WESTERN EXHIBITIONS they will not ruin us through the things that we like

In Gallery 2, we turned over the reins to Philip von Zweck who brings us a show of drawings and mixed media works on paper all relatively modest in scale, by brilliant local artists. The works are all representational and play with ideas of narrative or allegory, expanded by the way the exhibition is installed.

Anthony Elms is an artist and writer, whose drawings have been called “cryptic and quietly cunning”. As an artist, Elms' works have been exhibited at Boom (Oak Park), Gahlberg Gallery (Glen Ellyn), Mandrake (Los Angeles), and VONZWECK (Chicago), among others. His writings have appeared in Art Asia Pacific, Art Papers, Artforum, Artforum.com, Cakewalk, Coterie, Interreview.org, Modern Painters, New Art Examiner, and Time Out Chicago.

Joel Dean is a recent BFA recipient of The School of the Art Institute of Chicago. In the summer of 2008 he was a recipient of the Ellen Battell Stoeckel Fellowship and a student at the Yale University Summer School of Music and Art in Norfolk, CT. This summer he will be a Fellow at the Ox-Bow School of Art and Artist Residency in Saugatuck, MI and will be showing his work in the upcoming exhibition at Corbett vs. Dempsey, Big Youth: New Painters from Chicago.

Carol Jackson’s Sheet Music series, carved and painted leather works, begun in 2006, is inspired by original sheet music covers created during the 19th to mid 20th century, the oral culture and the MTV of their era. Jackson has exhibited at the Van Abbemuseum in the Netherlands, Gallery 400, Van Harrison Gallery, and Ten in One, all in Chicago and her work has been written about in Frieze, The New Yorker and the New York Times.

Andy Moore’s sculptures, drawings and other works attempt to traffic in clarity, transparency and honesty. Moore’s first show in Chicago was at Beret International and his last was at Butcher Shop/ Dogmatic. The work presented in this show is part of a project begun in 2003.

Mindy Rose Schwartz creates objects, installations and drawings. She has exhibited at the Renaissance Society, Gallery 400; Hyde Park Art Center; Northern Illinois University Gallery; Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions; Spertus Museum; Rose Art Museum.

Deb Sokolow’s text-driven drawings map the obsessive, inner-dialogue of a nameless, paranoid narrator who speculates on various topics relating to popular culture, conspiracy theory and human nature. Recent projects include site-specific installations for the Van Abbemuseum in the Netherlands, Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art in Kansas City, Inova in Milwaukee, the Spertus Museum in Chicago and an upcoming group exhibition at the Smart Museum at University of Chicago in fall 2009.

Amy Vogel is a Chicago-based artist. Recent solo exhibitions include Larissa Goldston in NYC, Paul Kotula Projects in Detroit and her solo show at 40000 in Chicago in 2007 was reviewed in Artforum, where her practice was described as “engaged in a kind of rustic Conceptualism”.

Curator Philip von Zweck’s projects include the on-going Temporary Allegiance at Gallery 400 in Chicago and Something Else radio program at WLUW; the VONZWECK gallery in Humboldt Park; The Fryvalry with Kevin Jennings; the [Exchange] artist book series; Vomitorium with Agitprop at 40000; Sounding Off, curated with Lorelei Stewart at Gallery 400; and the legendary “honk if you love silence” bumpersticker. Philip von Zweck won a Richard H. Driehuas Foundation Individual Artist Award in 2007 and produced and narrated perhaps the best ever Bad at Sports episode, on New Orleans, in 2008.