antena

Short Court: Tropical Aesthletics

2012-01-10T17:02:00.001-08:00

Short Court: Tropical Aesthletics 
Curated by Tag Team  
February 10 - March 10, 2012

Opening Friday February 10 from 6pm-10pm

Prepare for fun in the synthetic sun at Short Court: Tropical Aesthletics!
A sporting event and painting exhibition all in one! HOT!HOT!HOT!

This collision of spectacles has it all:
* Attendees can challenge a pair of professional volleyball players
for the chance to WIN $100!
* Chicago's best painters will display event-specific works on the
walls surrounding the court!
*!Muy Caliente! Imbibe exotic tropical beverages from the Cabana!
*!Muy Caliente! DJ set by wurkstep pioneers SICH MANG!
*!Muy Caliente! Sun Lamps, Palm Trees, Coastal Wildlife, Sun Block, and Sand!
The sandy lines dividing spectators, artists, and athletes will be
smoothed over by all feet that make their way to this one night event
at Antena.
Painters include: Adam Farcus, Adam Grossi, Alberto Aguilar, Alex Bradley Cohen, Angeline Evans, Brian Wadford, Caroline Carlsmith, Cory Glick, Edra Soto, EC Brown, Irene Perez, Jeriah Hildwine, Jim Papadopoulos, Kevin Jennings, Nicole Northway, Pamela Fraser, Philip von Zweck, Thad Kellstadt, Vincent Dermody

ANTENA
1765 S. Laflin St.
Chicago IL 60608
www.antenapilsen.com
antenapilsen (at) gmail.com
(773) 340-3516
Hours: by appointment only

Antena @ Verge Art Miami

2011-11-24T03:39:00.001-08:00

VERGE ART MIAMI BEACH AT THE GREENVIEW HOTEL 
1671 Washington Avenue @ 17th Street
December 1-4, 2011

PUBLIC HOURS
Thursday, Friday & Saturday, 2 - 3 December, Noon to 10 pm 
Sunday, 4 December, Noon to 6 pm 

OPENING NIGHT PARTY  Thursday, 1 December, 2011, 6:00 pm to 10pm

Artists showing in the Antena room: Saul Aguirre and Miguel Cortez

TOMORROW'S ART TODAY: THE THIRD ANNUAL VERGE ART MIAMI BEACH Coming Thursday, December 1, Verge Art Miami Beach invites you to experience the finest, freshest work on display in Miami Beach by living artists. Unstunted by the blue-chip rehash of a stale market, VERGE breaks away from the false quality of name recognition art to reach for something new and cutting edge. Verge Art Miami Beach is proud to host a list of exhibitors that includes international and national gallery exhibitors, and more than fifty artists for "The Drawing Show" and "Tomorrow Stars." Chosen by a distinguished panel of jurors, "Tomorrow Stars" represents the brightest and best by artists from around the globe, as selected by Meg Duguid, Clutch Gallery Director and Cultural Grants Coordinator for the Chicago Office of Tourism and Culture, Michael Thomas, Dogmatic Gallery co-founder and sitting member of the Visual Arts Committee for the Chicago Cultural Center, Patrick Collier, artist and critic for PortlandArt.net and ultraPDX.com, and VERGE owner Michael Workman. Don't miss out on this opportunity to own the work of tomorrow's stars today!  

GALLERY EXHIBITORS 
ANTIDOTE, Brooklyn, NY, and Chicago, IL, Astro Space Party, Chicago, IL, Visual Cocaine, Berlin, Germany, Friend Party Enterprises, Berlin, Germany, Antena Gallery, Chicago, IL, Van Brabson Gallery, Minneapolis, MN, Diane Birdsall Gallery, Old Lyme, CT, Byrne Art Portfolio, Merion Station, PA, McGowan Projects, London, UK, Peters Art Projects, Chicago, IL, PURE LUCK, Brooklyn, NY, Vortex Enters Void, The Muldives, Dhivehi, Klaus Gerdes Projects, New York, NY.  

TOMORROW STARS 
Chizuco Sophia Yw, "Propogate-G," Brooklyn, NY, Emi Brady, "Convergence," Brooklyn, NY, Fanny Allié, "My Town is Gone," Brooklyn, NY, Jay Paavonpera, "Front St. / Gold St.," Brooklyn, NY, Eve Lateiner, "Untitled," New York, NY, George Goodridge, "Number Twenty, Vertebrate Companion Series," Miami FL, Adrienne Outlaw, "How to Mistake Your ____ For a ____," Nashville, TN, Michael Iauch, "Giving of Myself," Brevard, NC, Jordi Williams, "Artificial Plantlet Array," Richmond, VA, Josafat Miranda, "Lover," Ft. Lauderdale, FL, Cindy Mason, "I will give you what you do(n't) want," St. Petersburg, FL, Alice Raymond, "Mise plat 5," Biscayne Park, FL, Jovan Karlo Vilalba, "A Dawn Perched on Downbursts," Miami, FL, Mare Vaccaro, "Valor," Lexington, KY, Horst Josch, "Against the Odds #4," Meerbusch, Germany, Francesco Vizzini, "On the Trunk," Brooklyn, NY, Marita Contreras, "Death2," St. Pete Beach, FL, Michael Harris, "Seven Island Way," Weston, FL, Romy Maloon, "Birthing," Marietta, GA, Melissa Maddonni Haims, "Hell," Philadelphia, PA.

THE DRAWING SHOW 
Monica Rezman, "Hairpiece 30," Chicago, IL, Jordan West, "My Desires Are Not Easily Controlled," Santa Fe, NM, Danielle Wyckoff, "Horizon (we are each others' fates)," Athens, OH, Catherine Lane, "Figure With Guns," and "Figure With Deer," Toronto, Ontario, Canada, PST, "Rape Dream", Chicago, IL, Stefan Haase, "p016," Berlin, Germany, Alice Raymond, "Cloche," Biscayne Park, FL, Charmaine Ortiz, "Graphite Spill (Aquatic)," Carolina Beach, NC, Erin Whitman, "Projections: Gojira," Eureka, CA.

Art Sale for Antena @ VERGE ART FAIR

2011-11-17T19:03:00.001-08:00

Art Sale for Antena @ VERGE ART FAIR  

Friday November 18 from 6pm-10pm  

Antena will participate in this December's Verge Art Fair in Miami and we are having an art sale to raise funds to pay for necessary expenses. We will have affordable art by Miguel Cortez, Saul Aguirre and others.

For more info on Verge Art Fair: http://www.miamibeachartfair.com/miamibeachmain.html  

ANTENA 
1765 S. Laflin St.
Chicago, IL 60608
http://www.antenapilsen.com/

New City Review: El Stitch y Bitch/Antena Gallery

2011-10-20T17:08:00.000-07:00

This exhibition of work from the group El Stitch y Bitch reminded me of the essentially “relational” aims of feminist work of the 1970s and eighties, specifically Judy Chicago’s Birth Project, a series of embroidered depictions of birth stitched by women, non-artists, from all over the country. While the work on display at Antena in Pilsen looks good, the process out of which the work arises—groups of women stitching, sharing stories, discovering common traditions and discussing the impact on their lives created by the issues of the day—is key.

The meetings of the group El Stitch y Bitch and the relationships among women which develop out of a shared interest in textiles is a crucial but not necessarily visible component of the aesthetic project. Some of the work on display was accompanied by stories: A toilet-tissue cover in the shape of a large lacy crocheted skirt with a doll on top revealed memories of visits to a widowed Abuelo whose rural neighbors probably gave him the decorative crocheted item, or at least that was what Naomi Martinez who reproduced it, speculates about its feminine presence in a man’s house. Adriana Baltazar crocheted a soft sculptural installation of weeds common to city sidewalks along with a street sign (18th Street), commenting that the beautiful, ubiquitous chicory, dandelion and thistle are like local immigrants to Chicago, non-indigenous. Claudia Marchan, whose project was the most technically polished in keeping with its retro spirit, embroidered a garland of roses around a sentimental poem and the portrait of a Mexican movie star from the forties, Pedro Infante. Not all of the work tied the women to their Abuelos and Abuelas: a door crocheted out of “plarn,” plastic bags recycled into crochet materials, with text and photographs worked into the piece, offered a contemporary green and funky take on the theme of home, an old feminist standby. One of the strongest aspects of this small exhibit, aside from color and texture, and the multiple threads informing it (Latino identity, DIY, feminist process) is the display of a diverse group of objects which have been stitched, ranging from soft sculptures, objects which have the attributes of paintings, a coverlet made out of scraps (the only functional object in the gallery) to finely embroidered portraits. (Janina Ciezadlo)

At Antena, 1765 South Laflin, (773)340-3516, through October 22
http://art.newcity.com/2011/09/27/review-el-stitch-y-bitchantena-gallery/

Antena @ MDW

2011-10-17T16:22:00.000-07:00

MDW Fall Showcase
October 21st- 23rd  at The Geolofts 3636 S Iron St.

