In Gallery 2

Combining found materials, magazine cutouts, sculptures, and ink-on-paper drawings, Sofia Moreno's new series, She-King: the Origin of Perversion, Idolatry, and Neo-Pharmaco Mythology, samples from sources as far-flung as stone-carved Mesoamerican deities, Catholic traditions, environmental terrorism, and the fashion industry to cast dark eroticism over the body as a scientifically, self-mutilated site of discomfort. This body of work probes the contemporary technologization of the flesh through its vain self-imagination. Provocations depicting exquisite and grotesque figures-cyborgs, deities, and animalistic figures-are born in her private, demi-mythological landscapes, inviting the viewer into this vulgar, alluring paradise full of violence, protected by an ancient magic. Voyeurs in this world will encounter tender creatures as part of a living, ancient culture reclaiming time, space, and justice for the perverse body.

Sofia Moreno is a multimedia artist whose subjects include expressions of the sacred and profane, the body, sexuality, religion and socio-political issues within contemporary culture. She is currently working on the follow-up to her six-year project, P o r n A g a i n, which has been shown at s+s project in San Francisco, LaGrotta Art Gallery in Queens and at Defibrillator in Chicago. She has participated in multiple group exhibitions across the world, including in Berlin, Copenhagen, Amsterdam and across the US. Moreno, born and raised in Coahuila, Mexico, immigrated to the United States in 1994. She was educated at El Centro College and the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and she lives and works in Chicago.