UP NEXT- IN PLACE OF DREAMS

IN PLACE OF DREAMS

Alberto Aguilar and Alexander "Turbo/Buster Bear" Cohen

OPENING RECEPTION: Saturday, April 10, 7-11pm

Armed with ADHD, skittles, and raw unadulterated man-child silliness secondBEDROOM becomes the battleground for a war against sleep. With play at stake, our slumber party soldiers Alberto Aguilar and Alexander "Turbo/Buster Bear" Cohen will brave the harsh biological demands of their bodies for art, a la building forts, swapping stories, confessing crushes, and making prank phone calls, the product of which will be the material for the exhibit. United for the cause since September 2009, the duo has collaborated on countless drawings, two major installations, video, sound works, and has formed the band "The Loookers" which will perform opening night.

Alberto Aguilar

Raised in the notorious mob run town of Cicero, IL. After five turbulent years of high school he enrolled in The School of the Art Institute of Chicago where he received his BFA in 1997 and MFA in 2001. For five years Alberto taught part-time at various colleges throughout Chicago and painted several public murals with assistance of students. In 2004 he decided to give up painting due to a growing skepticism

towards the sloppy medium and a feeling of isolation brought on by his studio practice. Alberto got a full-time job teaching Art History in 2004 at McHenry County College. During this time he started documenting exchange with others, family life and household chores and designating them his artwork. In 2006 he received a position at Harold Washington College in downtown Chicago where he teaches painting and drawing. In 2007 Alberto started Pedestrian Project, an art initiative dedicated to making art accessible to people from all walks of life. He regularly collaborates with others under various guises.

Alexander Cohen

Alexander Turbo Cohen the wildest creature. Knew to taking tyme and developing ideas, werks of pureness. Straight from his curls and the soul he breathes creativity. Mic check one two one two. He aspires to be a poet but hes stuck in a painting. A painterly werld he knows and he expresses that. Stay tru he myte wall ride your house and tri to eat kandi wyth your daughter. awkward amongst the prettiest of humans he has enough fokus to get werk done. An artist pure no skillz just keepin it reelz. Must make someone smile as hes livyng.

UP NEXT-JIM ZIMPEL

"by George"
new work by Jim Zimpel
Opening: Friday, February, 12, 7-11pm

Jim Zimpel exposes the scam, the myth, the hornswoggle, the hoodwink ,the great con of our most perpetuated American notions of landscape as it relates to "liberty" and American male identity. His large scale sculpture and installations acknowledge our collective fabrication of this myth with affection as well as acknowledgment of his position well within the effort. In other words Jim knows his way around the table saw, the cattle brand, the buck knife and the TIG welder.
Carrying on in this vein for "by George" Zimpel willfully inherits the aesthetic and "practical" decision making of his grandfather, Grandpa George. By the looks of it Grandpa George is a collector, a bit of a pack rat even, with stock piles of kitchen knifes, foam brushes, painter's masks and countless other trinkets and doodads all "systematically" housed or displayed by an apparatus of Grandpa George design. Zimpel closely observed the organization and construction techniques of these odd collections and adopted these methods to inform this new body of work featuring but not limited to ice fishing stations, golf ball collection containers, and other apparatuses for storing the weird and the cherished.

NEXT UP-THAD KELLSTADT

what we do is a secret
acrylic on canvas
17x16
2009

AFTER EFFECTS
by Thad Kellstadt
OPENING-Saturday, October 24th, 7-11pm

Thad Kellstadt's After Effects attempts to explore the possible afterlife of objects, once dependent on human touch, now neglected but possessing a new presence. Some believe that the breaking of a mirror brings a lengthy stint of bad luck due to the soul confiscating power of the mirrors reflective surface. After Effects investigates the animism of life's less lustrous objects. In an attempt to kill time at the office a ceiling tile fatefully gets caught in the crossfire, walls are captured in senseless decay, a corpse of one of the countless botanical casualties happening everyday across the country plus many more examples of the grizzly and mundane horrors of the deceased!

Thad Kellstadt is a multi-disciplinary artist born and raised in Ohio. His work deals with the teenage spirit, displacement, enlightenment, and modern rural mysticism & myth. He has shown nationally at Space 1026 in Philadelphia, Lump Gallery in Raleigh and Heaven Gallery in Chicago, as well as internationally at Alice Gallery in Brussels, Cell Project Space in London and SKOL in Montreal.
He currently lives and works in Chicago, IL.