Vernissage: Friday October 21, 8-11pm

Saturday Noon to 6pm
Sunday Noon to 6pm
$5 admission

ANTENA: BOOTH #230

Artists representing Antena: Edra Soto and Dan Sullivan

Edra Soto (b. Puerto Rico) is a Chicago based artist. In 1995 Edra received the Alfonso Arana Fellowship to work in Paris for one year. She attended The School of the Art Institute of Chicago where she obtained her Masters of Fine Arts in 2OOO. Immediately after, she attended the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture. She has exhibited nationally and internationally. Her work has been feature in New American Paintings and her show at Ebersmoore was selected Best Solo Exhibitions of 2010 NewCity Art of Chicago. Soto has lecture at El Museo de Puerto Rico, Harold Washington College and The Art Institute of Chicago among others. She is a member of the collective ED JR. with Deborah Boardman, Jeroen Nelemans and Ryan Richey. She is also the founder a fashion blog dedicated to artists with a flair for fashion called ModaMasters at modamasters.blogspot.com

Locally she has exhibited at Roots and Culture, , Longman and Eagle with Harold Arts, Ebersmoore, curatorial work for Dock 6 Design & Art Series and the UBS 12 x 12 at The Museum of Contemporary Art of Chicago among others. This summer, Edra completed a two-week residency at Ragdales newly renovated Meadow, granted by the 3Arts Foundation. Also this summer, she lectured at Beta-Local, an international contemporary space located in San Juan, Puerto Rico. Current presentations include: CoLaboratory with ED JR. and (f)utility curated by Annie Moorse at The Glass Curtain Gallery, Columbia College, Core Values at North Branch Projects and New Ways: An Exhibition of Ragdale Fellowship Artists both curated by Regin Igloria. Upcoming presentations include: Archival Impulse at UICGallery 400, LIVING By Example with husband Dan Sullivan, the inaugural exhibition of The Frankin projects space at NEIUFine Arts Center Gallery and Afterimage satellite exhibition at the Roger Brown Study Collection curated by Dahlia Tulet and Thea Liberty Nichols.

Dan Sullivan was born and raised in Maine, studying in Minnesota before moving to Chicago in 1997. After years working in both the trades and the arts, Dan used his experience to found Two Lights Contracting, specializing in residential and commercial rehabs, and Navillus WoodWorks, a custom furniture and millwork business. Clients include the Chicago Architecture Foundation, Drag City Records, Renegade Handmade, and the Illinois Holocaust Museum.

Navillus Woodworks is a member of the Dock 6 Collective, showing in the bi-annual Design & Art Series as well as with the Object Society and in The Design Harvest Art Fair. Dan has worked closely with Kujawa Architecture to develop a modular shelving system. With his wife, conceptual artist Edra Soto, Dan has collaborated on sculptural pieces that have been exhibited widely in venues including Ebersmoore Gallery and the Museum of Contemporary Art of Chicago. This last year Dan has been developing the Franklin Series, a furniture line for Navillus WoodWorks, and is in the process of securing two design patents. Dan is also an active musician, playing in the bands Rabid Rabbit and Arriver. Both bands are due to release new records on the Bloodlust! Label.

ABOUT THE MDW FAIR:
Chicago: on October 21st- 23rd, The MDW Fair presents a Fall Showcase of solo and duo exhibitions curated by small not-for-profits, artist-run spaces, independent galleries, collectives and curators from around the country. This iteration of the MDW Fair runs in conjunction with The Hand in Glove Conference and will highlight innovative curatorial and administrative practices happening in independent arts initiatives. The Fall Showcase will focus on the practices of individual artists, offering the opportunity for each artist to mount an ambitious project. The Fall Showcase, like the previous MDW Fair, will also feature an independent arts publisher’s forum.

Formed in spring 2011 as a collaborative project between the Public Media Institute, Roots & Culture and threewalls. The MDW Fair was conceived as a showcase for independent art initiatives, spaces, galleries and artist groups from the Chicago metropolitan area. The initial fair, which took place April 23 & 24th of 2011, drew large crowds and press from ArtSlant, The Chicago Tribune, Bad at Sports and more as Chicagoans gathered for a special focus on the visual arts in their county.

In conjunction with The MDW Fair, threewalls & Alliance for Independent Arts Organizers will be hosting The Hand in Glove Conference on the first floor of the Geolofts. The Hand in Glove Conference is a new semiannual conference for independent visual arts facilitators working at the crossroads of creative administration and studio practice. This conference is open to people engaged in the pragmatic realities and imaginative possibilities of organizing exhibitions, re-granting programs, publications, residencies, public programs, platforms for projects, and a variety of other programming that challenges traditional formats for the production and reception of art at the grass-roots level. The Conference takes place October 20-23rd and is open to registered participants only. Visit threewalls for more information.

Participants include:
2612 Space
65GRAND
ACRE
Alderman Exhibitions
ANTENA
ANTIDOTE
Bad at Sports
Chicago Artists Coalition
BOLT Residency
Chicago Urban Arts
DEFIBRILLATOR
Devening Projects + Editions
Document
Drawn Lots
Green Gallery
Happy Collaborationists
Harold Arts
High Concept Lab
The Hills
Hinge Gallery
Hungryman
Iceberg Projects
Itsa_pony
LVL3
Trevor Martin n
Abr Gallery
North Branch Projects
Nudashank
Old Seoul
Packer Schopf Gallery
Peanut Gallery
Pentagon
Reference
Reuben Kincaid
Roots & Culture
Sixty Inches From Center
Small Space
Spudnik Press
threewalls
Uncle Freddy’s Treats
Linda Warren
Western Exhibitions
What It Is
Propeller Fund grantees 2010

Publishers and other organizations:
Alternative Press Center
AREA Magazine
CHI_art
Golden Age
Green Lantern Press
Klein Art works
Make Magazine
Neoteric Art
Proximity, Lumpen, Materiél
Quimbys
Soberscove Press

MDW Fall Showcase
The Geolofts

3636 S Iron St.

http://mdwfair.org/

see Google Map

Review: Renovation Creep/Antena Gallery

2011-09-02T13:33:00.001-07:00

RECOMMENDED
The uncanny potential of domestic objects is key to the art-world appeal of Steven Spielberg’s 1982 sitcomesque horror classic “Poltergeist.” Twenty years later, Paul Pfeiffer’s series of sculptures by that name recreated the tower of chairs stacked on the kitchen table by Spielberg’s ghost. In “Renovation Creep,” Antena gallery’s current show, Daniel Bruttig, Joseph Cassan and Erin Thurlow remake the gallery as a dysfunctional domestic environment of desiccated ephemera (perhaps a foreclosed hoarder home) similarly inhabited by ambient menace. Echoing the Reagan-era TV through whose static the ghosts communicate in the film, a hulking monitor encased in veneer and sitting on a mat of lush pile plays Bruttig’s “Carpet Master,” a video featuring black-and-white carpet textures. One delicately painted stain on the wall evokes an absent staircase, and another suggests recently removed tile. Atop sits Bruttig’s “Glass Stack,” a precarious nonsensical tower of jars, dripping rainbow hues like a psychedelic candle and topped by a casserole dish and a marble. Jagged shards of glass protrude upwards from various sculptures, some painted as trompe-l’oeil mirrors. One such piece sits on a set of shelves adorned with a jumble of colorful ceramic agglomerations and scary assemblages, like embellished models of predatory animals and green fangs glued to a decaying shingle glued to a mirror. On the floor below is a single spray-painted fuzzy slipper, standing en pointe. Nearby sits Cassan’s “Untitled (Box),” a white cube around which snake numerous white cords, one fused into the wall. And in Thurlow’s photo series titled “Poltergeist,” power cords and power strips are plugged into themselves, and a Post-It note on a refrigerator reads “Gone to the other side”… backwards. Vladimir Nabokov’s “Terra Incognita” isn’t a ghost story, but, as in “Renovation Creep,” the evil feels internal, arising from memories of dread and repulsion rather than a fear of invasion. As Nabokov’s protagonist succumbs to illness, the jungle in which he is expiring dissolves, and he starts to see fevered glimpses of a European bedroom—or, as he puts it, “the furnished rooms of nonexistence.” (Bert Stabler)

Through September 3 at Antena, 1765 South Laflin

http://art.newcity.com/2011/08/23/review-renovation-creepantena-gallery/

Stitch and Bitch

2011-09-02T13:32:00.001-07:00

Stitch and Bitch

Opening Friday September 23rd from 6pm-10pm
September 23- October 22, 2011

Tejer y Joder
El Stitch y Bitch (SyB) was founded in 2008 as a space for knitters, crocheters and crafters in the Pilsen, Bridgeport and Little Village neighborhoods of Chicago. Currently the group is consists of over 20 members, ages 18 and up. Over the years, the group has evolved into a collaborative art group interested in addressing handmade and Do-It-Yourself (DIY) culture. As DIY culture moves into a contemporary state, many members of the group have found themselves astonished and curious by the inheritance of the handmade skill or the need to carry on the tradition in an adapted manner. Tejer y Joder is a compilation of individual SyB members and independent fiber artists, all interested in the themes of gender, identity, tradition and memory. http://elstitchybitch.wordpress.com/

Artists:
Adriana Baltazar
Krissy Bodge
Julia Chau
Esmeraldo Garcia
Irasema Gonzalez
Erika Hernandez
Claudia Marchan
Naomi Martinez
Jackie Orozco
Jessica Phillips
Elvia Rodriguez-Ochoa
Thelma Uranga

ANTENA
1765 S. Laflin St.
Chicago IL 60608
www.antenapilsen.com
antenapilsen (at) gmail.com
(773) 340-3516
Hours: by appointment only

Article in ArtSlant

2011-08-10T03:42:00.000-07:00

Antena & Miguel Cortez

by Joel Kuennen

Renovation Creep: Joe Cassan, Dan Bruttig and Erin Thurlow

Joe Cassan, Dan Bruttig and Erin Thurlow

Antena

1765 S. Laflin St., Chicago, IL 60608

August 5, 2011 - September 3, 2011

Antena (the Spanish spelling of “antenna”) is a project space run by Miguel Cortez of the now-defunct Polvo collective and magazine. Located in Pilsen, Antena has a history of presenting new and interesting work that has given it a reputation of excellent curation representative of young artists and emerging work at the intersection of genres most important to the contemporary moment. Mr. Cortez points to his laissez-faire approach to curating as the key to keeping artists and patrons interested in Antena. “I allow artists to alter the space for their experimentation. Artists can paint the walls, put up bathroom tile (like the current show “Renovation Creep”) and even build walls. For a show about two years ago this artist wanted more wall space for his paintings so he had an L-shaped wall built. At the end of the show I left it in place for future artists to use.”

