A Solo Exhibition by Alex Kostiw

I’m calling from a great distance, through a variety of miniature and postcard-sized prints, large-scale artworks, and an artist’s book of indecipherable texts, relates the communications between a lighthouse keeper and an interplanetary explorer. The work explores the tension between physical distance and the closeness that technology can create; memory; and the scale of humanity. The prints are divided into two series. One details a sequence of a woman turning around. The other depicts planets and abstracted landscapes. The gallery becomes as a space for this two-part story to unfold.

During recent travel, Kostiw’s interest in immeasurable spaces shifted from metaphorical interior or mental spaces to physical ones. She was drawn to parallels between explorers in history who crossed oceans and the speculative exploration of other planets. She finds intrigue in the gut-wrenching contrast in size between the ocean or space and the individual, as well as in exploration as an expression of, and cause for, longing.

Throughout her practice, Kostiw’s interest is as much in what a story presents as in what it does not—in what is not said or done, as in what is. Oceans and outer space are settings that sharply highlight the inconsequentiality of humankind, but also our need for intimacy and our yearning for connection at the heart of the story.

I’m calling from a great distance will kick-off with a Gallery Talk with Alex Kostiw at 6:00 p.m. on April 7th, followed by the Opening Reception.

I’m calling from a great distance is the last of three Residency Exhibitions, a series of solo exhibitions that feature the 2016 Spudnik Press Resident Artists and the new work they each produced through the Spudnik Press Residency Program.

A Solo Exhibition by Jake Saunders

I Will Love You Forever/Hans + Eva Rausing 4/1/12-7/10/12 is a body of work by Chicago artist, Jake Saunders. In this series of etchings, the artist employs events surrounding a three month period in the relationship between Eva and Hans Kristian Rausing. These works mine for aesthetic tropes and symbolism while occupying landscapes reminiscent of European Romantic Era artists such as Fuseli, Gericault and Goya. Amalgamating these events and symbols with those of his own life, Jake conveys the deeply personal through the veil the Rausings. Merging the idiosyncratic with that of the publicly known, Jake contemplates love, anxiety, loss and the malleability of narrative.

I Will Love You Forever/Hans + Eva Rausing 4/1/12-7/10/12 will kick-off with a Gallery Talk with Jake Saunders at 6:00 p.m. on March 3, followed by the Opening Reception.

I Will Love You Forever/Hans + Eva Rausing 4/1/2012-7/10/12 is the second of three Residency Exhibitions, a series of solo exhibitions that feature the 2016 Spudnik Press Resident Artists and the new work they each produced through the Spudnik Press Residency Program.

A Solo Exhibition by Viraj Mithani

Paper to Plastic explores time and contemporary printmaking. It investigates the relationship between the hierarchy of print, painting and drawing by challenging the established norms of the mediums. By combining painting techniques with both traditional printing processes and digital prints, Paper to Plastic questions the historical segregation between the mediums. It further explores the fading practice of traditional printmaking processes and sustainable way of living with the oversaturation of digital technology. Responding to these phenomena, the constructed forms and images capture the permanence of constant change, and evoke feelings of inevitable destruction.

Paper to Plastic will kick-off with a Gallery Talk with Viraj Mithani at 6:00 p.m. on February 3, followed by the Opening Reception.

Paper to Plastic is the first of three Residency Exhibitions, a series of solo exhibitions that feature the 2016 Spudnik Press Resident Artists and the new work they each produced through the Spudnik Press Residency Program.