Gallery
Address:
119 N Peoria St, Suite 2A
Chicago, IL 60607
USA
312.480.8390
Gallery hours:
Wednesdays - Saturdays
11am to 6pm
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September 8 - October 6, 2007
- In the Main Gallery:
True Diplomacy
JIMMY & JIL BAKER
(images)
- In the Plus Gallery:
GEOFFREY TODD SMITH
Geoffrey Todd Smith Will Romance You When He Is Good And Ready!
(images)
- In the Drawing Room:
KRISTEN ROMANISZAK
(images)
In the Main Gallery:
True Diplomacy
JIMMY & JIL BAKER
At a time when America's optimism about the war in Iraq is exhausted, we have just witnessed the unveiling of the largest US embassy in the world in Baghdad. With $592 million dollars of emergency funding, the embassy will house 21 buildings, a water treatment plant, and an electrical plant on 104 acres within the Green Zone of Baghdad on the banks of the Tigris River.
Artist Jimmy Baker and architect Jil Baker set out to comprehend the US embassy project with only scraps of data found on the internet. Their interpretations of the heavily fortified hermetic complex expose the disparity between U.S. foreign policy’s ideology of “democratization” and this new war-fortress approach to diplomacy.
A dark figure looms in the painting Succession, which features a hybrid portrait of L. Paul Bremer [Director of Postwar reconstruction, 2003], and ambassadors John Negroponte, Zalmay Khalilzad, and Ryan Crocker. This mutation shows an uneasiness and uncertainty toward the factual progression of oversight in Iraqi relations. This uncertain future in Iraq prompts us to imagine a Kafka-esque vision of further metamorphosis for the figure in Succession. The architectural site model, Invisible Fortress, employs a three dimensional replica of what the complex might look like based on layout images that the architectural firm Berger Devine Yaeger leaked on the internet before being shut down by the State Department. This model is a saturated solid gold city cast into a mass of clear resin. Many reports have described the design to be 'suburban' in nature, in keeping with many accounts of life in the Green Zone. The other walls include framed images combining computer renderings of the embassy complex and screenprinted imagery depicting the turbulent existence outside of this bubble. They contrast visions of development and disaster, as they look beyond the construction phase of this behemoth site, and into its placement within the origins of human development in the Fertile Crescent.
Jimmy Baker's recent solo show, Rapture, at Roberts & Tilton in Los Angeles was written about at Artforum.com, Art US, and the Los Angeles Times. His other solo shows include The Captives at Foxy Productions in New York City and Challenges at Weston-Bolling Gallery in Cincinnati, OH. He will be included in a group show at the Contemporary Art Center in Cincinnati in 2008, and he will also exhibit at Foxy Production’s new Paris location in the spring of 2008. Jimmy has been included in shows at Western Exhibitions in Chicago, Black Floor Gallery in Philadelphia, 25 Bold Moves Emerging Artist Exhibition in Los Angeles, and the DePauw Biennial in Indiana. He holds a BFA from Columbus College of Art and Design, Ohio and an MFA from The University of Cincinnati, OH. Jimmy Baker (Dover, Ohio 1980) lives and works in Cincinnati.
Jil Baker is a project designer at Michael Schuster Associates in Cincinnati. She holds a Masters of Architecture, and a Bachelor of Science in Architecture from The University of Cincinnati, and a BFA in Interior Design from Columbus College of Art and Design. She has also studied architecture at the Denmark International School, and has worked for LSM and Studio Architecture, both in Washington DC. Jil was born in Cincinnati, OH (1979) lives and works in Cincinnati
More Jimmy Baker
In the Plus Gallery:
GEOFFREY TODD SMITH
Geoffrey Todd Smith Will Romance You When He Is Good And Ready!
Geoffrey Todd Smith's abstract drawings mix beauty and danger in equal measure, enticing viewers into fields of beautiful psychedelic patterning only to reveal wickedly spiked and thorny shapes. As viewers, we recall the moments when we began asking questions like: Why are my parents inspecting my Halloween candy? What was that high school boy in the Ace Frehley t-shirt distributing on the playground if not stickers? Influenced by nature documentaries on gorgeous carnivorous plants, great white sharks and razor sharp coral reefs, these colorful and trippy hand-made drawings are both seductive and threatening.
Smith uses a series of small geometric shapes to form fields of brightly colored images drawn with gel pens on a variety of colored papers, often including collaged elements or shapes painted in gouache. This limited vocabulary of mark making presents a range of images that evoke a mood of sentimentality for activities of his youth: jigsaw puzzles, video games, sticker collections, and doodling as well as his youthful fascination with simple geometry and one-point perspective.
A key drawing in the show, "Please Don't Lick the Pollock," was inspired by a story Geoffrey was told about a girl who had the odd desire to lick a Jackson Pollock painting on a trip to a Washington D.C. museum, a story that made him want to arouse a visceral response to the viewing of his work. Hence, Geoffrey Todd Smith will reward the patient viewer by turning them on!
In 2007 Geoffrey Todd Smith was included in "The Uncertainty Principle: Drawing in the Golden Age of Worry" at the Northern Illinois University Art Museum and in "Obsessive-Explosive" at the Evanston Art Center in Illinois. Recent shows include a solo at ButcherShopDogmatic in Chicago and group shows at Telephone Booth in Kansas City, Mixture Contemporary in Houston and SUNY-Purchase in New York Smith has work in the collections of Hallmark Cards, Inc. in Kansas City, the South Bend Regional Art Museum and Harper College in Illinois. He was featured in the April 2007 issue of Chicago Magazine as one of Chicago's "rising stars we should be collecting now" and his work has been written about in artinfo.com, twice. Smith lives and works in Chicago.More Geoffrey Todd Smith
In the Drawing Room:
KRISTEN ROMANISZAKKristen Romaniszak's comic books (masquerading as artist books) about parasites, fecal matter, bad dreams and awkward social interactions travel the line between dark humor and bad taste, marrying whimsy with disgust. Bookmaking allows her to share stories -- often autobiographical -- hilarious, weird stories, that just might embarrass her if she were to tell them in person
This show will feature 4 new books and a set of trading cards. In "Small Talk" two old friends, a moose and a bear, run into each other and catch up in that awkward small talk way. "Joe: Nature's Misfortune" is a chronicle of the physical and mental issues of her sister's dog Joe. "The Likes of Tim Biedron" and "The Dislikes of Tim Biedron" are two books cataloging the likes and dislikes of tattoo artist Tim Biedron (information for the books was gathered through interviews and eaves dropping). "Little Levi's Guide to Canine Parasites" is a set of 15 informational trading cards about parasites.
Kristen Romaniszak is currently slinging t-shirts for a living and her artist books and comics about poop and flatulence have been included in shows at Western Exhibitions, Fraction Workspace and Gallery 2 in Chicago. She received her BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2006 and currently resides in Chicago with her bisexual dog Levi.
More Kristen Romaniszak
ALL IMAGES © WESTERN EXHIBITIONS & EACH INDIVIDUAL ARTIST