Antena is itself an apartment gallery following in the long tradition that has defined Chicago’s art scene for years. Both because of the prevalence of two large art school institutions that bring in a rotating cast of artists and curators, the apartment gallery is kept as a transient phenomenon. Cortez takes advantage of this through allowing the space to reflect each show. The apartment renews with each exhibition.

Installation view of "Renovation Creep" at Antena. Image courtesy of Antena

Much of the contemporary art scene in Chicago is a cloud of alternative gallery spaces that come into existence for a year or two and then disappear. Some transition into more permanent institutions, others are lost to time and the revolving door of the city. Sometimes, as is the case with Miguel Cortez, the closing of one space, Polvo, leads to the opening of another, Antena.

Cortez says of the consecutive galleries; “Both were very similar and it was just a natural transition. Polvo was run by a collective. Once the collective disbanded then I decided to continue using my apartment to showcase art under a different name.” The mission didn’t change however. What has changed is the frequency of shows as well as their make-up. “With Antena there are fewer shows a year and most are one person shows (with the exception of the current show). Antena runs six-to-eight shows a year as opposed to twelve shows a year and more group shows during the Polvo years.”

“Renovation Creep,” is on view (by appointment) until September 3^rd and will be followed by an exhibition by a local group of female crafters called El Stitch y Bitch, following Antena’s mission “as a cultural space that transmits/broadcasts symbolically art ideas, new media and installation projects on a local and global scale.”

-Joel Kuennen, ArtSlant Staff Writer
http://www.artslant.com/chi/articles/picklist#p24566

Renovation Creep: Joe Cassan, Dan Bruttig and Erin Thurlow

2011-07-19T17:27:00.000-07:00

Renovation Creep: Joe Cassan, Dan Bruttig and Erin Thurlow

Opening Friday August 5th from 6pm-10pm
August 5- September 3, 2011

Three artists, Daniel Bruttig, Joe Cassan and Erin Thurlow will be sculpting, painting and directly intervening in the space of Antena gallery for their show, Renovation Creep. Simultaneously material and ephemeral, the work here resembles the haunted, transitory nature of urban apartment dwelling.

Renovation Creeps

History: We are, many of us, temporary occupants of someone else's property. For most people who live in cities, in fact, it represents the reality of the American Way of Life far better than the well-branded American Dream of home (house) ownership. It will most likely be an apartment, a collection of rooms 'distinguished' by a patchwork of occupant-renovations, handyman quick-fixes, cheap fixtures and bad paint jobs. The typical rental is a way-station for young up-and-comers, or a mortgage-free house for the lifelong renters. From the Victorian-era railroad, to the condo-style mod flat, each is home to a succession of denizens who leave behind a particular residential stain.

Palimpsest: A raw spot remains on a surface when a thing fixed there for a long time previously, is removed. It is anti-residue; clean space on an aged plane that has evaded the ruin of time. Move a picture frame that has hung for years on the too-long-unrepainted wall, and you will expose a lighter, brighter rectangle. This sort of mark shows along a floor after walls have been torn out, fixtures have been removed, and carpets pulled back. The minor spirits that remain, remind us that the apartment has had a history prior to our brief residence. Conversely, there is an organic quality to the gradual accumulation of paint, wall paper, and hole-filler that covers the walls, obscuring the details left from a more meticulous era. It is like a moss on the forest floor, covering the duff in a soft, uniform carpet.

Patina: The cabinets, some sort of revival in nineteenth century, frontier design, now just look anachronistic; plywood and melamine surfaces tarted up with Gothic drawer pulls and moulding. Worse, the details, narrow clefts and dimples, are caked and filled with a residue of dust (90% dead human skin), cooking grease and tobacco resin. Who knows how many Marlboros, fondue parties, cut fingers and splatted Yoplait Yogurts it took to create such a

(Also note: The jerry rigged wiring and fixtures that follow a succession of handymen, do-it-yourselfers and building supervisors resembles the growth of benign tumors.)

Labyrinth: Pull back the carpet or linoleum, scrape the wallpaper, remove a cabinet hung during a cheap renovation. What do you see? Another, older pattern of wallpaper? Pristine hardwood flooring, or urine-soaked, rotting press-board. Rip open a wall and you find a door behind it. Rather than unpainted drywall, the hole in the wall reveals another wall, floral wall paper graffitid with a handwritten grocery list. 'Your' flat is a labyrinth of histories, wandered by the ghosts of those who became lost there.

-Erin Thurlow

ANTENA
1765 S. Laflin St.
Chicago IL 60608
www.antenapilsen.com
antenapilsen (at) gmail.com
(773) 340-3516
Hours: by appointment only

Closing Reception: PLUGGED OUT: New works by Salvador Jiménez Flores

2011-07-18T16:24:00.000-07:00

PLUGGED OUT: New works by Salvador Jiménez Flores

Closing Reception Friday July 22nd from 6pm-10pm

This experimental mixed-media installation highlights the reliance of modern humanity on technological innovations. In this digital age, we have become wholly dependent on devices that can be plugged in. Our jobs, our social lives and even our food production—all aspects of our existence rely on technology.

We are so intertwined with our iPhones and Androids it is as though we are becoming like them. This hardwiring of our hearts and minds will surely rob us of our humanity.

ANTENA
1765 S. Laflin St.
Chicago IL 60608
www.antenapilsen.com
antenapilsen (at) gmail.com
(773) 340-3516
Hours: by appointment only

"Is this thing on?: The art of comedy"

2011-07-14T23:28:00.000-07:00

"Is this thing on?: The art of comedy"
Guest Curator: Miguel Cortez from Antena

Opening Friday August 12 from 6pm-10pm
August 12-28, 2011

"If Jesus had been killed twenty years ago, Catholic school children would be wearing little electric chairs around their necks instead of crosses."
- Lenny Bruce

Contemporary art is too serious sometimes. This show will focus on the lightheartedness and humor in art. Most of us are part of the system and work 40+ hours a week and by the weekend we just want to unwind and be entertained. Then this show is just for you. These artists use irony, goofiness, satire, and sarcasm in their work.

Artists:
Andy Detskas
Ben Pederson
Catie Olson
Chris Silva
Darrell Luce
David Leggett
Lauren Feece
Meg Duguid
Nick Black
Nicole Marroquin
Paul Shortt
Rick Huggett
Sarah Perez

Born June 3rd, 1975, Andy Detskas grew up hopping around the Midwest, deep South and East coast. Like many artists, Andy began to work at a young age exploring drawing, painting and sculpture. Since graduating from Cranbrook Academy of Art in 2000 Andy's work has varied as much as the places he grew up; exploring themes of human scale, urban ruin, defacement, landscape, ghosts, robots and typography. Andy's current body of work is focused on using discarded motel landscape paintings as a canvas for hand-drawn typography and strange comedic characters. http://andyandyandy.com/

Ben Pederson was born in 1979 in Grand Rapids Michigan and received his B.A. in Studio art from Aquinas College in 2003. He went on to obtain his M.F.A. in Sculpture from the University of Massachusetts, which he received in 2007. After graduate school, Ben moved to Brooklyn, New York, where he worked as an art handler and continued to make and show work. Now residing in Madison, WI, he has shown in Chicago and throughout the midwest as well as staying involved with shows and screenings on the east coast. http://benforceblog.blogspot.com/

Catie Olson is multi-disciplinary artist born in Decatur, Illinois, the pleasant home of two chicken cars. She received her BS from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 1995 in Agriculture, ventured to Chicago and received her BFA at the School of the Art Institute in 2000. Catie organizes SpiderBug, a mobile short film festival, along with her husband, EC Brown. The pair also run Floor Length and Tux, an apartment art space. Catie has an animation that will be shown in the International Pancake Film Festival in Boston upcoming in July. She has shown work in Chicago including Heaven, Swimming Pool, antena and minidutch galleries. http://www.catieolson.com, http://www.floorlengthandtux.com, http://www.spiderbug.org

Christopher Tavares Silva is a multi-disciplinary artist who has been cold rockin' shit since his little monkey feet touched down on Planet Earth. Having recently returned to Chicago from a 4 year vision quest in the jungles of Puerto Rico, Chris is splitting his energy between creating collaborative and heart-warming works of art and music with his expansive band of misfit slackers - and charging ever onward with his tireless passion for data entry. Chris's work has been exhibited and published in places that would make you shit your pants, and since most of us prefer to shit our pants in the privacy of our own homes (I know - there's nothing greater) the details will be spared. It's simple - buy one of these reasonably priced pieces of supreme quality visual funk...or live a life full of regret. Pussy. http://chrissilva.com/

Darrell Luce, b. circa 1963, probably in San Francisco. Luce is the wild man of the workshop, which he joined in 1996, at the request of Alma de la Serra. He either refuses to discuss his past or concocts sly stories that in retrospect cannot possibly be true. A realist in more ways than one, Luce paints in an expressionistic style that borrows freely from old masters, publicity stills, and cartooning. His sarcastically entitled 'Life of Ignotus' series documents his skepticism with regard to Ignotus's ideas--which Ignotus fully shares. His series of paintings of de la Serra apparently documents his relationship with her, though no one has yet figured out exactly what that relationship is, since Luce never gives a straight answer and de la Serra limits herself to saying "you either trust Darrell completely or not at all."

