Posts Categorized: Exhibitions

WaterBodies

Featured Artists:

Amanda Lilleston & Lisa Matthias

Dates:

7/16/2021 – 8/31/2021

Location:

Spudnik Press Cooperative

Events

WaterBodies | Artist Talk & Virtual Reception
Tuesday July 20
7:00 p.m. CST

Visiting the Exhibition:

Visitors can make an appointment by emailing info@spudnikpress.org. Please include the date and time you would like to visit, and number of people in your party. We are typically able to accommodate visits between 10:00 a.m. – 6:00 p.m. Monday – Saturday and occasional weeknights.

Exhibition Statement:

WaterBodies features immersive relief prints by Amanda Lilleston and Lisa Matthias. 

Amanda Lilleston explores interconnected systems of biology and physiology. In her work, human beings are integrated into the larger ecosystem. Translucent prints depicting tissues, organs, and anatomical structures are layered with botanical and zoological forms. The membranous quality of the paper allows tendons, arteries, and tissues to connect and create new pathways unhindered by physiological limitations. Blood, bones, and the botanical are suspended in water and susceptible to its density, nourishment, and perpetual movement. Organic forms shift and adapt together. They shape and are shaped by their environment. 

Lisa Matthias’ artwork builds on this worldview where nature is not a separate entity but is a web. Her prints featured in WaterBodies stem from a collaboration with a colleague and scientist studying algae, aquatic ecology, and a microscopic group of algae called diatoms. Diatoms are intricately patterned single-celled organisms responsible for producing a large proportion of Earth’s oxygen. Her large scale prints embrace ambiguity. They are abstract and referential, expressive and structured, graphic and sculptural. They are simultaneously architectural and biological and could reference man-made constructions, microscopic worlds, or they could be otherworldly. 

By bringing together prints by these two artists, WaterBodies invites viewers to consider the relationships within and between humans and the natural world. With a focus on biological forms, these larger-than-life prints embrace a sense of wonder and appreciation for anatomy and ecology. They urge us to seek out unity and harmony with the biological environment that we are unmistakably a part of.

About the Artists

Amanda Lilleston

Our bodies are open systems. We are merely a pocket of the landscape we currently inhabit. I explore interconnected systems of biology and physiology where I visualize environmental pressures, toxins, and stressors impacting the ecosystem in equal force as it impacts human biology. I integrate human beings into the larger ecosystem by collaging prints of organs, tissues, and other human anatomy into botanical or zoological forms. My work as an artist explores the mutuality between the world and the bodies it continually shapes.

I explore these concepts using printmaking as my tool. I develop print collages from woodcut matrices of carved human anatomical structures as well as botanical, invertebrate, and other vertebrate morphology. I draw and carve imagery into birch plywood and print on both Sekishu and Gampi paper. After printing, I cut the paper and rebuild the Sekishu woodcuts, overlapping and reconnecting, layering imagery. I pound layers of fiber together using a stiff brush and wheat paste. In this process, tendons, arteries, and tissues are connected to create new pathways and structures. I layer this imagery through hanging Gampi woodcut prints—allowing the membranous quality of the paper to create depth and space in this suspended environment. The organic imagery is unhindered by physiological or morphological limitations. These anatomies depict organic forms shifting and adapting together, weathered and shaped by forces in the environment. The series of work I have represented is inspired by organic material floating in water−susceptible to current, density, growth, and movement—trying to reestablish physical or chemical relationships to greater cycles and systems at play. In the end, what are we really? Blood and bones chemically interconnected to each other and every organism on this planet. I find comfort in this shared experience of physicality. We are each bodies: We hurt, heal, adapt, and endure the challenges and triumphs of being alive on earth.

Amanda Lilleston is a visual artist living in Maine. Her work depicts a long and evolving relationship with human anatomy, physiology and ecology. Using drawing, carving, and printing, Lilleston transforms imagery of the body into adapting forms and structures. She received her MFA from University of Michigan and a BA in biology from Colorado College in Colorado Springs, CO. She has exhibited her work at the International Triennial Colour in Graphic Arts in Torún, Poland; Boston Printmakers North American Print Biennial; The Atlanta Print Biennial; Annual National Print Exhibitions at Artlink Contemporary Gallery in Fort Wayne, Indiana; The Detroit Artist Market; The Alden B. Dow Museum in Midland, Michigan; The Printmaking Center of New Jersey; Portal Gallery in Atlanta, Georgia; and the Ice Box Gallery in Philadelphia. She currently resides in Maine, and teaches printmaking at Colby College.

Lisa Matthias

There is the idea that humans have an innate tendency to show interest in other forms of life; we may be predisposed to focus on living things as opposed to the inanimate . Add to this supposition the evidence that all organisms have descended from the same ancestral life form: after 3.5 billion years of evolution all life remains interconnected at a genetic level. It’s clear that associations among species, between humans and other living beings, are complex and old. This kind of systems-based worldview where nature is not a separate entity but is instead a web of interactions among living things and their environments is articulated through ecology. 

