Mu Gallery is a fine arts gallery located in the heart of West Town, Chicago. The gallery expresses its unique perspective through event programming, including exhibitions, artist series, artist interviews, and multi-format events incorporating visual, audio, and performance components, and through the Mu Collection, containing curated works from our partner artists. The gallery community is hyperlocal and representative of the thriving and diverse background of the city. Mu Gallery was founded in 2021 by Chicago artist Lee Mosser and Chicago collector Aidan Mouat.&nbsp;Featuring&nbsp;contemporary painting, sculpture, textile, hybrid material, works on paper, conceptual, installation and performance art.Image Credit: Kate Roth&nbsp;

Mu Gallery

Mu Gallery is pleased to present and welcomes all to the opening of Autumn Maximum, a group exhibition that includes work by artists Christine Forni, Sheri Rush, Zach Weber, Jonathan Worcester, Ginny Krueger and curated by Lee Mosser. Autumn Maximum is an examination of work-intensive practices that concentrate on the process of creation itself. The works found within are generally bright, sensual and visually rich. Historically comparable to Fauvism and more recently Excessivism the works here have ‘the courage to return to the purity of means’ a phrase Matisse used to describe the wild beasts. Also, like the Fauvists, the artists shown here have voided the symbol, figure and literary aesthetic to instead embrace bold color and the elevated chaotic beauty of nature.For additional information, images, events and to arrange an appointment, please contact Lee Mosser at info@muartgallery.com.About: Mu Gallery was established in 2021, with a visual program emphasizing on conceptual, and abstract art; especially minimal, color field, geometrical and process work in all media, as well as abstracted representation. Beyond its carefully curated visual program, Mu gallery seeks to actively connect with other parts of the creative community, especially in the field of poetry, sound, and performance art.General Gallery Hours: Thursday 12-4pm/ Friday -Saturday, 11- 6 pm. www.muartgallery.com&nbsp;Copyright © 2022 Mu Gallery llc., All rights reserved.You received this email because you either signed up for our mailing list or you are already on a pre-existing mailing list.Our mailing address is: Mu Gallery 1541 Chicagon Ave., Chicago IL 60642&nbsp;

Autumn Maximum

A group exhibition that includes work by Chicago-based artists Kayla Anderson, Scott Kemp, Sofia Diaz Fernandez, Cody Norman, Jungwoo Lee, and FÁTIMA, curated by Amay Kataria.&nbsp;Curated by Amay KatariaMu Gallery is pleased to present and welcomes all to the opening of World that Awaits, a group exhibition that includes work by Chicago-based artists Kayla Anderson, Scott Kemp, Sofia Diaz Fernandez, Cody Norman, Jungwoo Lee, and FÁTIMA, curated by Amay Kataria. World that Awaits brings a compelling collection of new and existing objects that invite visitors to reflect upon a world that deviates from its assigned categories, a world that spills beyond meanings and attributes, a world that rejects trajectories ... a world that simply awaits. With a range of multimedia works rooted in contemporary and traditional practices, the exhibition glimpses upon the horizon of the unknown that unifies our existence with this world.Everything we see is in relation to us, the individual. Our mind often diffracts what we see in our environment into its constituents and assigns labels of menial or nontrivial, noble or ignoble, simple or hard, archaic or contemporary. What is the agency of a flower resting in a garden, emanating a scent that enthralls a passerby, and what are the consequences of its behavior? Perhaps on a macro level, we may appear to have these boundaries that separate us from the world around us. However, on a micro level, there is the biota that crawls or lives, within or without the body, exchanging itself with others, without any national approval. Biologists say that the gut is the second brain. So where does the “mind-body” begin and where does it end?As artists, we often use materials that bridge our vision with the expression of the world. However, the materials are not empty. Before the human encounter, they hold lives and purposes that are intertwined with culture and tradition. Perhaps, this may be an intersubjective - interconnected reality, where existence is a form of acceptance rather than resistance or resilience. Every time there is a crisis, we try to solve it, yet resulting in a new crisis. Thus, the territory of solutions is a territory of crisis. What if this circular world needs no corrections, solutions, strategies, processes, or fixes like we are affixed to approach it with? Maybe it has always spread its arms in abundance, but we have been myopic and anthropomorphic in our reactions. What seems invasive or problematic may be an opportunity to stay with the trouble and embrace it.&nbsp;Participating ArtistsKayla Anderson, Scott Kemp, Sofia Diaz Fernandez, Cody Norman, Jungwoo Lee, and FÁTIMA.Amay Kataria is a visual artist and a first-time curator, whose practice is becoming a site to excavate new ecologies that are sympoetic and correlated with nature. His methodology is communal and approach is experimental yet open-ended, while creating a field of empathy, sensitivity, care, and intimacy towards the stories that he wants to perpetuate. He holds an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and was previously a new-media resident at Art Center Nabi and Mana Contemporary. He has exhibited at Hyde Park Art Center, Ars Electronica, Electromuseum, Vector Festival, Mu Gallery, among others.&nbsp;