David Leggett was born in Springfield, Massachusetts in 1980. He received his Bachelors of Fine Arts from Savannah College of Art and Design (2003), and a Masters of Fine Arts form the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (2007). He also attended Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture (2010). His work is influenced by relationships, both personal and cultural. Popular culture and imagery are often used in his work. He has shown his work throughout the United States and internationally. He received the visual artist award from 3Arts in 2009. http://www.davidleggettart.com/

Lauren Feece
I have always loved making things and I have spent most of my life happily tucked away in my beloved studio. It helped to make me a bit unprepared for real life but completely comfortable with life in my sketchbooks and paintings. In my youth I struck out for success in the city of Chicago. Waitressing and pursuing a career as a working artist kept me very busy. One night on my way to an art opening with friends I met a very interesting musical and visual artist named Chris Silva. I like to think in hindsight that at that moment I knew I was meeting my future husband, but even if it wasn't entirely clear back then I knew instantly I was meeting someone very special. We were hardly apart and soon we had combined our lives, our living and studio spaces. We made our first attempts at collaborative work. Life was beautiful and full of art making.

For years we put art making first and "real jobs" second. Living simply and working hard we happily enjoyed life as full time artists. Over time, our energies focused on making and selling art work for years, began to run down. We wanted to recharge so in 2006 we moved on to a new opportunity. The Silva Family property in Moca, Puerto Rico was without a caretaker and we left The Windy City to take on that job.

From December 2006 to September 2010 we learned more than we had planned on. We encountered many trials as the abandoned house became a home. We got to be more green as the well was dug and the solar were panels installed. We learned how hard it is to grow a garden in the tropics. We learned to listen to the birds, bugs, and frogs, and to see the stars again. This was a life with many new challenges, but through it we got back to art making with a recharged and refreshed perspective.

In the fall of 2010 we returned to our sweet home in Chicago. Continuing to make a life full of love, we are wiser from our travels, and more committed than ever to our human responsibility to the earth, the animals, and especially to one another.

I continue to be motivated by the challenge of being present in the moment. The paintings and drawings I make are thoughts about the nature of things, musings on the everyday, and studies of the layers of meaning just under the surface. In my work I continue to be inspired by the connection of the artistic process to ritual, myth, and meditation. My work is a dance of brushstroke, line, swirls, drips, explosions and movements of paint. As I dance, I remember life, birds, clouds, color, flowers, trees, light, lace, pattern, people, blooms, webs, waves, vines, twilight, leaves, sunrise and sunsets... http://laurenfeece.com/

Meg Duguid was raised in Columbus, Ohio, and received her BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and her MFA in from Bard College. She has performed and exhibited at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago, the Hyde Park Art Center in Chicago, the DUMBO Arts Festival in Brooklyn, and 667 Shotwell in San Francsiso. Duguid has screened work at Synthetic Zero in New York, Spiderbug in Chicago, and at the Last Supper Festival in Brooklyn. Duguid lives and works in Chicago, IL where she runs Clutch Gallery, a 25 square-inch white cube located in the heart of her purse. http://megduguid.com/, http://clutchgallery.blogspot.com/

Nick Black was born in Chicago in 1958. He has attended the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, DePaul University, the University of Illinois at Chicago, and the Massachusetts College of Art. Recent exhibitions include Byron Cohen Gallery, Kansas City, Uncle Freddy's Gallery, Highland, IN, and Joymore, Buddy Space, and Klein Art Works, all in Chicago. Nick has had key works at Art Chicago, the Stray Show, Version Fest, and the New Chicagoans. http://www.flickr.com/photos/nbtoy/sets/72157607672560085/

Nicole Marroquin is an interdisciplinary artist whose creative practice includes collaboration, studio art, research, teaching, and strategic intervention. As a classroom art teacher in Chicago and Detroit, Marroquin taught and collaborated with youth on art-based action research projects. She makes art, exhibits and writes about participatory cultural production with youth and in communities. Marroquin recieved her MFA from the University of Michigan in 2008 and is now living in Pilsen in Chicago. She is an Assistant Professor of Art Education at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. nicolemarroquin.com

Rick Huggett
Raised in shrimpy Chagrin Falls, Ohio, the starting place for plenty of jokers including; Tim Conway and Tom Watterson (Calvin & Hobbs), I graduated from high school there and then attended Kent State University for a degree in Graphic Design. Four weeks before graduating I took a job in advertising and never completed my degree. I worked in advertising for two years before it dawned on me that I was both starving and penniless. Moved to Canton, Ohio after taking a job selling material handling systems to the steel and aluminum industries and did the 50-60 hour work week grind for the next 20+ years. During that time I acquired a wife, a house, 3 children, a dog, and a business degree from Malone University in Canton, Ohio. Now retired from sales I am currently pursuing a B.A. in Arts at Malone University with an emphasis in painting. In other words, I am a 52-year old undergraduate who will graduate in December of 2011, so long as I pay off all of my parking fines.

Paul Shortt (b. 1981) received his BFA in Painting from the Kansas City Art Institute in 2009. He has been in numerous group shows in Chicago, Nebraska, Kansas City, and Minneapolis. From 2009-2010, he directed a monthly, year-long series of performance art at the Fishtank Performance Studio in Kansas City, Missouri, called The Paul Shortt Invitational Performances. He has participated in the Charlotte Street Foundation residency program in Kansas City, and spoken about his work at the Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art. Shortt currently is pursing his MFA in New Media at The University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign, and expects to graduate in 2013. http://www.paulshortt.com/

Sarah Perez
Born in the suburbs of Chicago, I lived for most of my childhood in a tiny, one-bedroom apartment with my mother, father and younger sister. My entire family relies on love and humor to get through tough times, which has been a continued inspiration. I feel this evident in my work, in addition to the combination of real and surreal that creates a delicate balance in our day-to-day lives. http://www.sarahperez.net/gallery.html

----------------------
Miguel Cortez is an artist/curator living in Chicago and born in Guanajuato, Mexico. He has studied filmmaking at Columbia College and art at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. He currently runs Antena, an alternative art space located in Chicago's Pilsen neighborhood. His artwork has been shown at Gallery 414 in Fort Worth, Texas, at the Krannert Museum and at the National Museum of Mexican Art in Chicago. Other shows include exhibits in Dallas at Mighty Fine Arts Gallery, Glass Curtain Gallery and at VU Space in Melbourne, Australia. http://www.mcortez.com/

Cobalt Studio is an artist run space. Studio artists, Adriana Baltazar and Antonio Martinez work separately and collaborate on occasion to produce thoughtful public art that is meaningful for it's communities. As a project/exhibition space, Cobalt's key purpose is to provide exceptional artists, established and emerging, with an opportunity to showcase their work in a gallery-like atmosphere minus the commercial pressures and b.s.

Cobalt Studio
1950 W. 21st St.
Chicago, IL 60608
http://cobaltartstudio.blogspot.com/

View Larger Map

ANTENA @ THE TRANS FORMIDABLE

2011-07-05T17:14:00.000-07:00

*THE TRANS FORMIDABLE* is a collaborative project that aims to establish links and intersecting connections with international art spaces, through the structure of an exhibition.

Saturday, July 23 at 7:00pm - August 14 at 7:00pm

The Workhouse Test and Bridge Street, Callan, Co Kilkenny

A number of artist-led initiatives have been invited to present lens-based work by associated artists. These works will be installed by The Workhouse Test in Callan for the duration of the project.

Participating spaces include;

// Antena Pilsen (US) //

// 98Weeks (LBN) //

// Vox Populi (US) //

// New Jerseyy (CH) //

// Y3K (AUS) //

// The Flux Space (US) //

// The Future Gallery (DE) //

The show seeks to open a dialog about curatorial roles and representation, self-organisation, location and the significance of technology in sharing and disseminating contemporary art.

A number of events and discussions will run in tandem with the show, which itself runs alongside The Abhainn Ri Festival, COMMONAGE, and The Kilkenny Arts Festival 2011.

For any inquiries please email theworkhousetest@gmail.com

http://theworkhousetest.wordpress.com/
http://youareheretest.tumblr.com/

PLUGGED OUT: New works by Salvador Jiménez Flores

2011-06-28T19:01:00.001-07:00

PLUGGED OUT: New works by Salvador Jiménez Flores, June 24, 2011

2011-06-28T19:00:00.000-07:00

SEE PHOTOS FROM THE OPENING @ PICASA

PLUGGED OUT: New works by Salvador Jiménez Flores

2011-06-14T20:05:00.000-07:00

PLUGGED OUT: New works by Salvador Jiménez Flores

Opening Friday June 24th from 6pm-10pm
June 24- July 23, 2011

This experimental mixed-media installation highlights the reliance of modern humanity on technological innovations. In this digital age, we have become wholly dependent on devices that can be plugged in. Our jobs, our social lives and even our food production—all aspects of our existence rely on technology.

We are so intertwined with our iPhones and Androids it is as though we are becoming like them. This hardwiring of our hearts and minds will surely rob us of our humanity.

ANTENA
1765 S. Laflin St.
Chicago IL 60608
www.antenapilsen.com
antenapilsen (at) gmail.com
(773) 340-3516
Hours: by appointment only

Is this thing on?: the art of comedy

2011-06-12T06:52:00.001-07:00

I am curating this art exhibit. Feel free to submit work. /////MC

A call for artists:
"Is this thing on?: The art of comedy"
Art exhibit at Cobalt Art Studio in Chicago's Pilsen neighborhood, Opening in August 2011

"If Jesus had been killed twenty years ago, Catholic school children would be wearing little electric chairs around their necks instead of crosses."
- Lenny Bruce

Art is too serious sometimes. This show will focus on what makes us laugh. Most of us are part of the system and work 40 hours+ a week and by the weekend we just want to unwind and be entertained. Artists will create work for you that is both funny, absurd and will make you think.