Most living things are minute compared to us, and Lisa often captures microscopic imagery in the development of her artwork. She habitually looks for repetition and pattern in form. The existence of mimicry in structures and behaviours that are reiterated across species and at different scales of life is an expression of forces of natural selection at work over millions of years . Her work is frequently motivated by chance encounters with plants, animals, and patterns. 

This new developing body of large-format woodcut prints stems from a collaboration Lisa has undertaken with a scientist colleague who studies algae and aquatic ecology. In particular, these works focus on a microscopic group of algae called diatoms. Lisa was first introduced to these singled-celled organisms in a high school biology class, and went on to study them in a university course, and then further in her first job as a biologist. Diatoms are covered in intricately patterned glass cell walls, called frustules. They’re responsible for producing a large proportion of Earth’s oxygen. They’re incredibly diverse with thousands of different species.

These prints exhibit multiple ambiguities; they are abstract and referential, expressive and structured, graphic and sculptural, and biomorphic and technological. Like any organism the figurative component of each composition is to some degree interwoven with its environment. The large scale immerses viewers in images of perplexing architectural and biological configurations and perspectives. The images might seem like a magnified look at a microscopic world, they could reference some larger man-made constructions, or they could be otherworldly.

Lisa Matthias is an artist and printmaker living near Edmonton, Alberta. She completed her Master of Fine Arts in printmaking at the University of Alberta, and prior to that carried out a Master of Science in plant ecology from the University of Manitoba, and a Bachelor of Science in biology from the University of Guelph. After working as a professional ecologist for over a decade she became a full-time artist. Her environmentalism has driven each of her career paths. Her artwork frequently draws from her experiences as an ecologist, and she often captures microscopic images, and field sound recordings, in her creative practice. The idea that everything is part of a larger assemblage, emphasized by the recognition of patterns and relatedness across species and scales of life is a central theme in her work.

Image Credit:
(Left) Amanda Lilleston, Waterform (detail)
(Right) Lisa Matthias, Diatom Construction II (detail)

The Hunger Will Wake Us: Hope Wang & Farnaz Khosh-Sirat

Featured Artists:

Farnaz Khosh-Sirat and Hope Wang

Dates:

5/21/2021 – 7/2/2021

Location:

Spudnik Press Cooperative

Events

The Hunger Will Wake Us | Artist Talk & Virtual Reception
Sunday, June 6
1:00 – 2:00 p.m.
Zoom Meeting ID: 9199 0613 028

The Hunger Will Wake Us | Artist-Led Gallery Hours
Sunday, June 13
1:00 – 4:00 p.m.

Press Release:

This exhibition brings together new print work from Hope Wang and Farnaz Khosh-Sirat, who each explore the translational process of materializing digital animations and poetry text into print. Together they reflect on events of displacement through the metaphor of simultaneously losing and finding new meaning and new form via the act of translation.

Hope Wang uses printmaking, handweaving, painting, and photography to reimagine spatial association and visual perception. Wang references the architectural landscape as a malleable document of visual language where building facades become eroded, redacted, and defaced. Farnaz Khosh-Sirat is an Iranian light artist whose work employs digital tools to enhance human experiences of the sublime. Through the use of Persian architectural structures and patterns, Khosh-Sirat personifies human fragility in the contrasting positions between man and nature.

By reconfiguring fragments of hyper-specific architectural details, their works become “false” copies and traces of their constructed memories. These palimpsests’ postures of longing aren’t just decorative, but also serve as coded languages of their own.

Artist Bios:

Farnaz Khosh-Sirat

As an Iranian who has resided in various parts of the world, I am curious about the nuances of sacred spaces in the shifting cultures around me. My work engages the audience in my exploration of spiritual truths, human behavior, healing, and human relationships to the sublime.

I utilize Persian architectural structures and patterns that evoke paradise, and through the use of natural materials such as soil, grass, sugar and natural dyes, I personify human fragility in the c​ ontrasting positions between man and nature. ​As questions about technology emerge from the use of digital tools to enhance the human experience in feeling a closer presence with the sublime, I also transform these subjects into animations and video projection-mapped installations.

As my practice progresses, I have begun to question the idea of paradise, and am invested in manipulating light within space to create pause and meditative room to celebrate an honest struggle with truth.

Hope Wang

My interest in reimagining spatial association and visual perception scales into observations of trompe l’oeil and its projected desires, codes of spatial authority, and more broadly, how people form complicated relationships with the structures of their daily lives. Contending with sloppy traces of human activity around sites of industrial labour, my work references building facades that have been eroded, redacted, or defaced. I use hand-weaving, screen-printing, painting, and photography to reproduce these architectural “scars” and patterns from common construction materials. By personifying our structural environment as something malleable and flesh-like, I examine contemporary conditions of alienation through mimicry and shifts in material reality.