World that Awaits

Mu Gallery is pleased to present and welcomes all to the opening of Wall Ornament, Abraham Cone’s first solo show in Chicago. Moving across large-format oil paintings, garlands of corded milkweed silk, acrylic paintings on stretched canvas, infrared photographs, and works on paper, Cone trails through the woods of Michigan, Indiana, and Illinois, beholding places through orna- ments and ornaments as places along the way.Works in Wall Ornament are lilting, mischievous, and mirthful as they join painterly traditions of the nocturne, manuscript, and landscape. Holding narrative, myth, and eroticism dear, Cone’s visions become re-membered between stretcher bars—anointments, formed into ornament, as a return for the gift of night. Dozens of slightly varying tones blur as Cone’s brush ambulates around and around painted forms. Luminous yet subtle progressions of color re-enact the optically indistinct quality of low-light conditions. Cone sings his paintings into being even as cadences of color hum and emanate.Born and raised in rural Michigan, Cone’s subjects span bushcraft to agriculture and are often sourced from personal and familial history. Graph paper preparatory drawings pay homage to his father’s pattern-making, while his painterly precision echoes a cherished (yet bygone) lineal attention to craft. Images speak a language of adornment as subjects are set in pattern.For additional information, images, events, and to arrange an appointment, please contact Lee Mosser at 224-297-4787 | <a href="mailto:info@muartgallery.com">info@muartgallery.com</a>.Cone graduated from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2020 with a BFA in Painting. He maintains long-standing collaborations with botanists, ecologists, and naturalists, serving as the scientific illustrator for the Michigan Botanical Society’s Huron Valley Chapter these past seven years. Cone’s illustrations have been published by the Oxford University Press, AoB PLANTS, and the Arisaema. His work is held in the Ann Arbor District Library’s Print Collection, with recent exhibitions including a booth at The Other Art Fair, Chicago, and Circuition, Mu Gallery, Chicago.&nbsp;

Abraham Cone: Wall Ornament 

Lynn Basa&nbsp;discusses her new&nbsp;exhibition&nbsp;‘Hoodoos and Other&nbsp;Anomalies‘ &nbsp;On Jan 8, 2022, hundreds of small wind-carved sand formations appeared overnight on the shore of Lake Michigan near St. Joseph.&nbsp; Rarely seen and short-lived, these “sand hoodoos” became the launching point for Lynn Basa’s new series of ceramic sculptures.&nbsp; More inspiration than documentation, they are a continuation of Basa’s process to foreground the essential nature of materials by setting up situations for accidents to happen.&nbsp; After wheel-throwing the forms she allows gravity to take its course by slumping, dropping, and battering the clay while it is still malleable.&nbsp; The glaze firing adds the final unpredictable element.Basa’s paintings are handled similarly.&nbsp; She works in encaustic, an ancient medium combining oil pigments and beeswax that is applied while melted and fixed by heat.&nbsp; Not coincidentally, it shares some primary characteristics with clay in the way it reacts unpredictably to heat, can be layered and carved, and is at its best when least controlled.&nbsp; Her process acts out the personal. She scrapes the faces off of paintings that took days to build up, not only to reveal the memory of what happened beneath but as an action of dissatisfaction with what she had accomplished.&nbsp; Alternately revealing and concealing, she is always searching.&nbsp; She is influenced by the angst and awkwardness in the non precious handling of materials by artists such as Phyllida Barlow, Ruth Duckworth, Peter Voulkos, and Neanderthals.&nbsp;

