| Join
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. |