Through the destabilization of surface and its assumed material conditions, my work questions familiarity as sincerity or as artifice. Engaging provisional aspects of architecture that embody and evade meaning, I am both the skeptic and the nostalgic body: one longing for intimacy and perhaps only finding it in the liminal spaces that belong to nothing in particular.

Image Credit:
(Left) Farnaz Khosh-Sirat, Leyl (detail), screenprint on steel, 2021
(Right) Hope Wang, the night croaked with the ache of cicadas (detail), paper collage, 2021

Shelter In The Speculative: New Works by Spudnik Press Members

Featured Artists:

Teresita Carson Valdez, Sam Hensley, Miller & Shellabarger, Yasaman Moussavi, Kianni Pleasant-Bey, Joshi Radin, Don Widmer

Juror:

Ruby T

Dates:

11/9/2020 – 1/9/2021

Location:

Spudnik Press Cooperative (Annex)

Events

Shelter in the Speculative | Virtual Reception & Artists Talk
Monday, November 30
7:00 – 8:30 p.m. 
Zoom Meeting ID: 966 4803 1564

Shelter in the Speculative | Gallery Hours
Most Mondays 2:00 – 6:00 p.m.
Most Thursdays 2:00 – 7:00 p.m.
Most Fridays 10:00 a.m. – 6:00 p.m.
Sunday, December 12, 1:00 – 3:00 p.m. with Don Widmer
Most Saturdays, 10:00 a.m. – 2:00 p.m. with Sam Hensley

Press Release:

For the 2020 Member Exhibition, Juror Ruby T has selected artworks that have a powerful physical presence: works that feel like a form of shelter, or are an extension or impression of the artist’s own body. During the pandemic, and mass movements for revolution, this exhibition asks: What kinds of physical and relational structures will we need, or need to build, in order to survive? How will the warmth and softness of our bodies guide us? 

In Audre Lorde’s 1978 essay “Uses of the Erotic: The Erotic As Power,” she defines the erotic as “…a measure between the beginnings of our sense of self and the chaos of our strongest feelings. It is an internal sense of satisfaction to which, once we have experienced it, we know we can aspire.” She goes on to write: In touch with the erotic, I become less willing to accept powerlessness, or those other supplied states of being which are not native to me, such as resignation, despair, self-effacement, depression, self-denial.”

Kianni Pleasant-Bey includes excerpts from Lorde’s essay in Fever Dream, a soft altar space rooted in protecting and nurturing Black femmes/womxn and all that they embody. Sometimes prayerful, sometimes geometric, sometimes grim, all of the works in this exhibition show reverence for the power of the erotic and the sensual to help us navigate pleasure, illness, rest, memorial, and violence. 

Like a body, an artwork experiences and projects a physical life as it moves through the world. Experiencing art in this time of pandemic, we can more closely approach an artist’s work than we can the artist. With their rich textures and tactile materials, the works in this exhibition are further activated by proximity. 

Yasaman Moussavi’s Revelation paper pulp sculpture references the traditional central courtyard of Persian domestic architecture as a site of spatial and social interactions, along with family correspondence as a means of emotional and social exchange between family members in and far away from home.

Teresita Carson Valdez’s work draws inspiration from translation as world building, the histories of cloth, the palimpsest, the creation of new traditions and archeological imagery as markers of temporality. Her screen-printed and dyed cloth sculpture, A novena for the plague, feels like a sacred object for private prayer, made public via the extreme circumstances of the pandemic, undergirded by the movement of bodies through global trade and displacement. 

Even when viewed remotely, these works still insist on an awareness of our own spatial relationship to the artists’ bodies and internal worlds, via the stand-in, or symbolic object of the work. Miller & Shellabarger‘s Untitled pressure prints show layers upon layers of hands, giving the impression of being reached toward, or beckoned. The process for creating these images relies on physical pressure or force to create this bodily imprint, underscoring the labor and rhythm of human relationships— a theme at the heart of this collaboration between the married artists. Their gestures shift between moments of togetherness and separation, private and public, protection and pain, and visibility and invisibility. 

Don Widmer’s Darkness and Light, an artist flag book, presents quotes by Etty Hillesum, a Dutch mystic and writer, who documented her life during the German occupation of Amsterdam and her experiences at Westerbork concentration camp. The harsh, stacked geometry of the black book evokes a prison cell block, rooting our current crises of incarceration and fascism in the historical. 