Acceptable formats include: video, performance, installation, audio, painting, drawings, and objects. There is no fee. email submissions with video/audio links or jpeg attachments to antenapilsen@gmail.com

Deadline: July 10, 2011

Cobalt Studio is an artist run space. Studio artists, Adriana Baltazar and Antonio Martinez work separately and collaborate on occasion to produce thoughtful public art that is meaningful for it's communities. As a project/exhibition space, Cobalt's key purpose is to provide exceptional artists, established and emerging, with an opportunity to showcase their work in a gallery-like atmosphere minus the commercial pressures and b.s.

Cobalt Studio
1950 W. 21st St.
Chicago, IL 60608
http://cobaltartstudio.blogspot.com/

Daisy Chain: An Anarchic Performance Event

2011-04-29T19:30:00.001-07:00

Daisy Chain: An Anarchic Performance Event
curated by Adam Trowbridge and Jessica Westbrook of Channel TWo

Opening Friday May 13 from 6pm-10pm
May 13- June 11, 2011

Adam Trowbridge makes work exploring the aesthetic possibilities that arise as communication breaks down. He invents incidents and simulations that occur slightly above the noise level, between words that organize our communities and the chaos that lies beyond them. His work was recently awarded a 2011 Turbulence commission and has been featured nationally and internationally including The Grey Market and Anthology Film Archives, NYC; Pleasure Dome, Toronto; Workspaces Ltd., San Francisco, CA; The Hyde Park Center, Chicago, IL; and festivals in France, The Netherlands, Switzerland, Korea, and Russia. Trowbridge is Adjunct Associate Professor in the Contemporary Practices and Art and Technology Studies Departments at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

Jessica Westbrook’s projects explore desire, visual cues, cultural artifacts, systems, language, and contradictory sensations that vacillate between great fortune and impending catastrophe. Always semantic in nature and modular in form, she considers her productions a section of visual language culled from a complex matrix of assets, reconfigured and repurposed per space and time. She was recently awarded a 2011 Turbulence commission and has exhibited work nationally and internationally including recent and upcoming projects for: gli.tc/h/ Chicago, InLight Richmond, Nature/Nurture Kinsey Institute, Carnegie Museum, and Experimental Media Series Hirshorn Museum of American Art Smithsonian Institute. She is currently an Assistant Professor and the Director of Technology Initiatives in The Department of Contemporary Practices at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

ANTENA
1765 S. Laflin St.
Chicago IL 60608
www.antenapilsen.com
antenapilsen (at) gmail.com
(773) 340-3516
Hours: by appointment only
------------------------------------

DAISY CHAIN PROGRAM: Friday May 13, 2011

Susan Abelson, Deborah Boardman, Paola Cabal, Lisa Cline, Charles Mahaffee, Ryan Richey
title: La La La Death
time: duration
Broadcast: http://www.ustream.tv/channel/la-la-la-death

Put that paintbrush in the paint and spread it around like you're playing with your food. Lose all control like you're running in the nude.

J. Christian
title: Yelling Box
time: duration
Broadcast: http://www.ustream.tv/user/bonertown
http://bonertown.com/?author=1

Sheridan Cudworth
title: Two Girls, One Bowl
time: 8-8:30PM Central
Broadcast: http://www.ustream.tv/channel/two-girls-one-bowl

Two Girls, One Bowl is a response to the infamous Two Girls, One Cup video that went viral in 2007. In continuation of my first live-feed performance, Exhibitionist: Scud6969, I will continue to investigate the relationship between the submissive and dominant aspects of sexual assertion amongst women, men, and its integration into media.

Sheridan Cudworth assembles her life and her artworks with a raw-refined enthusiasm that is not for the faint of heart. She works in performance, which is mediated by her career as a make-up artist. Cudworth's work incorporates these elements in a highly stylized edge that challenges the viewer's perspectives of femininity. Her most recent work branches out into social media, as she has begun to produce live-feed performances.
http://sheridancudworth.com

Tyrone Davies
title: tba
time: duration
Broadcast: tba

Tyrone Davies is a conceptual artist and a filmmaker. His work explores questions of mediated spectacle and mass culture either through the reuse, re-appropriation, and re-contextualization of recorded material and industrially produced objects, or by producing wholly new material that reconsiders established assumptions about cultural trends. Film, video, installation, collage, sculpture, performance, printmaking, and painting are all disciplines that Davies works within in order to disassemble, and then reconstruct themes, messages and trends that are found within both domestic and global cultures. Davies lives and works in the San Francisco Bay Area. http://tyronedavies.com

Joseph DeLappe
title: Chatroulette: Discipline and Punish
time: duration
Broadcast: http://www.ustream.tv/channel/joseph-delappe

I propose to engage in a performative reading of Michel Foucault's classic text Discipline and Punish - The Birth of the Prison whilst connected to the online video/chat site, Chatroullete. My performance will involve a four hour "professorial" reading primarily from Part Three Discipline, section 3 Panopticisim. For this performance I will read from a comfortable chair, with a bookcase in the background. I will dress appropriately to the task, in dress slacks, black sport coat and tie. I will connect to Chatroullete and proceed to read. Over the past ten years I have performed within a variety of online contexts ranging from first person shooters, to massively multiplayer online role playing games to social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter. Chatroullete is a logical venue for performance experiments as it exists, as "a tool to meet new people with webcam and mic".

Chatroullete allows for a type of random access to a two way, voyeuristic experience, to view and be viewed. Everyone connected to Chatroulette is performing in some basic sense of the word. This type of random, real-time visual and auditory social media website is unique and will not only provide a interesting context in which to perform, but will allow for the extension of the notion of "audience" to equally function in the Daisy Chain context but also exist as a live interventionist act within the semi-public forum that is Chatroulette. I am interested in Foucalt's book Discipline and Punish specifically in relation to his focus on the creation of the panopticon as a concept. This seems wholly appropriate content to read into a context such as Chatroullete.

Joseph DeLappe is a Professor of the Department of Art at the University of Nevada where he directs the Digital Media program. Working with electronic and new media since 1983, his work in online gaming performance and electromechanical installation have been shown throughout the United States and abroad - including exhibitions and performances in Australia, the United Kingdom, China, Germany, Spain, Belgium, the Netherlands and Canada. In 2006 he began a project dead-in-iraq , to type consecutively, all names of America's military casualties from the war in Iraq into the America's Army first person shooter online recruiting game. He also directs the iraqimemorial.org project, an ongoing web based exhibition and open call for proposed memorials to the many thousand of civilian casualties from the war in Iraq. He has lectured throughout the world regarding his work, including most recently at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City. He has been interviewed on CNN, NPR, CBC, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation and on The Rachel Maddow Show on Air America Radio. His works have been featured in the New York Times, The Australian Morning Herald, Artweek, Art in American and in the 2010 book from Routledge entitled Joystick Soldiers The Politics of Play in Military Video Game.
http://www.delappe.net

Christina Houle
title: 16 Conversations with Escape Bird
time: duration
Broadcast: http://www.ustream.tv/channel/christinasukhgianhoule

In the performance I wear a soft sculpture costume, created entirely out of trash, recyclables and the pelts of stuffed animals, and speak using gestures and nonverbal sounds as the character, Escape Bird. Conversations are scheduled with friends, strangers and art world professionals at 15 minute intervals during which I will try to communicate my intentions, goals and desires as a performance artist, as the Escape Bird.

Christina Sukhgian Houle attends Texas State University in pursuit of BFAs in Drawing and Photography, and has studied and performed comedic improvisation at The Second City in Chicago, Illinois. Her performances have been nominated for a B. Iden Payne Award, named by the Austin Chronicle as one of the Top Ten Dance Phenomena of 2010, and selected to be performed at the Southwest American College Dance Festival. Ms. Houle has toured with Salsation Theatre Company (IL), worked with Creative Time (NY) and in 2008 was a visiting artist at Spelman College (GA). Additionally, her films and art have been exhibited at Flatbed Studios, Pump Project Satellite Space, and the Southwest School of Arts and Crafts, and her poems and essays published in multiple literary journals including the Sun Poetic Times and Quirk. Most recently her video, String Theory, received an Honorable Mention in the Spring FASA Show, and in July her installation and performance art will be exhibited in a solo show at Co-Lab. When not working on her artistic practice Ms Houle studies Hakomi and yoga, and works as an assistant to choreographer, Deborah Hay.
http://christinasukhgianhoule.weebly.com/

John Kilduff
title: Let's Paint TV
time: 6-7PM Central
Broadcast: http://www.stickam.com/letspainttv

Mr Let's Paint can be seen performing live in person around the world and on his internet tv show airing Monday-Friday 11AM -12:30PM Pacific Standard Time.

John Kilduff and Let's Paint TV have performed live at the following venues: Urban Culture Project, Kansas City, MO 2009; Horse Bazaar, Melbourne,AUS 2009; Tape Space,Melbourne,AUS 200909; Canberra Contemporary Art Space, Canberra,AUS 2009; Electrofringe,Newcastle,AUS 2009; Seriel Space, Sydney, AUS 2009; Red Rattler, Sydney, AUS 2009; Drake Hotel, Toronto,ON 2009; Pleasure Dome, Toronto, ON 2009; Ed Video, Guelph,ON 2009; Isssue Project Room, Brooklyn,NY 2009; Northwestern College, St Paul, MN 2009; Smokey's Tangle, Oakland,CA 2009; University of Wisconsin, 2009; Ottawa Bluesfest, 2008; Dunedin Fine Arts Center, Dunedin, FL 2008; GarageComedy, Los Angeles, CA 2008; LA Weekly Biennual, Santa Monica, CA 2008; Electric-Eclectics Sound Art and Media Festival, Meaford, ON 2007; America's Got Talent, 2007; Tyra (Tyra Banks), 2006; VH1's Big in 06, 200
http://www.letspainttv.com/
http://www.stickam.com/letspainttv

Jeff Kolar
title: Hallmark Cards
time: 7:10-7:30PM Central
Ustream: http://www.ustream.tv/channel/hallmark-cards

"Hallmark Cards" is a hand-bent playback of Hallmark greeting cards with sound.