Lynn Basa: Artist Talk

An exhibition of new paintings and ceramic sculptures by Lynn BasaMu Gallery is pleased to present and welcomes all to the opening of, Hoodoos and other Anomalies: New painting and sculpture by Lynn BasaOn Jan 8, 2022, hundreds of small wind-carved sand formations appeared overnight on the shore of Lake Michigan near St. Joseph. Rarely seen and short-lived, these “sand hoodoos” became the launching point for Lynn Basa’s new series of ceramic sculptures. More inspiration than documentation, they are a continuation of Basa’s process to foreground the essential nature of materials by setting up situations for accidents to happen. After wheel-throwing the forms she allows gravity to take its course by slumping, dropping, and battering the clay while it is still malleable. The glaze firing adds the final unpredictable element.Basa’s paintings are handled similarly. She works in encaustic, an ancient medium combining oil pigments and beeswax that is applied while melted and fixed by heat. Not coincidentally, it shares some primary characteristics with clay in the way it reacts unpredictably to heat, can be layered and carved, and is at its best when least controlled. Her process acts out the personal. She scrapes the faces off of paintings that took days to build up, not only to reveal the memory of what happened beneath but as an action of dissatisfaction with what she had accomplished. Alternately revealing and concealing, she is always searching. She is influenced by the angst and awkwardness in the non precious handling of materials by artists such as Phyllida Barlow, Ruth Duckworth, Peter Voulkos, and Neanderthals.Letting go of control, seeing what happens when the id supersedes ego, sums up the course of Basa’s evolution as anartist. In the series preceding this work she explored the question, what would Neanderthals make? Before the human species was touched by religion, class, discrimination, status, money, theory, before the influence of art history, what would art look like that was truly unselfconscious? In Basa’s case it lookedlike suspended three dimensional weavings of twigs, sticks, and other things found in the woods that were open for interpretation. Were they meant for ritual, warning, way finding, decoration, play, shelter, traps? This exercise in ambiguity paved the way for her current work.Lynn Basa is a painter and public artist based in Chicago. Her work is included in numerous public, private, and museum collections such as the Museum of Arts and Design (New York), Museum of Fine Arts (Boston), Rhode Island School of Design Museum (Providence), Spencer Museum (Lawrence, Kansas), Tacoma Art Museum, and others. She was included in the seminal exhibit Craft Today: Poetry of the Physical organized by the American Craft Museum before traveling to the Louvre and major museums in Helsinki, Frankfurt, Warsaw, Lausanne, Moscow, Ankara, Prague, Ghent, Goteborg, Berlin and Barcelona. Her work was also part of the Smithsonian Institute’s landmark Threadworks exhibit, which traveled throughout eastern Africa.She has taught in the Sculpture Department at SAIC, the Hyde Park Arts Center, and Creative Capital. She is the author of the Artist’s Guide to Public Art, now in its second printing. Basa has an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and an MPA in public art policy from the University of Washington, with an undergraduate degree in ceramics and art history from Indiana University. She worked for 12 years as the founding director and curator of the University of Washington Medical Center’s artprogram where she guided the collection of 1500 original artworks. Prior to that, she was the curator of the Safeco Insurance Company’s permanent collection.Basa was born in Pittsburgh and raised in Bloomington, Indiana before moving to Seattle to attend grad school. She relocated to Chicago in 2002 for its cultural vitality, opportunities, and community. In 2014 she started Corner, a storefront project space, and in 2017 founded a nonprofit organization called the Milwaukee Avenue Alliance. @lynn.basaFor additional information, images, events and to arrange an appointment, please contact Lee Mosser at 224-297-4787, info@muartgallery.com.Mu Gallery was established in 2021, with a visual program emphasizing on conceptual, and abstract art; especially minimal, color field, geometrical and process work in all media, as well as abstracted representation.Beyond its carefully curated visual program, Mu gallery seeks to actively connect with other parts of the creative community, especially in the field of poetry, sound, and performance art.&nbsp;&nbsp;

Hoodoos and Other Anomalies

Mu Gallery is pleased to present and welcomes all to the opening of ‘INSCRIPTION’, an exhibition with work by Francesca Schwartz a New York based artist and psychoanalyst. Schwartz’s work rests on her fascination with the contents and materials that make up the body. Originally working in bone, her work has expanded to include paint, wax, metal, found objects and textiles, finding expression in collage and assembled works. Her art making addresses many of the same questions confronted in her practice, finding meaning through the articulation of the unconscious and the necessary, preoccupation with the body, its disappearance, life’s beginnings and death.This exhibition aims to evoke a visual atmosphere that may be described as celestial, ethereal, spiritual or ephemeral – Like memory itself the work teeters on the fulcrum of existence and pure disintegration.Francesca Schwartz is drawn to elements of bone, dye, chiffon, paper, wood and found objects - to some of them for their precision, to others because of their elusiveness. Once in hand, alchemy takes over and what happens is unexpected - she proceeds until the unconscious emerges. By altering and reassembling the image, she encounters the space between longing and loss, memory and erasure, permanence and dissipation.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;

Inscription

Closing Reception for Circuition: Saturday May 28th 6-9pm&nbsp;A group show featuring: Abraham Cone, Jake Fagundo, Christine Forni, Hai-Wen Lin and Katie Vota in ‘Circuition.'&nbsp;Perceptions on life, death and renewal. A perfect spring time selection carefully curated to lift and celebrate the spirit.Image credit: Lee Mosser&nbsp;

Circuition

Performance art by Hai-Wen Lin, poetry reading by Colin Fleck, Christine Forni discusses ‘Fragments’ her new work on display at the gallery and Katie Vota pairs up with Leatherbee gin to create a special cocktail for you to enjoy. Gallery hours are 11am-6pm&nbsp;Image credit: Lee Mosser&nbsp;&nbsp;

Summer Session 1

The Gallery will feature a rotating collection of works and programming taking advantage of Chicago’s long summer nights and the large pool of talent gathered at Mu. Weiyang Gao, Ndivhuho Rasengani, Yvette Kaiser Smith, Lindsey Claire Newman , Colin Fleck, Abraham Cone, Jake Fungundo, Marian Carow, Munchen Wang and other fine artists will be accompanied by live intimate performance art,&nbsp; music, poetry and&nbsp; sound Installations. Watch our calendar , join the Newsletter and visit Mu Gallery for up to date information.&nbsp;Image credit: Lee Mosser&nbsp;

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