Joshi Radin’s CardboardRecord006_1, made from found packing materials and used clothing in infant proportions, feels like an ultrasound from outer space after the aliens got their hands on our cardboard waste. The print records the marking of an absent body, as both a unit and a package, on a horizontal plane. 

Sam Hensley’s Little Like Yourself presents an animatronic sculpture of a mythical creature resting atop a miniature bed, its breathing slow and belabored. This piece evokes reclaimed experiences of chronic illness and disability, in which rest may be proudly claimed and celebrated. Beds become more than of convalescence, but also soft zones of  pleasure and even performance—bed as stage, stage as shelter, shelter as communion between bodies near and far.   

This exhibition’s optimism comes from its insistence on human touch, physical care and pleasure, and the act of sheltering each other, as if to say: “Even during apocalypse, even when we must rebuild everything, we will still have our bodies and each other’s bodies.”

Image Credit, clockwise from top left:

  • Yasaman Moussavi, Revelation 2, 2019, handmade paper and screenprint (detail)
  • Kianni Pleasant-Bey, Fever Dream, 2019, mixed media (detail)
  • Joshi Radin, Cardboard Record 006, 2020, monotype (detail)
  • Teresita Carson Valdez, A Novena for the Plague, 2019, screenprint, silk, dye discharge (detail)
  • Sam Hensley, Little Like Yourself, 2019, animatronic sculpture and zine (detail)
  • Miller & Shellebarger, Untitled 2, 2019, pressure print
  • Don Widmer, Darkness and Light: Words of Etty Hillesum, 2020, artist book (detail)

With Renewed Urgency: New Editions from Spudnik Press

Featured Artists:

Candida Alvarez, Alexandra Antoine, Judith Brotman, Andrea Carlson, Celeste DeLuna, Brendan Fernandes, Azadeh Gholizadeh, Erin Hayden, Benjamin Merritt, Jessie Mott, Paul Nudd, João Oliveria, Steve Reinke, Joe Tallarico, Selina Trepp

Dates:

8/24/2020 – 10/31/2020

Location:

Spudnik Press Cooperative (Printshop & Annex)

Events

Open House
Saturday, September 13, 2020
1:00 – 5:00 p.m.

Press Release:

With Renewed Urgency is our annual exhibition featuring new prints by 15 artists, created through our Residency and Invitational Publishing Programs. This exhibition reflects on the unique power of a printmaking studio to breathe new life into the art making process, and how we depend on art during times of crisis for solace and meaning. Our title and theme With Renewed Urgency is also a chance to reflect on how the current pandemic has escalated already existing social emergencies that many of our featured artists have long been making work about. The call of Andrea Carlson and Celeste De Luna’s Indigenous Futurism rings even louder, as capitalism and colonization turn COVID-19 into an economic disaster. Others like Selina Trepp and Benjamin Merritt give us critical and pleasurable ways to reconsider what it means for an artist to remain homebound, reduce their material consumption, or need to rest because of an illness.

Other show highlights include a collagraph impression of the pelt of a plastic animal by our first international Resident Artist, João Oliveira, organized in collaboration with Comfort Station and funded by the MacArthur Foundation’s International Connections Fund. The prints from Ten x Ten show a collaboration between visual artists and musicians exploring the translation of artistic gestures across media.

The Spudnik Press Cooperative Residency Program provides professional printmakers unfettered studio access for new projects. The Publishing Program welcomes artists from a variety of contemporary disciplines, ranging from painting and drawing to performance and experiential art making, to enter a centuries-old tradition of developing a fine art print in collaboration with professional printers. Through these programs, Spudnik Press invites a diverse range of artists to continue printmaking’s unique history as a fine art, a master craft, and a social practice. With Renewed Urgency showcases traditional process and new experiments in screenprint, intaglio, relief, collagraph, and digital printing, as well as an impressive range of monotype techniques and prints that used the plate-making process as a form of sculpture. By installing the exhibition throughout the printshop in which the artwork was produced, we embrace our goal of encouraging artists and audiences to move through a variety of creative roles: making, experiencing, learning, and teaching. Placing the artwork into an active print studio highlights connection among the creative, the analytical and the technical processes of art making.

Image:
Left: Benjamin Merrit, Nap Suite
Right, clockwise from top left: Alexandra Antoine, Nkrabea: A coming together; Jessie Mott, OF SOUND AND LINE; Selina Trepp, 7 beats, don’t want to do 8, it’s too square; Azadeh Gholizadeh, Memory Bubbles

See The Printed City!

