Gallery Address:
1821 West Hubbard, Ste
202
Chicago, IL 60622
312.307.4685
Gallery hours:
Wednesdays - Saturdays
noon to 6pm
send email
September 24 to October 30, 2005
5 Solo Shows:
Mike Andrews
Jimmy Baker: Cemetery Gates
Carl Baratta
Paul Fuchs: Cryptozoological Gung
Ben Stone
CLICK HERE FOR IMAGES
Western Exhibitions is reconfiguring the gallery into 5 distinct spaces for its fall season opener, 5 SOLO SHOWS, thus giving each of the following artists, Mike Andrews (Chicago), Jimmy Baker (Cincinnati), Carl Baratta (Chicago), Paul Fuchs (Wisconsin) and Ben Stone (Chicago), an autonomous exhibition.
Mike Andrews’ multiple-medium, drippy, gloppy sculptures (or drawings/objects/spatial paintings) might be mistaken for the spawn of an illicit encounter between Eva Hesse and Arturo Herrara. Flavorpill.com (Chicago) called his latest sculpture “a glorious mishmash of twigs, silk flowers, plastic beads, and latex paint.” His work has been most recently exhibited at Artists Space in New York and the Lobby Gallery in Chicago. Andrews, who lives and works in Chicago and received his MFA from Cranbrook, tells us: “I know the work is ready when I’m slightly embarrassed of the material combinations and their potential for metaphor”.
More info on Mike Andrews:
http://chi.flavorpill.net/mailer/issue46/index.html#sculpture
http://www.artnet.com/Magazine/reviews/velez/velez4-2-02.asp
http://www.newcitychicago.com/chicago/4531.html
http://www.lobbygallery.com/place/placepr.html
In Jimmy Baker’s mixed media installation "Cemetery Gates", a rubberized raven acts as a foreboding omen of destruction as it sits perched high on an Ikea drawer handle attached to the wall. The raven looks down toward Gothic cut-cardboard gates that open outward to showcase a vitrine encasing archived monuments to outmoded American packaging design. Baker’s mixture of painting, installation, sculpture and heavy metal and punk music focuses on the gap between science fiction and environmentalism, and the points at which the two overlap. Baker’s work has been included in shows at Foxy Productions in NYC, Publico in Cincinnati, Black Floor Gallery in Philadelphia and currently in a show at Roberts and Tilton Gallery in Los Angeles. Baker studied painting at the Columbus College of Art and Design and received his MFA from the University of Cincinnati. He lives and works in Cincinnati. More info on Jimmy Baker:
http://www.artnet.com/magazine/reviews/orden/orden4-22-05.asp
http://www.cinweekly.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20050810/ENT07/508100322/1053
http://www.citybeat.com/current/artsbeat.shtml
http://www.whatamilookingat.com
http://www.foxyproduction.com/Despite%20the%20sun.html
http://www.citybeat.com/2004-05-19/artsbeat.shtml
Carl Baratta’s intricate paintings of oddly bucolic battle scenes draw inspiration from Persian miniatures, glam-rock fashion, and kung-fu movies. Baratta will show new drawings, studies and sketches in our newly re-christened Drawing Room Gallery in the WX’s back space. Baratta showed work in our summer show, recently at Gallery 2 and Contemporary Art Workshop (both in Chicago) and has an upcoming group show in NYC and a solo show at Gallery J2 in Tokyo. Baratta lives and works in Chicago and recently received his MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. He tells us recent work may feature a dragon vomiting smaller versions of itself and more glamorous monsters. More info on Carl Baratta:
http://www.carlbaratta.com/
http://www.westernexhibitions.com/current/summer2005/baratta.html
Paul Fuchs has bottled-up all your fears in the Plus Gallery for his solo show at Western Exhibitions. For "Cryptozoological Gung" Fuchs is unveiling a collection of sculpturally-mounted paintings, drawings, and one multi-media mindbend all behind a frilly-shiny doorway of doom. Paul says: "My art is about my feelings. At this point in time I am feeling monsters. Not scary scary monsters, not eat baby animals monsters, not acid urine monsters: look closely at these creatures and you will see the apologetic phenonmenon known as 'your reflection'. I've looked at these creatures and every time my heart aches- it can be difficult to confront your feelings." Fuchs is a Wisconsin based artist and a founding member of the art group Jibangus, who screened its first feature length movie, “The Yungling” with Western Exhibitions in March 2005. A review of “The Yungling” in the Minneapolis/St.Paul City Pages mentions, “There are simply too many fucked-up images to catalogue here (and why ruin the fun?)” More info on Paul Fuchs:
http://www.westernexhibitions.com/fuchs/index.html
http://citypages.com/movies/detail.asp?MID=7016
http://www.westernexhibitions.com/jibangus/index.html
http://www.jibangus.com/
Ben Stone, creator of Nuptron 4000 (recently featured on WGN nightly news), transforms 2-dimensional illustrations of women, rip-offs of the classic Patrick Nagel style, typically found in hair salons, into distorted 3-d reliefs. Stone is fascinated by how these depictions of beauty, frozen from the 1980’s, are both grotesque and kind of hip. Translating a flat image into low relief similarly intrigues him, saying, “It seems the more 3 dimensional I make them, the stranger they become.” Stone’s hand-crafted pop sculptures and video work have been shown at the Mattress Factory in Pittsburgh, DiverseWorks in Houston, Gallery 400 and Van Harrison Gallery in Chicago and solo shows at Suitable and Ten-in-One. This summer Stone’s Nuptron 4000, a seven-foot tall, 250 pound robot performed at Stone’s wedding ceremony in 2004, was shown at the Hyde Park Art Center. Stone received his MFA from the University of Illinois-Chicago. He lives and works in Chicago More info on Ben Stone:
http://wgntv.trb.com/news/local/morningnews/wgntv-news-101504larrysworld,0,6228663.story?coll=wgntv-home-3
http://www.midweeknews.com/local/articles/111704-robot.html
http://abdominalfluid.com/images/nup.avi
http://hydeparkart.org/exhibitions/ruth_horwich_gallery/interaction.php
http://www.bridgemagazine.org/1_03art/speh.html
http://www.chicagoartcriticsassociation.org/P/s1page1.html
Western Exhibitions, a commercial gallery showing emerging and established artists who work in contemporary idioms, is a proud member of the WestTown Gallery Network, a consortium of galleries on the near-northwest side of Chicago. The Network recently published a map, hand drawn and lettered by Chicago artist Eric Lebofsky, with each gallery’s fall schedules, as well as routes to and from each space. The map is available at each gallery as well at our website: http://www.westernexhibitions.com/WestTown/index.htm
ALL IMAGES © WESTERN EXHIBITIONS & EACH INDIVIDUAL ARTIST