Gallery Address:
119 N Peoria St, Suite 2A
Chicago, IL 60607 USA
312.480.8390
Gallery hours:
Wednesdays - Saturdays
11am to 6pm
send email
December 16, 2006 to January 20, 2007
In Gallery 1
Michelle Maynard and Teena McClelland's
DEATH BY DESIGN CO.In Gallery 2
Where All the D*cks Hang OutGo here for images
Ryan Travis Christian
Dana DePew
Joe Hardesty
Rich Lane
Dutes Miller
John Neff
John Parot
Tomiko Pilson
Liz Roth
Stan Shellabarger
Shannon StrattonJoin Western Exhibitions for a holiday treat of mayhem, gore, blood and especially DEATH as we fearfully present Michelle Maynard and Teena McClelland's DEATH BY DESIGN, CO., a special effects and video-based company that specializes in providing clients with their own customized, horror film death. In this show, opening December 16, you will be able to witness splatter-style slayings from prior Death by Design residencies. On Friday, January 19 at 8pm, we will screen all Death by Design, Co. deaths to date. This screening is free and open to the public, but will require reservations, as seating is limited. Please email the gallery to make your reservations.
At Western Exhibitions, on monitors throughout the gallery, we'll be showing selected "deaths" filmed by Death by Design, Co. at Gallery 400 in January 2006. Visitors to Gallery 400 had the opportunity to construct, enact, and document a custom on-screen horror movie death scene of their choosing for a small fee. Clients formulated their own on-screen "Hollywood" death from a menu of hair-raising choices: eaten by zombies in the woods; attacked by an army of giant rats; mauled by a mutant badger; or blasted by a space cowboy. Come see some of your favorite Chicago art personalities, like Alex Jovanovich and Duncan MacKenzie, "die" a most gruesome, disgusting and ultimately hilarious death! Props and f/x from the productions will inhabit the space, as will a random "corpse" or two. Visit with Death by Design, Co. masterminds at their horror conference table to perhaps plan your own on-screen death. Professionally edited DVDs of the first twelve death scenes will be available on a point-of-purchase basis at the gallery. Autographed glossies of the DxD ladies in action will be on hand as well as special appearances by other horror film personalities! A small amount of Special Edition discs contain Bonus Features including behind-the-scenes footage, a slideshow of still images, DxD bloopers and the gut-busting Death By Design, Co. company presentation.
Chicago-based artists Michelle Maynard and Teena McClelland, through Death by Design, Co., offer a safe vehicle for exploring ideas on myth, storytelling, cinematic illusion, celebrity, and our own mortality. They achieve this by incorporating the formal appeal of splattered gore with a narrative structure and providing a humorous encounter with death through extreme situations and stunning visuals.
Both artists received MFAs from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2005. Michelle Maynard recently premiered the final cut of her feature film "Throb" at Western Exhibitions on Halloween. "Throb", an independent sci-fi/horror/comedy, tells the story of a centuries-old entity that pulsates, mutates, infects and slimes its way into the teenagers of the city of Woodbury, USA. Teena McClelland, the female lead in "Throb", has been included in shows at the Linda Warren Gallery, artLedge and the Van Harrison Gallery in Chicago. She received an Illinois Art Council Artist's Fellowship Award for New Performance Forms for 2005.
Visit the Death by Deisgn, Co. website
Western Exhibitions is pleasantly engorged to present "Where all the D*cks Hang Out" in our Plus Gallery in a show that opens on Saturday, December 16. This show of collages prominently featuring male genitalia is presented concurrently with "Death by Design" in our main gallery. Death and D*cks: can you imagine better holiday season programming!?!?
We were inspired to organize "Where all the D*cks Hang Out" during a trip to Cleveland this summer where we saw an unconscionably dense installation of penis-themed collages by Dana Depew in the basement of the Asterisk Gallery. Depew affixes large and small d*cks onto and into vintage inspirational plaques, 70's style shadow box frames, 19th century black and white photos and Norman Rockwell reproductions and we'll showcase DePew's perversities on an entire wall in the Plus Gallery.
The artists in "Where all the D*cks Hang Out" come to genitalia collage from a variety of perspectives; gay, straight, lesbian, trans, male, female, whatever. Ryan Travis Christian embellishes art from the antiquities with the member in question; Joe Hardesty's heavy metal three-fingered devil horn symbol is rendered completely from d*cks found on the web; Dutes Miller sexy surreal juxtapositions combine c*cks with lyrical linear work and plantforms; John Neff will show genital blueprints from his recent and ongoing Trans. Portrait and Pornographic Pantograph projects; John Parot's "Cock Blocked" ink and gouache collage drawings are based from recent events; Tomiko Pilson's fanciful, illusory landscape featuring masked women, snakes and you-know-what is inspired by the myth of Medusa and examines rapture and castration anxiety; Liz Roth waxes nostalgic on penises that have surprised her in drawing classes; Stan Shellabarger seamlessly inserts gay porn images into banal 1980's magazine advertisements; Shannon Stratton constructs fantastical penises using etching images from ironwork and decorative ornament patterns.
ALL IMAGES © WESTERN EXHIBITIONS & EACH INDIVIDUAL ARTIST