Featured Artists:

Lauren Anderson, Atlan Arceo-Witzl, Alana Bailey, Ryan Basile, L. Berger, Lilli Carré, Veronica Corzo-Duchardt, Luke Daly & Bailey Romaine, Anya Davidson, Jo Dery, JNL Design, Alex Fuller, Craig Hansen, Walker Kampf-Lassin, Angee Lennard, Cynthia Marris, Keara McGraw, Michelle Miller, Jennifer O’Neill, Colin Palombi, Adam Paul, Mike Pennekamp, Chloe Perkis, Jason Pickelman, Joey Potts, Reba Rakstad, Brad Rohloff, Jill Ruzicka, Mary Sea, Emily Serruto, Derek Smith, and Joe Tallarico

Dates:

2/17/2020 – 4/8/2020

Location:

Spudnik Press Cooperative, 1821 West Hubbard, Chicago IL 60622

Corresponding Events:

Charlie and the Hashbrown Factory: 10th Annual Spudnik Press Chili Cook-Off

Exhibition Statement:

From zine fests to shows at The Hideout to Spudnik’s own “Heavy Metal County Fair” themed chili cook-off, our artists have designed stunning visuals for some of the city’s most well loved and experimental events in theatre, literature, music, and the arts. Don’t miss this deep dive into our archives, which includes 3-D posters, wearable posters, and posters so smart they come with books!

This 13-year retrospective of the Chicago arts scene through handprinted posters features screen, offset, and risography prints produced at Spudnik Press Cooperative through both open studio and in-house publishing programs.

Domestic Tides / Indigenous Mind

Featured Artist:

Jessica Christy

Dates:

11/15/2019 – 1/18/2020

Location:

Spudnik Press Cooperative, 1821 West Hubbard, Chicago IL 60622

Corresponding Events:

Domestic Tides / Indigenous Mind | Opening Reception & Artist Talk

Exhibition Statement:

Domestic Tides / Indigenous Mind explores a move from the prairies of North Dakota to the urban environment of Chicago. The exhibition considers Jessica Christy’s transplanted indigenous identity, one connected to place, in the midst of a culture shock. While exploring a new city, both foreign and known images were gathered: deer hair, parking signs, coyote tracks, municipal tickets, bird feathers, and corner store signs. Through self-applied cultural guilt and gender expectations, visuals emerge that suggest the artist’s voice is becoming comfortable in the 21st century metropolis.

As traditional printmaking moves from a commercial process to fine art editions to a contemporary medium, artists are continually exploring new matrices and substrates and their conceptual implications. The work in Domestic Tides / Indigenous Mind stems from a fascination with this contemporary shift. Images are transferred through print onto surfaces found and gathered in Chicago. The artist’s cultural and personal transition from the Great Plains to an urban Chicago environment is represented on found wood, fabric, and other surfaces through text and imagery gathered in a daily journal. Domestic Tides / Indigenous Mind employs these new substrates to intimately speak to the artist’s experiences of cultural disconnect, domestic struggles, and a general liaison with her new environment.

Download the Press Release

Artist Bio:

Christy is a native North Dakotan, born to two artists on the Sanger Art Farm, located at the northern edge of the Sheyenne River Valley. She received her MFA from the University of North Dakota in 2011 and has since created works that challenge the status quo of human activity and the resulting impacts. Heavily influenced by her upbringing in the Dakota and Lakota cultures, Christy weaves the Native experience into her work. She has shown both nationally and internationally, most recently at the Urban Institute for Contemporary Art in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Find further information at www.jessicachristy.com.

Image: Jessica Christy, Untitled (chic), 2019

Prints United: 2019 Member Exhibition

Featured Artists:

Vidisha Aggarwal
Reevah Agarwaal
Lisa Armstrong
Cat Chen
Elke Claus
Kyle Dunlap
Lya Finston
Rita Gondocs
Elnaz Javani
M Kellman
Steve Kerber
Dave Krzeminski
Gary Lehman
Dutes Miller
Yasi Moussavi
Catherine Norcott
Trent Pierson
Hope Wang

Dates:

8/30/2019-11/2/2019

Location:

Spudnik Press Cooperative, 1821 West Hubbard, Chicago IL 60622

Corresponding Events:

Reception! Prints United: 2019 Member Exhibition

Press Release:

This exhibition highlights the thing that brings us all together: Print!

Prints United: 2019 Member Exhibition features a wide variety of print-centered art making that happens at Spudnik Press Cooperative. Printmakers and fans alike are invited to celebrate the work of our beloved print geeks, relief devotees, intaglio fans, serial serigraphers, and letterpress lovers.

From the Exhibitions Committee:

“At Spudnik Press, we all feel welcome, whether we wipe plates, roll ink, or squeegee shapes. We all have in common a deep curiosity about print and an appreciation for the way ink transforms our ideas into reality. This exhibition celebrates the cacophony of visual statements made each day at Spudnik Press.”

This exhibition celebrates the cacophony of visual statements made each day at Spudnik Press.  

