Show ran from 3/1/2012 to 3/24/2012

WAR AND PIECE    mixed media

Opening Reception Friday, March 2, 6-9pm

Victoria Szilagyi presents us with her thought-provoking  exhibit entitled War and Piece.

Working in the disciplines of both theatre and visual art, Szilagyi has deep insights and strong viewpoints on the portrayal of women.

Szilagyi states, “In mainstream western culture, the ubiquitous media relegates women to a narrow repertoire of acceptable emotional expressions and personas.  Limited depictions, exponentially reinforced through repetition and amplification of the male dominated gaze, blanket our cultural perceptions with an absurd hyperbole.”  In Szilagyi’s work, the farce of the “cat fight” forges it’s own truth on a solid foundation of paint, wax, thread and deception.

Among Szilagyi’s works will be included the painting on the left: Erinyes, which was the winner of the inspiring Sword & Pen 2011-12 play-writing and visual-arts competition. It gave inspiration to “Trash”, a new dramatic production written by Arthur M Jolly and produced by the Chicago theatre company “Babes with Blades.” The “War and Piece” exhibit runs in conjunction with the production of “Trash” at the Side Project Theatre in Chicago.

Show ran from 3/1/2012 to 3/24/2012

TYPE+CODE II    mixed media

Opening Reception Friday, March 2, 6-9pm

In her exhibit,  TYPE+CODE II, Yeohyun Ahn experiments with traditional and culturally oriented calligraphy reinterpreting modern and contemporary typography with computer codes. She uses letter forms, words, phases and sentences to explore innovative typographic forms with basic visual elements(points,lines,and circles.) Her works convey diversified visual messages inspired by nature-addressing environmental issues such as Green design, healing through Arts and exploring philosophical and religious reflections regarding life, death and love. They show alternative forms of typographic solution using the codes referenced by computer algorithms.

For more information about this artist’s work: http://www.typeandcode.com

Show ran from 3/1/2012 to 3/24/2012

MAINSPRING    mixed media

Opening Reception Friday, March 2, 6-9pm

The primary focus of Jessica Gondek’s work is abstract, stemming from an interest in technology, geometry, machine aesthetics, architecture and nature. Over the past decade, she has been working the areas of painting, printmaking, digital printmaking, and drawing.

Mainspring is an exhibition of recent work exploring the combination of inkjet print with traditional media including reduction woodcut to reveal process and create a dialogue between the hand and machine.  The amalgamation of woodcut and digital print contrasts the earliest known printmaking form with the most current.

The intermingling of new and old approaches play against each other and promote a collision between the intuitive hand derived images vs. mechanically mediated ones. On the picture plane a war is being waged between the neutrality of the computer and the fallibility of the human hand.