Gallery Address:
1821 W Hubbard, Suite 202
Chicago, IL 60622
312.307.4685
Gallery hours:
Wednesdays - Saturdays
noon to 6pm
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January 12 to February 16, 2008
In the Main Gallery
AARON VAN DYKE C-Side—Deluxe Edition!
Show dates:
January 12 to February 16, 2008
Opening reception:
January 12, 5 to 8pm
Gallery Hours:
Wednesday – Saturday, 12-6pm
One false beard worn over another, multiple sunglasses, three hats. In Aaron Van Dyke’s recent "self portraits," the artist wears disguises over disguises. The effect is comic, but also psychologically troubling. Why would one possibly need a double disguise? A fake beard covers the face, hiding identity. But this transformation can be productive, the creation of a new character.
Van Dyke's works deal with redaction and its consequences. Redaction, most commonly a blacking out of textual information, is different than erasure. Redaction covers over, but does not obliterate, information. The artist's January 2008 show at Western Exhibitions will consist of large-format digital prints and sculptural work. Presented in multiple formats and media, the "redacted" prints use found text and imagery from a variety of sources, ranging from Department of Defense documents to classic rock album covers. Some of these prints are covered with clear caulk and hair. The sculptural works are covered with small prints smothered in layers of caulk. Van Dyke's methods in these pieces include multiple layers of redaction, black-white inversions, and the repeated use of Photoshop's "spray paint" tool to conjure references to gestural painting and radical chic of faux graffiti.
Van Dyke states of his new sculptures that he has "let go of the idea of making a coherent object. Instead, I am making sculptures that split and digress." This is true not just of the work's referential promiscuity, but also of its physical status. Both the sculptures and the prints are too large to be models, too small to carry out the function of their referents, stuck between being artworks and being only grounds for display.
The roots of these works are political in the sense that their incoherence and sloppy prettiness leaves us with the uneasiness of "rendering politics aesthetic" (which, Walter Benjamin warned, leads inevitably to war). The redactions also refer to repressed lines of discourse. Peter Frampton, one of the show's most prominent images, is included because of his ability to take one of the deepest philosophical questions (indeed, one might even claim the founding question in the study of subjectivity) and turn it into a party anthem. "Do you feel like I do?"
This is Aaron Van Dyke’s third solo show with Western Exhibitions. His 2005 show at the gallery was reviewed in Art Papers and Time Out Chicago. His recent solo shows include the Kiehle Gallery at St. Cloud State University and Thomas Barry Fine Art in Minneapolis as well as an upcoming solo show at the Rochester Art Center. Van Dyke is a 2005/2006 recipient of a MCAD/McKnight Foundation Fellowship and also runs an exhibition space, Occasional Art, with Peg Brown in St. Paul, where he lives and works.
ALL IMAGES © WESTERN EXHIBITIONS & EACH INDIVIDUAL ARTIST