Download the Press Release

Noah Breuer: CB&S Werkstätte

Featured Artist:

Noah Breuer

Dates:

6/7/2019-7/27/2019

Location:

Annex of Spudnik Press Cooperative, 1821 West Hubbard, Chicago IL 60622

Corresponding Events:

Noah Breuer: CB&S Werkstätte | Opening Reception & Artist Demonstration

June 7, 2019 6:00 – 9:00pm

Press Release:

In his first Chicago solo exhibition, Noah Breuer presents prints and fabric wall hangings from his ongoing project that examines the visual legacy of “Carl Breuer and Sons” (CB&S), his Jewish family’s former textile printing business in Bohemia. The exhibition’s title, CB&S Werkstätte is a nod to the now-defunct family business that began in 1897 and was forcibly sold to Nazi-approved owners in 1942. Breuer acquired a rich digital collection of original CB&S designs and fabric samples during a 2016 research trip to the Czech Textile Museum and has used these images as the primary source material for his current work.  The exhibition features recent laser-engraved woodblock prints, large cyanotypes on cotton and an accompanying risograph-printed artist book published by Spudnik Press.   

In conjunction with the opening, Breuer will facilitate a demonstration that will allow exhibition attendees to use the laser-engraved surfaces of custom-built table-tops to make wax rubbings.  Attendees may collaborate with the artist and produce new artworks inspired by the CB&S factory designs.  The table-tops will be displayed and made available for use through the duration of the exhibition. 

About the artist:  Noah Breuer is an American artist and printmaker.  He holds a BFA in Printmaking from the Rhode Island School of Design, and an MFA in Visual Art from Columbia University. Breuer additionally earned a graduate research certificate in traditional woodblock printmaking and paper-making from Kyoto Seika University in Japan. Solo exhibitions include Spudnik Press Cooperative, Chicago, IL, Left Field Gallery, San Luis Obispo, CA, SPACE Gallery, Portland ME, and Zughaus Gallery in Berkeley, CA. He has attended residencies at the Vermont Studio Center, Ox-Bow, Kala Art Institute, Hotel Pupik, Grin City and the University of Oregon. His artist books have been published by the San Francisco Center for the Book as well as Small Editions in Brooklyn, New York. His work is in the permanent collections of the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Brooklyn Museum of Art, the Watson Library at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the Victoria & Albert Museum.  Currently, Breuer works as an Assistant Professor at Auburn University. 

Image:  Hops, 2018, woodcut, 22″ x 15”

 

Eternal Recurrence: New Editions from Spudnik Press Cooperative

Featured Artists:

Carris Adams, Claire Ashley, Judith Brotman, Elijah Burgher, Holly Cahill, Lilli Carre, Dana Carter, Tom Christison, kg, Jonathan Herrera, Richard Hull, Anita Jung, Raeleen Kao, Chad Kouri, Benjamin Larose, Judy Ledgerwood, Faheem Majeed, David Leggett, Caroline Liu, Jereon Nelemans, Paul Nudd, William J. O’Brien, Roni Packer, Steve Reinke, Kay Rosen. Alice Tippit, Orkideh Torabi, Amanda Williams, Brittney Leeanne Williams

Dates:

4/5/2019 – 5/25/2019

Location:

Spudnik Press Cooperative (Printshop & Annex)

Corresponding Events:

Opening Reception & Publisher’s Talk
Friday, April 5, 2019
6:00 – 9:00pm

Press Release:

Eternal Recurrence: New Editions from Spudnik Press Cooperative features prints by 28 artists who recently developed new print-based projects through the Spudnik Press Cooperative Residency and Publishing Programs.

The Spudnik Press Cooperative Residency Program provides artists unfettered studio access to produce a new body of print-based work. For the first time in 2018, the Residency Program was open to national artists in addition to local artists. Renowned printmakers Anita Jung and Tom Christison travelled from Iowa City to be our first regional visiting artists.

The Spudnik Press Cooperative Publishing Program invites artists representing a variety of contemporary disciplines—ranging from painting and drawing to performance and experiential art making—to develop a fine art print in collaboration with professional printers at Spudnik Press.

Together, these programs provide entry point into the unique facets of printmaking, such as its historical and cultural roots as a social art practice and its role in contemporary art practices.

The phrase Eternal Recurrence is borrowed from Steve Reinke’s print entitled Eternal Recurrence of Shame from his series featuring absurd, crude, humorous, and poetic aphorisms and short phrases. Reinke’s piece references a phenomenon Nietzsche calls “eternal recurrence” in a passage from The Gay Science. In the passage, Nietzsche asserts that existence may recur in an infinite cycle as energy and matter transform over time.

The artists included in this exhibition maintain a wide range of studio practices and experiential art making. Eternal Recurrence reflects the continual transformation of ink and paper to reflect artists’ visions and honors the act of creation as a continuous process responsive to a particular time and place–a particular recurrence of the infinite possibilities.