Jeff Kolar is an audio/visual artist working in Chicago, USA. He is the grandson of an ex-military radio operator and has a history of trespassing to land. His work, described as "speaker-shredding" (Half Letter Press) and "amusingly kitschy" (Music For Maniacs), investigates circuits that are disguised, hidden, or ignored. His recent interests include cross-platform collaboration, low-powered radio, and live performance.
http://www.jeffkolar.us/

Another language Performing Arts Company
Elizabeth Miklavcic – Artistic Director, Jimmy Miklavcic – Executive Director
title: The Two
time: duration
Ustream: http://www.ustream.tv/channel/another-language-the-two

Combining different art forms in innovative ways and broadening access to cutting-edge performance art with today's technology since 1985.
http://www.anotherlanguage.org/

Wyatt Niehaus
title: Obscenity Sleep
time: duration
Broadcast: http://www.ustream.tv/channel/wyatt-niehaus

As an artist, I have found myself drawn to new media for its clear political implications. My work focuses on the dissonance and subversion of traditional communication through the Internet. I see the Internet as a place for an egalitarian and anarchistic reconstruction of both artistic process and conversation. Intensely interested in the critical theory surrounding emerging media, I have spent time both creating art that relates to this subject, as well as writing formal analysis and speaking at interdisciplinary conferences in academic settings.
http://wyattniehaus.com/

Rob Ray
title: Boom Harangue
time: duration
Broadcast: http://www.ustream.tv/channel/robray
Follow along: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m5S3_dmj8BU

"Boom Harangue" uses Richard Serra and Nancy Holt's 10min 27sec "Boomerang" (1974) public television broadcast as a script for improvised streaming performance.

Rob Ray makes site specific electronic installations, wondrous public games and experimental videos. He has recently relocated to Los Angeles, CA from Chicago via Rensselaer's Electronic Arts MFA Program in Troy, NY. Rob also collaborates with Jason Soliday and Jon Satrom as a member of the Chicago-based circuit-bent multimedia noise trio I Love Presets and is visual arts editor for the online journal Drunken Boat. Rob is also a keyholder at Public Address Los Angeles via Publica - a new experimental cultural center currently in residence at the Outpost for Contemporary Art and is a member of the CrashSpace hacker space in Los Angeles. From 1999 to 2008 Rob was founder and head curator of the DEADTECH electronic arts center in Chicago, IL, USA.
http://robray.net

V1rus
title: untitled?
time: duration
Broadcast: http://www.ustream.tv/channel/mcv1rus

V1rus has been doing rap and beating on samplers for a lot of years, and it doesn't look like it is going to end anytime soon. In his home city of Seattle he is known for making all forms of music, from true school hip hop to improvisational noise.
http://soundcloud.com/mcv1rus

Heather Warren-Crow
title: 4-Hour Confession (After 1984 After 1984, or Confession is the Princess of Evidence)
time: duration
Broadcast: http://www.ustream.tv/channel/after1984after1984

Using Winston's final confession from the 1984 film adaptation of the novel 1984 as a template, 4-Hour Confession is a series of public expressions of guilt. A group of volunteers working in shifts will watch other Daisy Chain performances and make small changes in the original text based on what they see. Warren-Crow will read these scripted mea culpas with great sincerity, happily taking on other artists' "crimes" as her own.

Heather Warren-Crow is a performance artist and professor based in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Her solo performance pieces both critique and embrace representations of identity in the mass media. She joins the vernacular of low art (the language of pop music, social networking websites, and Internet memes) with the rhetoric of body art to address issues pertaining to youth and femininity. Alternately playful, tragic, cheeky, and earnest, her performances confront the aesthetic pleasures of the American Brand Identity as well as its pains. She has exhibited her work at galleries and in performance spaces in the United States, Austria, Germany, India, Japan, Mexico, Spain,Tanzania, and Trinidad and Tobago. Warren-Crow received a doctorate in Performance Studies from the University of California, Berkeley. She is a professor of art theory and practice at the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee's Peck School of the Arts.
http://simplesatellite.org/artwork.html

Webster Oppewal and Interweb Plasma (Jon Satrom, Mark Beasley)
title: Daisy Chainsaw: An Anachronistic Parallelistic Event
time: duration
Broadcast: http://www.ustream.tv/channel/meatspace
SLTeleport: http://4nt3n4.info/

Throughout the evening, Webster Oppewal and Interweb Plasma (AKA Jon Satrom, Mark Beasley) will be functioning as gateways betwixt the IRL Pilsen Antena Gallery Meatspace and a Second Life 4nt3n4.gallery-meetspace. Participants, attendees, and virtual visitors will overlap and dissolve through this anarchistic mirrored polygon swap.

Mark Beasley is an artist/educator making software, video, performance and web art.
http://arcanebolt.net/

Jon Satrom performs realtime audio/video and enjoys working within collaborative projects and open systems.
http://jonsatrom.com

ANTENA @ MDW ART FAIR, April 23-24, 2011

2011-04-29T19:29:00.000-07:00

see more images here: https://picasaweb.google.com/lapsus05/MDWArtFair?authkey=Gv1sRgCLW0ysrDirjAOA#

images from Duk L. Kim show

2011-04-13T18:17:00.000-07:00

SEE MORE IMAGES HERE: https://picasaweb.google.com/lapsus05/VicissitudeDukJuLKimAntena#

Antena @ The MDW Fair

2011-04-12T17:50:00.001-07:00

The MDW Fair: visual arts landing in Chicago

CHICAGO: threewalls, Roots and Culture and Public Media Institute announce The MDW Fair, a gathering of alternative art initiatives, spaces, galleries and artist groups from the Chicago metropolitan area. Held April 22-23, 2011 at The Iron Studios, 3636 S. Iron Street, The MDW Fair will demonstrate the diversity, strength and vision of the people/places making it happen in the art ecology of our region.

The fair features for-profit, 501(c)3, and commercial and unincorporated galleries, independent curatorial projects and publishers and media groups in over 25,000 square feet of exhibition space that includes a 10,000 square foot sculpture garden with work by local artists. The MDW Fair is a manifestation of the collective spirit behind the region's most innovative visual cultural organizers, focusing on the breadth of work done here by artists and arts-facilitators alike. Participants include: threewalls, Roots and Culture, Reuben Kincaid, ebersmoore, OxBow, Heaven Gallery, Antenna, Roxaboxen, Regional Relationships, The Suburban, ACRE, Iceberg Projects, The Post Family, Western Exhibitons, 65GRAND and more.

The MDW Fair
Saturday and Sunday April 23-24, 2011

GEOLOFTS
3636 S. Iron Street
Chicago, IL 60609
SEE GOOGLE MAP

ARTISTS PARTICIPATING WITH ANTENA:

SAUL AGUIRRE
SEBASTIAN ALVAREZ
ARIELLE BIELAK
MIGUEL CORTEZ

Saul Aguirre is a Chicago Based artist born in Mexico City. He has been considered a standout at NEXT 2010 Chicago by PEDRO VÉLEZ who is an artist and critic living in Chicago. Saul used real manacles, to remind people of the reality of being picked up by the police during a live spectacle, and captivated people with his small drawings. Saul has been exhibiting Nationally and Internationally, in several Museums and Galleries since 1990. http://www.saulaguirre.com

Sebastian Alvarez, born in Lima, Peru, is an interdisciplinary performance artist, who is interested in transforming his personal vision into social responsibility with new cultural imperatives that include a renewed sense of community, an ecological reintegration, and greater access to the mythic and archetypal bases of bio-restoration. http://sebastianalvarez.info/

Arielle Bielak is an integrative minded collaborationist living and working in Chicago; circa 2005. By day, she works as a program coordinator, teaching artist, writer and curator at the esteemed and astounding Marwen. By night she concocts real live performance art and other Objects. She makes art chiefly to be in direct and ecstatic participation with the joy and wonder of living and understanding life. Photography has been a dominant force in Arielle's life, beginning about 13 years after she was born-at-home in Damascus, Maryland. This medium followed her through her studies at the Johnston Center for Integrative Studies (Redlands, CA). Photography took center stage in her studies in Florence, Italy, and then on through a career as a mental health advocate and organizer on tour with Warped, Take Action, and Plea for Peace. She was doggedly photographing as an employee of the Big Apple Circus (NYC-Based) in 2004. In May of 2005, she and her one suitcase and her Nikon D70 arrived in Chicago. Currently, Arielle is organizing her first apartment-style exhibition set to open in the magnificent Pilsen on Tuesday, June 7, with an promising group exhibition entitled Mothers. You are invited. http://www.ariellebielak.com/

Miguel Cortez is an artist/curator living in Chicago and born in Guanajuato, Mexico. He has studied filmmaking at Columbia College and art at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. He currently runs Antena, an alternative art space located in Chicago's Pilsen neighborhood. His artwork has been shown at Gallery 414 in Fort Worth, Texas, at the Krannert Museum and at the National Museum of Mexican Art in Chicago. Other shows included exhibits in Dallas at Mighty Fine Arts Gallery, Glass Curtain Gallery and at VU Space in Melbourne, Australia. Upcoming shows include a two person show with Saul Aguirre at Carlos & Dominguez Art Gallery. http://miguelcortez.wordpress.com/

Vicissitude: Duk Ju L. Kim

2011-03-26T07:32:00.000-07:00

Vicissitude: Duk Ju L. Kim

Opening Friday April 1 from 6pm-10pm
April 1- April 30, 2011

Duk Ju L. Kim was born in Pusan, South Korea. Due to her father’s job, her family later moved to Tehran, Iran, before eventually immigrating to the United States. Duk Ju received her BFA from Rhode Island School of Design. After completing a residency program at the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, she moved to Chicago and enrolled in the Master’s program at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago for one semester.

