectures are FREE and open to the public unless otherwise noted. Doors open at 5:30 p.m. and lectures begin promptly at 6:00 p.m. All seating is first come, first served. Reservations may be accepted for groups of 10 or more made at least two weeks prior to the event.

Sign up here to join the mailing list to receive info on more SAIC public events! 

This Sunday, September 11, the Evanston Art Center will present an opening reception for Dimensional Lines: Art + Dress.  The exhibition features eight Chicago-based designers, and follows them as they expose the beauty of decay while utilizing the 82-year-old Evanston Art Center’s aged condition as the perfect environment to showcase their work. 

Curators Gillion Carrara and Fraser Taylor (Taylor is also a contributing artist), extended an invitation to eight local artists to respond to the mansion’s crumbling façade, “architecturally, historically, and emotionally,” Taylor says.  Participating artists include Abigail Glaum-Lathbury, Conrad Hamather, Anke Loh, Beata Kania, Kristin Mariani, Katrin Schnabl, Kristina Sparks, and Fraser Taylor.

The artists all have a hand in the fashion world as well as in some other artistic medium, and each created a distinct work for the show.  Carrara and Taylor enlisted the help of freelance theatre designers Mary Griswold and Geoffrey Bushor to play with and transform the space using light, sound effects, and the installation of temporary walls to disorient the viewer.

Fraser Taylor speaks about his work and interest in building three-dimensional drawings - part of what his work is based on.  His installation lies between being “constructed and destroyed all at once.”  Taylor previously worked in fashion and textile designs, but has since experimented with other mediums.  In his featured work, he covers materials in black to “manifest the decay, erosion, and revolution of Evanston Art Center.”

Kristin Mariani, who is know for repurposing 80’s and 90’s leather coats, focuses on deconstructing her work while also building upon it.  Her piece is an evolving “grid of various elements associated with dressmaking” that will transform throughout the course of the exhibit.  Mariani explains how it is “about addressing the different layers of a building’s various facades.

Katrin Schnabl is a fashion designer and professor at The School of the Art Institute Chicago, who most often works as a costume designer.  Her reuse of cotton and linen pieces has created an intertwineable structure linking the interior and exterior of a space.  “The garments will be exposed to the elements.  It is deliberate in a sense that as the place is decaying, and my idea of how the memory is changing, the structure is invited to react and change.”

Insight from these three featured artists helps highlight the meaning of the exhibition and its homage to the Evanston Art Center, a home to the arts for many decades.

The exhibition opens to the public this Sunday, September 11, with a reception from 1-4pm.  Admission is free and the exhibition will run through November 6.

Where: Evanston Art Center, 2603 Sheridan Rd, Evanston, IL 60201