The work in Eternal Recurrence features screenprinting, relief, letterpress, intaglio, and monoprinting techniques, using a range of traditional and nontraditional materials and bringing together an impressive collection of artists. Each prints reflects the artist’s vision and dedication to their individual practices while showcasing the creative, analytical and technical processes of art making.

Image: Cerulean Blue Series #2, kg, 2017

Non-Constants: Ashley Freeby & Jesse Meredith

Featured Artists:

Ashley Freeby
Jesse Meredith

Dates:

1/11/2019 – 3/16/2019

Location:

The Annex @ Spudnik Press

Corresponding Events:

Opening Reception & Artist Talk
Friday, January 11, 2019
6:00 – 9:00pm

Press Release:

Emerging from recurring conversations about access, authenticity and authorship, artists Ashley Freeby and Jesse Meredith make artwork around and through one another’s experiences, from outside of their own cultural backgrounds. Over the course of a year, they have worked in one another’s studios, traded primary research sources and conducted a series of structured conversations about their own personal experiences. Non-Constants presents recent work that has stemmed from this exchange.

Many of their collaborative artworks address racialized experiences in the United States and transpose them with survivalism and defensive preparation. Using a technique of doubling, one artist produces a piece through synthesis of conversations and research, and the other re-makes it, displacing its context.

At a time of polarization and broken lines of communication, Non-Constants asks viewers to consider the impact of their own presence in the environments they inhabit, to reclaim permission to be inquisitive and open, and think outside of individualized experiences.

About the Artists:

Ashley M. Freeby (b. 1986, rural Pennsylvania) is a multidisciplinary artist whose incisive exploration of American history builds a critical examination through found sources to reveal how the history of injustices against people of color inform our understanding of society today. Recent solo exhibitions, Unjustified Patterns, Kanzlei, Berlin Germany and Palimpsest: present through past, GalleryX, Chicago. In addition, she has participated in group exhibitions in Canada, Chicago and Pennsylvania. Freeby is a 2019 HATCH Projects resident at Chicago Artist Coalition, received An Artist Opportunity Fellowship from Vermont Studio Center and participated in a residency at Institut für Alles Mögliche, Berlin, Germany. She received a MFA from School of the Art Institute of Chicago 2018 and a BA from Bucknell University 2015.

Jesse Meredith is an interdisciplinary artist working with photography, sculpture, text and video to undermine power structures and complicate simplified narratives of belonging. Born in New York City (1987), he grew up splitting his time between rural Gilboa, New York and Brooklyn. Recent solo and group Exhibitions include Reckless Comfort, Extase Chicago, Do You Fear For Your Life, 062, Chicago, and 2,3,4: Dimensional Photographies, Ohio University Seigfred Art Gallery. He was awarded the 2018 James Weinstein memorial fellowship and is currently a Field/Work artist in residence at the Chicago Artist Coalition. He has also exhibited in, New York, Philadelphia, and Buenos Aires. He currently lives and works in Chicago. He received a BFA from SUNY Purchase (2009) and an MFA from SAIC (2018).

Image: Ashley Freeby & Jesse Meredith, And What Are We Up To This Evening?, 2018, graphite, acrylic, digital collage, 14″ x 28″

 

Collective Ground | 2018 Annual Member Exhibition

Featured Artists:

Julia Arredondo, Molly Berkson, Emma Bilyeu, Jennifer Burak and Dan Spielman, Elijah Burgher, Mary Clare Butler, Jessica Christy, Ben Garbus, Orr Gidon, Colleen Hardison, Margot Harrington, David Krzeminski, Carron Little, Grace Makuch, Dan Manion, JJ McLuckie, Miller and Shellabarger, Yasaman Moussavi, Catherine Norcott, Emily Shopp, Veronica Siehl, Junli Song, Amanda Ware

Dates:

September 7 – October 20, 2018

Location:

The Annex @ Spudnik Press
1821 W. Hubbard St., Ste. 302

Gallery Hours:

Monday – Friday, 10:00 a.m. – 4:00 p.m.
Saturday, 1:00 – 5:00 p.m.

Corresponding Events:

Opening Reception
Friday, September 7, 2018
6:00 – 9:00 p.m.

EXPO Chicago’s Art After Hours 
September 28, 2018
6:00 – 9:00 p.m.

Hubbard Street Lofts Open House
Friday, October 19, 2018
6:00 – 10:00 p.m.

2018 Annual Benefit: Bad Wedding
Saturday, October 20, 2018
6:00 – 9:00 p.m.

Press Release:

Spudnik Press Cooperative is pleased to present Collective Ground, our 2018 Annual Member Exhibition. Collective Ground opens on Friday, September 7th at The Annex at Spudnik Press and will have a public reception from 6:00 to 9:00 p.m. All are welcome.

