Gallery
Address:
119 N Peoria St, Suite 2A
Chicago, IL 60607 USA
312.480.8390
Gallery hours:
Wednesdays - Saturdays
11am to 6pm
send email
April 5 to May 17, 2008
In the Gallery 1:
Mark Wagner
Creative Accounting
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In Gallery 2:
Dead Center / Marginal Notes:
Peter Downsbrough / Jeanne Silverthorne
curated by John Neff | imagesIn the Drawing Room:
Emily Blair
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Show dates:
April 5 to May 17, 2008
Gallery Hours:
Wednesday – Saturday, 12-6pm
Western Exhibitions presents “Creative Accounting” a solo exhibition by New York-based artist Mark Wagner with a public reception from 6 to 9pm on April 5, 2008.
Wagner makes meticulous, beautiful, at times, bizarre collages with U.S. currency. The one-dollar bill is, after all, as he puts it, “the most ubiquitous piece of paper in America”. For his second solo show at Western Exhibitions, Wagner will chart the creative process of his collages, from first thoughts to sketches to the finished works. Wagner plans to install several “collage stations” in the gallery, with each station centered on a finished money collage, imagery ranging from portraits to symbols to abstractions. Accompanying the collages at the individual stations will be a blank sheet of paper with a blind embossment of a phrase or thought; an 8 ½ by 11 page of notations – pocket notes, preliminary drawings, lists, timesheets, etc.; a home-made tool that increases Wagner’s efficiency in the studio – foot counter, stool, an altered and repaired pencil sharpener, doortstop, etc.; a “degenerate” sculpture – little things Wagner does around the studio to re-focus his brain during his laborious collage process; and a 4” x 6” matted and framed currency collage.Wagner’s collages shine a light on the overlooked beauty of the dollar bill, its delicate engraving and decorative filigree and symbolism. His works range from portraits of friends to art historical icons to founding fathers. The subjects are literally made out of money in a to witty and cutting commentary on material value. to re-forming a single bill into a mesmerizing contortion. Wagner transforms an icon of American capitalism into representational images whose symbolic force asks us to question our understanding of money, its cultural significance and its relationship to art.
Mark Wagner's book and collage work is collected nationally and internationally by dozens of institutions including the Museum of Modern Art, The Walker Art Center, the New York Public Library, the Library of Congress, and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. His work has been shown at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Getty Research Institute, The Brooklyn Museum of Art, The Renaissance Society, The Milwaukee Art Museum and the Pavel Zoubok Gallery in New York. His work has been written about the Chicago Reader and in Artnet, writer Abraham Orden stating “Mark Wagner, who has made a minor practice of cutting up the almighty dollar and reassembling it into new images. The most successful of these, like Demon Dollar, throw a fresh light on the graphical ritualism of the state, but without being smug about it.” Wagner lives and works in Brooklyn, New York.
Dead Center / Marginal Notes: Peter Downsbrough / Jeanne Silverthorne is the second in a yearlong series of exhibitions for Western Exhibitions' Plus Gallery curated by John Neff. Each show in the program will present one piece each by two artists or a small selection of works by a single maker. All of the works exhibited will deal – directly or indirectly – with the relationships of centers to margins (culturally, geographically, politically and within works themselves as a formal concern). The second show in the series, opening April 5, partners an untitled sculpture by Peter Downsbrough with the 1998 work Wires with Computer by Jeanne Silverthorne.
Jeanne Silverthorne's twisted network of cast-rubber electrical wiring plays on oppositions between energy / dissipation, image / object, and sculpture / environment. Peter Downsbrough’s exactingly installed, perceptually challenging arrangement of two black pipes is likewise activated by tensions between the graphic and the volumetric and also works to disturb the distinction between the object and its setting. Dead Center / Marginal Notes: Peter Downsbrough / Jeanne Silverthorne juxtaposes these two works – which initially appear quite different – to investigate how artisanal and de-skilled, studio-based and post-studio, representational and abstract practices address similar concerns.
Since the 1960s, Peter Downsbrough’s work in installation, print, sculpture and video – among other media – has been exhibited throughout Europe and the United States. Downsbrough’s wide-ranging practice was the subject of a 2003 traveling retrospective organized by the Palais des Beaux-Arts in the artist’s adoptive hometown of Brussels, Belgium.
Jeanne Silverthorne has been exhibiting her work in installation, photography and sculpture nationally and internationally for over twenty years. Her recent projects have included solo presentations at the Butler Gallery in Kilkenny, Ireland and at Seoul’s Gallery Seomi. Additionally, the artist is a widely published critical writer and a noted educator. Silverthorne is represented by McKee Gallery in New York, were she lives and works.
Dead Center / Marginal Notes series curator John Neff lives and works in Chicago. His artwork is represented by Western Exhibitions, where he will be presenting a solo exhibition in May of 2008. Neff's past curatorial projects have included “Hysterical Pastoral” at the Ukrainian Museum of Modern Art and “Cold Conceptualism” at Suitable Gallery, both in Chicago. His writings have recently been published in BAT Journal #5 and in the exhibition catalog Vincent Como: In Praise of Darkness.
Emily Blair will be presenting new “peepshow” books in Western Exhibitions Drawing Room Gallery. The Drawing Room, in the rear of Western Exhibitions multi-room space, is periodically used to exhibit artists working on paper, with a concentration on artist books. The show opens on April 5, 2008 with a public reception from 6 to 9pm.
Emily Blair’s books physically telescope to show a series of receding planes, each one collaged with the image of a discreet, theatrical space. The effect is one of dream-like disjunction: an office cubicle leads into a redwood forest, an aquarium merges with a costume drama. The scenic elements are drawn on scratchboard, in a manner reminiscent of line engraving, enhancing the impression that the books are conventional illustrations that have unfolded to meet the viewer. Incorporating eclectic images and subjects, Blair examines the ways in which power operates through visual structures such as dioramas and television— as well as the ways in which a motivational poster can seriously harsh your mellow. Kim Novak, Alphonse de Lamartine and George Eliot are featured, in addition to a renowned celebrity feud of Hollywood’s golden age, when they knew how to carry a grudge.
Emily Blair’s work has been exhibited widely nationally and internationally, including solo and collaborative shows in Belgrade, Florence, Italy, Alfred University in New York, and the Map Room in Portland, Maine and group shows at Ironworks Gallery in the Bronx, the Warhol Museum and Wood Street Gallery, both in Pittsburgh, and the Soap Factory in Minneapolis. Blair’s comic books, “Living Statues” and “Soap Opera” have been lavishly praised in the Comics Journal, Bags and Boards, Zine World, Art New England, and the Portland Gazette. Of “Soap Opera”, Steven Grant of Comic Book Resources said “If this is a debut, it's the best debut I've seen in a long time”. She has been awarded a New York Foundation of the Arts Fellowship in Fiction and a Xeric Foundation Self-Publishing Grant. Blair received her MFA from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and lives and works in Brooklyn.
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