Duk Ju’s course of study at both the Bachelor’s and Master’s levels was fine art. She has received a number of honors for her work, including a Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture Fellowship Grant and a 2003 Fellowship from the Illinois Arts Council in 2003, that state’s most prestigious recognition of artistic talent. She was selected to show at Sotheby’s International Young Art in 1999; all the paintings shown in Chicago and Tel Aviv were sold, and she continues to sell her art through Sotheby’s to international buyers.

"For the past several years I have been working on a series of mixed media drawings and paintings featuring abstracted portraits that interact and mesh with the surrounding urban environment. Since living in Chicago, the city's raw and rigid buildings and streets have crept into my paintings. Exposed pipes, plumbing, and wires have become part of my work. Evident in my work is a sense satirical entrapment; people who cannot seem to escape the grittiness of urban living.

Gravity, violence, as well as grace, and beauty all coexist-which can be both exquisite and perverse. I portray it by exposing and intertwining the hidden with the obvious-pulling the inside out and pushing the outside in. I approach the canvas as if making a three-dimensional sculpture. Content and depth are what matter the most. I want the paint to move and shift for the viewer. Figures, mostly abstract, are constructed from lines. The colors I choose are manipulated to make space, to box space. Creating art is an intensely solitary activity for me. It is never easy to achieve a dialogue with the canvas. The fulfillment comes when that dialogue is achieved, when the canvas and I have reached a mutual respect for one another.

My earliest influences are from writers as well as painters, among them Flannery O'Connor, Kafka, Dostoevsky, and Salinger. I share their preoccupation with the human psyche and its place in society, the complex manner in which society and people intersect and interact." - Duk Ju L. Kim

photos from PaintFX opening

2011-02-23T18:00:00.000-08:00

SEE PHOTOS FROM THE OPENING AT PICASA: https://picasaweb.google.com/lapsus05/PaintFXAntena?pli=1&gsessionid=LD4dXrv-y4meKMi_Mtr9GA#

Paint FX @ Antena

2011-01-03T16:50:00.001-08:00

Paint FX
Opening Friday February 18 from 6pm-10pm
February 18- March 19, 2011

PAINT FX (www.paintfx.biz) is a web-based painting collective/website produced by artists residing at various locations of the internet:

Jon Rafman
Parker Ito
Micah Schippa
Tabor Robak
John Transue.

Poetry - Open Mic @ Antena

2010-11-23T18:20:00.000-08:00

Antena is proud to present:
A Night of Poetry
and Open Mic

Featuring:
Carlos Cumpian
Leticia Cortez

OPEN MIC for poets will be available...all themes welcomed. We will set aside five minutes max or one poem per open mic reader. Open Mic from 7-7:30:pm

Saturday December 11 @ 7pm
FREE ADMISSION

ANTENA
1765 S. Laflin, St.
Chicago, IL 60608
http://www.antenapilsen.com

Carlos Cumpián was named among the Chicago Public Library’s “Top Ten” most requested poets. His poetry has been published in small press magazines as well as numerous anthologies, while Carlos’ books have received positive reviews for their contributions to Chicano literature.

Cumpián is also the editor of March Abrazo Press, which has been instrumental in the longevity of the small press and establishing its presence as an independent publisher of Latino and Native American poetry.

Some of his most recent poetry appears along with poems by Martin Espada, Luis Alberto Urrea, Achy Obejas and David Hernandez in the premier edition of The Hummingbird Review.

Works include Emergency Tacos, March Abrazo Press, 1989; Coyote Sun, March Abrazo Press, 1990; Latino Rainbow, Poems About Latino Americans, Children`s Press, 1994; Armadillo Charm, Tia Chucha Press, 1996; 14 Abriles: POEMS (March Abrazo Press, 2010).

Among the honors Carlos has received include the Gwendolyn Brooks Significant Illinois Author Award and a pair of Community Arts Program Grants from the city of Chicago.

Leticia Cortez was born in Guanajuato, México and grew up in Chicago. As she grew older, reading and writing became her escape. At a city college she met a teacher who encouraged her to write and soon discovered poetry through writing short stories. She studied Literature and Science at The University of Illinois in Chicago and would later teach both subjects for over a decade at Truman College. Since 2009 she has resided in Santa Fe. She edited and co-funded the bilingual publication ¿Hasta Cuándo? which is now online. She writes poetry, book reviews and articles for Polvo, Area, Lumpen times and Contratiempo magazines. Considering poetry as a form of expression that crosses cultures as well as space and time, her poetry is a process of thoughts and images, which arrange themselves in words and worlds.

Amelia Winger-Bearskin opening pics

2010-10-27T18:39:00.000-07:00

see more photos on PICASA: http://picasaweb.google.com/lapsus05/AmeliaWingerBearskinAntena#

AMELIA WINGER-BEARSKIN: TRANSFORMATION OPERA

2010-09-19T10:49:00.001-07:00

AMELIA WINGER-BEARSKIN: TRANSFORMATION OPERA

Also this month's Project Wall Space: J. Thomas Pallas

Opening Friday October 22, from 6pm-10pm
October 22 - November 20

Transformation Opera is a sound and video project by Amelia Winger-Bearskin in which music generated from four different video works merge in the center of the gallery. Personal and Public figures are captured by video during moments of transformation, and then projected as slow moving loops. Sleepwalkers, Italian arias, trash TV, and tragic love ballads are warped to create the dreamlike musical environment.

Winger-Bearskin is an assistant professor of art at Vanderbilt, where she teaches video and performance art, as well as new and interactive media. Her undergraduate studies were in opera and performance art, her MFA is in time based media art (transmedia) from the University of Texas in Austin, 2008. She was in the group show Art in the Age of the Internet at the Chelsea Art Museum in 2007 and was a featured video and performance artist at Basel in Miami, Scope at the Lincoln Center and other art fairs consistently since 2007 as an artist at large for the perpetual art machine [PAM]. She has concentrated her live performance since 2009 on Asian Performance Art Festivals, performing live in the Philippines, South Korea and China as there is a unique support structure for performance that she wishes to study in hopes to bring similar structures in place in the USA.

ANTENA
1765 S. Laflin St.
Chicago IL 60608
www.antenapilsen.com
antenapilsen (at) gmail.com
(773) 340-3516
Hours: by appointment only

Transformation Opera, by Amelia Winger-Bearskin
REVIEW BY: LAURA HUTSON

Amelia Winger-Bearskin, Professor of Video and Performance Art

The ability of an appropriated image to maintain its original intent can be manipulated to create subtext with far more subtlety, complexity, and intelligence than a brand new creation. The Transparencies/Transformation Opera exhibit combines two artist’s work, both of which contain original and appropriated images. Artists Amelia Winger-Bearskin and Vesna Pavlovic pose questions of authorship, the difference between reality and illusion, and the post-modern wonderings of the authority of the audience.

Amelia Winger-Bearskin’s is a charismatic and powerful personality that doesn’t purposefully seek out performing, but it seems to follow her around anyway. It comes easily to her, and in Transformation Opera, she recreates a space that is emblematic of a performer’s headspace, filled with grandiosity, foolishness, and dying dreams. Four videos, all of which feature sound in some way, converge to fill the gallery space with the ambiance of perpetual performance. Winger-Bearskin uses her own performances twinned with appropriated footage of (former) starlets Mia Farrow and Lindsay Lohan against a confluence of operatic vocals, shoe gaze, and honky-tonk.

In “ambienTTransformation,” Winger-Bearskin uses the turn of phrase for being a hyper-productive artist literally, as she unwittingly made a performance piece in her sleep. Actually sleepwalking throughout the entire piece and recording herself the whole way through, the video perfectly captures the restless energy associated with performers between performances. In her sleep the artist smears honey on her face and covers it with $150-worth of gold leaf. She is asleep, and yet the video is perfectly shot, and it is not necessary to understand the context of its creation to appreciate the appeal of the artist’s expressionless face being covered in gold. “I could try my very hardest to be earnest,” Winger-Bearskin says, dreaming of all the different ways she could manipulate her face, calling on her relationship with her young son to inspire authentic concern in a dreaming state of nonsensical logic. The childlike, diva-esque behavior of an artist performing in front of a camera is echoed in other pieces in the exhibit, like Mia Farrow’s over-the-top starvation opera, and in Lindsay Lohan’s Morrisey-tinged anguish.

In “Transformation Opera,” she spontaneously performs with the house band at Second Fiddle, one of the more identifiable honky-towns in Downtown Nashville. Succeeded by a piece that shows Lindsay Lohan in a tasteful, respectful, terribly sad analysis of her recent jail-sentencing, Winger-Bearskin’s light-hearted rendition of Willie Nelson’s outlaw country ballad “Crazy” reminds you that fame is good luck and bad luck, and opportunities taken or squandered.

“The Transformation of Lindsay Lohan” is a series of stills from YouTube, taken seconds before and as the actress hears her sentence – 90 days in jail. Blond hair and beautiful bone structure collapse as her face falls and her head drops, all as the first few measures of Morrisey’s “Seasick, Yet Still Docked” play. For a performer, the moments between being free and imprisoned carry the additional weight of transforming an identity. Lohan’s life is a well-known spectacle. In jail, she will be without audience, and what is a performer when she is not performing?

As so many videos are being played at once, there exists an inability to view each one individually. Victor Turner called liminality “the state of being betwixt and between.” Winger-Bearskin’s videos capture this moment - between sleep and waking (“ambienTTransformation”), between audience and performer (“Transformation Opera”), between celebrity and prisoner (“The Transformation of Lindsay Lohan”) – and, through the addition of sound and the careful proximity between videos and gallery space, creates a suspended liminality among her audience. It is at once unsettling and comforting -- a familiar feeling of unrest.