In The One and The Many: Contemporary Collaborative Art in a Global Context, art historian Grant H. Kester writes: “The workshop has emerged as a significant nexus of creative production in a wide range of collaborative and collective projects.” Inspired by the work of our own community, Collective Ground is an exhibition that highlights collaborative projects by members of Spudnik Press. This exhibition is a response to our layered and multi-generational community, comprised of creatives from different backgrounds, fields of study, and stages in their careers. It is the amalgamation of their unique perspectives and voices that allows our print shop to be a space for social, educational, and artistic exchange.

Through this exhibition, we witness work that is playful and humorous, socially conscious, or explores the boundaries of print media. The outcome is a spacious celebration of the different artistic approaches and ideas shared in our community of printmakers. This in turn, yields a transformative vision and helps craft a deeper understanding of our art practices, each other, and our surrounding communities.

We grateful to our participating artists who embarked on this project with us, and to our 140+ active members. It is their contributions that enrich our community day in and day out.

Participating collaborators include:

Julia Arredondo and JJ McLuckie
Molly Berkson and Orr Gidon
Emma Bilyeu and Dan Manion
Jennifer Burak and Dan Spielman
Elijah Burgher and Dutes Miller
Mary Clare Butler and Veronica Siehl
Jessica Christy and Spudnik Press Studio Users
Ben Garbus and Grace Makuch
Colleen Hardison and Margot Harrington
David Krzeminski and Amanda Ware
Carron Little and Spare Rib Project Contributors
Miller and Shellabarger
Yasaman Moussavi and Catherine Norcott
Yasaman Moussavi, Emily Shopp, and Junli Song

Please note, Collective Ground will have extended viewing hours on September 28th during EXPO Chicago’s Art After Hours, on Friday, October 19th during Hubbard Street Lofts Open House, and on Saturday, October 20th during our 2018 Annual Benefit: Bad Wedding.

Now More Than Ever

Featured Artists:

Emmy Lingscheit

Dates:

11/2/2018 – 12/29/2018

Location:

The Annex @ Spudnik Press

Corresponding Events:

Opening Reception & Artist Talk
Friday, November 2, 2018
6:00 – 9:00pm

Press Release:

Spudnik Press Cooperative is pleased to present Now More Than Ever, a solo exhibition featuring work by Emmy Lingscheit.

In Now More Than Ever, artist Emmy Lingscheit invites us to think about the idea and aesthetics of salvaging hope, shelter, and community out of repression, division, and catastrophe caused by rapid environmental change. Her prints offer a critique of entrenched systems and attitudes that contribute to environmental damage, amplifying social and economic inequality in the process.

Created specifically for this exhibition, and in addition to her framed work, Lingscheit hones in on the idea of a natural world out of balance through large-scale relief prints. These pieces are designed to yield prints that align edge-to-edge, repeating infinitely and building up to a visually overwhelming abundance that is both breathtaking and grotesque. Among the specimen featured in these large-scale prints are oyster mushrooms and a bloom of jellyfish, both of which may seem alien to us, but are situated to inherit the earth as we change it.

Now More Than Ever opens on November 2, 2018 and will be on view through December 29, 2018 at The Annex at Spudnik Press, 1821 W. Hubbard Street, Suite 302, Chicago, IL 60622.

About the Artist:

Emmy Lingscheit’s work critically investigates the ambiguities and exchanges between organisms and non-organisms, and that between humans and non-humans. These seemingly rigid categories become increasingly blurry as technological advances take us further into a postnatural domain, and scientific research continues to reveal surprising insights into the world we think we know. Lingscheit’s prints, drawings, and sculptural works explore the myriad ways in which we are enmeshed with the non-human world, from the cellular level to the global economy, and their implications for the ecological and climatic challenges we face.

Lingscheit exhibits her work nationally and internationally, including recent invitational and group exhibitions “New Prints 2016/Winter” at the International Print Center New York, NY, “A Curious Bestiary: Chimeras and Cryptozoology from American Printmakers” at Davidson Galleries in Seattle, WA, and “American Lithography in the 21st Century,” at the Lithographic Academy in Tidaholm, Sweden. Recent solo exhibitions include shows at the John Michael Kohler Arts Center, the University of Southern Indiana, and the Indianapolis Arts Center. She has held numerous artist residencies, including at Ucross, Brush Creek, Zygote Press, and the John Michael Kohler Arts/Industry Program. Lingscheit holds a BFA from St. Cloud State University in Minnesota, and an MFA from the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. Her work is represented by Davidson Galleries of Seattle, WA, and resides in private and public collections, including the collection of the John Michael Kohler Arts Center. Lingscheit is currently an assistant professor at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, where she is the printmaking coordinator.

Image (left to right): Emmy Lingscheit, Longitudinal Study, 2016; Mycoremediation, 2018 (detail).