Gallery
Address:
119 N Peoria, Ste 2A
Chicago, IL 60607
312.480.8390
Gallery hours:
Wednesdays - Saturdays
11am to 6pm
send email
February 23 to March 29, 2008
In the Main Gallery:
Eric Lebofsky
Sculpture
Show dates:
Opening reception:
February 23, 6 to 9pm
Gallery Hours:
Wednesday – Saturday, 12-6pm
Images
Western Exhibitions is pleased to announce a solo show of new work by Eric Lebofsky: Sculpture. Known primarily for his playful and poignant drawings and paintings, Lebofsky will dedicate his appropriately titled show to recent three-dimensional works in wood. According to the artist, these modestly scaled - "animal sized," to use his term - sculptures work with and against one another as part of a family. In making these works, the artist's studio process was improvisational: he drew inspiration both from the ancient myth of the Golem and from his cathartic and visceral work as the lead singer and saxophone player in the rock and roll band Avagami.
Lebofsky provides the following descriptions for some of his new sculptures:
"Piece of Cheese" is an actual sized piece of cheese, sitting on the floor, painted a cheesy yellow.
“OTTO” is a medium dog-sized rectangle (referencing the artist’s own dog, a bichon-poodle mix with some very antisocial personality traits) with spikes and a long phallic protrusion on facing sides (in lieu of head and tail), its palindromic composition calling to mind Dr. Doolittle's cow. The protrusions recall huge hemorrhoids. This is definitely an ass piece.
“Nostos” (def. the Homeric notion of homecoming) represents three books- Pynchon’s “Gravity's Rainbow”, Borges’ “Labyrinths”, and Joyce’s “Ulysses”, one after another, each one getting smaller, with largest being 36” and the smallest being actual scale. The details on the books are realistically painted. The first two books are hollow, referencing everything beyond the boundaries of cognitive experience, and the futility of trying to understand the unknowable through a narrative. They are hollow, stripped of book content, because they can't answer any questions. The final book, “Ulysses”, unlike the first two books, has a front and back. It is a book that celebrates homecoming, and in this model, is itself a homecoming, where mystery is grounded -- this book is literally emerging from the Earth.
“Marketwatch” imagines a stock market widget on your computer rendered out of wood, a play on hardware and software, in that it's a hard wooden embodiment of soft data.
“Bizarre Love Triangle” features two 4-feet tall spears, and one very long eraser leaning against the wall. The eraser, there to soothe the aggressive tendency of the spears, is the actual width of a common eraser, stretched out lengthwise. One spear appears to be made out of wood, and is painted "wood color." The other spear appears to be made out of flint, and carved to look as if it was chiseled using epipaleolithic techniques. The eraser is intended to look as if it was made of, well, eraser.
“Distortion” is the rock n roll piece: a black amplifier cabinet, about the size of two stacked sea turtles, with eleven rows of variously colored spikes, hooked up to a wooden distortion pedal. It is an attempt to visualize the aural quality of distortion.
This is Eric Lebofsky’s second solo show at Western Exhibitions, his first in 2005, was reviewed in Art Papers and his three person show here (with Josh Mannis and William J. O’Brien) was reviewed in Time Out Chicago. Lebofsky’s artist book, “Things to do in an Ice Age” from his 2005 show is included in the artist book collections of the Museum of Contemporary in Chicago and the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Lebofsky has had solo shows at Sears-Peyton Gallery in New York and Miller Block Gallery in Boston and has been included in several group shows nationwide. His band Avagami recently released their debut album, “Metagami” on Lens Records. Lebofsky received his BA from Columbia University in New York and his MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. He lives and works in Chicago.
ALL IMAGES © WESTERN EXHIBITIONS & EACH INDIVIDUAL ARTIST