Photos from the opening in Fort Worth, Texas, Sept. 11, 2010

2010-09-15T16:11:00.000-07:00

SEE MORE IMAGES HERE: http://picasaweb.google.com/lapsus05/AntenaGallery414InFortWorthTexas91110?pli=1&gsessionid=ems6b6Iz7IlBhj_FsoJkvA#

Shikaakwa

2010-09-10T06:13:00.000-07:00

Shikaakwa:
work by artists from Chicago

Opening Saturday, September 11, from Noon-9pm
September 11 - October 10, 2010

Shikaakwa is a native american algonquian word used to describe the area that is now known as Chicago. The French-American settlers in Illinois back in the 1800s took that word and re-spelled it as Chicago. For this exhibit Gallery 414 brings to Fort Worth the work of several artists who reside in Chicago. The work ranges from painting, works on paper, digital prints and video. The artists include:

Saul Aguirre
Yong Choi
Miguel Cortez
James Jankowiak
Jaime Mendoza
Jenny Priego

Miguel Cortez is an artist living in Chicago and born in Guanajuato, Mexico. He has studied filmmaking at Columbia College and at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Future shows in 2010 include an exhibit at Gallery 414 in Fort Worth, Other exhibitions include shows in Champaign, IL at the Krannert Museum and at the National Museum of Mexican Art in Chicago, as well as, in Bridge Art Fair in Miami. Other shows included exhibits in Dallas at Mighty Fine Arts Gallery, ‚Lo Romantico at Glass Curtain Gallery and ‚Lies that Bill Gates told me: Exploring the Digital Divide‚ at VU Space in Melbourne, Australia. http://www.mcortez.com

Jaime Mendoza: Concerned largely with issues of immigration, ethnicity and place; Mendoza works in a wide range of media—activist inspired public art, sculpture, film, sound, and photography — all of which fuse the politics of contemporary urban culture with poetic meditations on aesthetics, history, and identity. Most recently Mendoza was awarded a grant from the National Performance Network/Visual Arts Network to participate in a one week residency at Galería De La Raza in San Francisco, California.

James Jankowiak was born and raised in the Back of the Yards neighborhood on the south side of Chicago. Although his early forays in the Chicago graffiti scene proved to be influential upon several generations of spray can artists, he always took risks with his art and continues to evolve as a painter and installation artist. His work has been exhibited at several notable institutions such as the MCA, Northwestern University and the SAIC’s Roger Brown Gallery. Plus he just had a solo show at De Zwarte Ruyter in the Netherlands. This summer he will be doing an installation at CoSphere and in October will have a solo show at The Architrouve. http://www.jamesjankowiak.com/

Jenny Priego is visual and performance artist who draws inspiration from her existence as a feminine being and random beauty. She uses several forms of media to interpret her self exploration, such as technology, her body, voice, and formal fine art technique. Her latest and ongoing project is "Adelita Pata de Perro" a photographic memoir of Adelita, a character that was inspired by the women who fought in the Mexican Revolution. Priego's Adelita is a hyper-ethnic woman wandering the world on an ever changing journey, and on her voyage of discovery she encounters symbols of power, femininity, sex, and cultural imagery. She finds herself in different situations and places that take her from Paris, to Rome and sugar cane mills in Mexico. Priego studied at Columbia College and currently works as a Stewardess. Jenny lives and works in Chicago.

Gallery 414
414 Templeton
Fort Worth, Texas
Phone: (817)336-6595

From the Wash: Mark Nelson

2010-09-02T17:02:00.001-07:00

From the Wash: Mark Nelson

Opening Friday September 3, from 6pm-10pm

September 3 - October 2

From the Wash is an exploration into the coded and indigenous landscape of the Painted Desert of the Petrified Forest in northern Arizona through performance, video and installation.

Mark Nelson lives and works in his GringoLandia Studio, located on 21st Street in the Pilsen neighborhood. His foundation in painting and theater evolved into multi-media installations. He has received the Illinois Arts Council's Fellowship Award twice and a third time as a runner up. His work can be found in collections such as the U.S. Embassy in the Republic of Panama' in 2007 and private collections in the Republic of Panama’ and North America. Mark Nelson is an adjunct faculty for Triton College and has been teaching art in the city of Chicago for 22 years.

ANTENA
1765 S. Laflin St.
Chicago IL 60608
www.antenapilsen.com
antenapilsen (at) gmail.com
(773) 340-3516
Hours: by appointment only

Religare: Artists explore the concept of Religion

2010-07-28T18:43:00.001-07:00

Religare: Artists explore the concept of Religion

"Religare": according to Tom Harpur and Joseph Campbell the word Religion derives from the Latin word "ligare" which means "bind, connect", and combined with the prefix "re"= re-ligare, i.e. re (again) + ligare or "to reconnect". For this art exhibit, artists will create work that analizes and critiques the concept of religion.

Artists:
Saul Aguirre
Eddie Alvarado
Miguel Cortez
Rakel Delgado
Rocky Horton
James Jankowiak
Antonio Martinez
Laura Olear
Josue Pellot
Polly Perez
Jenny Priego
Elvia Rodriguez-Ochoa
Sebastian Vallejo

Opening Friday July 30, from 6pm-10pm
July 30- August 28, 2010

Performance by Saul Aguirre and Rakel Delgado from 6:30-7:00PM

ANTENA
1765 S. Laflin St.
Chicago IL 60608
www.antenapilsen.com
antenapilsen (at) gmail.com
(773) 257-3534
Hours: by appointment only

Antena @ The Texas Theatre

2010-07-13T19:40:00.000-07:00

Hot Buns and Blazing Artists
Saturday July 17th from 5pm to midnight
One night only!! $5 Donation

The Texas Theatre
231 W.Jefferson in the North Oak Cliff Neighborhood
Dallas, Texas

Mighty Fine Arts presents “Hot Buns and Blazing Artists” a special one night only art meltdown at the historic Texas Theatre on Saturday July 17th from 5pm to midnight. MFA Gallery big chief Steve Cruz has assembled an inspired group of artists who will fill the space with more art than you can imagine. Also included is a full night of art videos and special performances by surprise guest artists! The featured lineup includes: Tim Best, Christopher Blay, Nancy Brown, Shelby Cunningham, Val Curry, Ray-Mel Cornelius, Steve Cruz, Brad Cushman, C.J.Davis, Simeen Farhat, Lauren Gray, Paul Greco, Omar Hernandez, Brian Jones, Peter Lignon, Michael Mazurek, Wendi Medling, Adriana Martinez Mendoza,Charly Mitcherson, Lisa Nersesova, Eddy Rawlinson, Lesli Robertson, Tom Sale, Brian Scott, Diane Sikes and Katherine Strause. Also from the infamous Sour Grapes collective: Carlos Donjuan, Arturo Donjuan, Miguel Donjuan, Emily Donjuan, Isaias Torres, Eddie Castro, Alejandro Diaz and Ricardo Oviedo.

All night Video programming from David Bacon, Mary Benedicto,Chaitra Garrick Linehan, Jennifer Gooch, Mike Henderson, John Hernandez, and Erik Tosten. And from Chicago an exclusive showing of videos put together by the notorious Miguel Cortez, owner/operator of Antena Gallery, with work by:

Saul Aguirre
Amelia Winger Bearskin
Miguel Cortez
Jaime Mendoza
Jenny Priego.

Over 40 stellar artists who will burn a hole in your consciousness and confound your expectations! The Texas Theatre is located at 231 W.Jefferson in the North Oak Cliff Neighborhood and was built in 1931. In 1963 15 Dallas Police Officers capture Lee Harvey Oswald in the theatre during a screening of “War is Hell”. A $5 entrance donation will help benefit renovation of the theatre. www.texas-theatre.org

For more info contact Steve Cruz 214-942-5241 or steve@mfagallery.com

Photos from the opening June 25, 2010

2010-06-29T19:04:00.000-07:00

See the entire photo set at Picasa here: http://picasaweb.google.com/lapsus05/SangreSudorYPapelesArtistsExamineTheImmigrationIssue?pli=1&gsessionid=dVbyGL8q6qqz2gbwo3YY6g#

Sangre, Sudor y Papeles: Artists examine the immigration issue

2010-06-21T18:14:00.001-07:00

Sangre, Sudor y Papeles: Artists examine the immigration issue

Artists:
Saul Aguirre
Adriana Baltazar
Miguel Cortez
Salvador Jiménez-Flores
Jaime Mendoza
Jenny Priego
Elvia Rodriguez-Ochoa

Also this month's Project Wall Space: Yong Choi

Opening Friday June 25th from 6pm-10pm
June 25 - July 24, 2010

Saul Aguirre is a Chicago Based artist born in Mexico City. He has been considered a standout at NEXT 2010 CHicago by PEDRO VÉLEZ who is an artist and critic living in Chicago. Saul used real manacles, to remind people of the reality of being picked up by the police during a live spectacle, and captivated people with his small drawings. Saul has been exhibiting Nationally and Internationally, in several Museums and Galleries since 1990. http://www.saulaguirre.com

Adriana Baltazar is a multidisciplinary artist living and working in Chicago. She has worked in various collaborative projects as well as shown work in galleries throughout the city. She draws her inspiration from the conflicts and comprimises that arise in our relationships with the "other" and our love/hate relationship with the natural environment. She received a BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Art Institute. http://adrianabaltazar.com

Miguel Cortez is an artist living in Chicago and born in Guanajuato, Mexico. He has studied at Columbia College and at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Future shows in 2010 include an exhibit at Gallery 414 in Fort Worth, Other exhibitions include shows in Champaign, IL at the Krannert Museum and at the National Museum of Mexican Art in Chicago, as well as, in Bridge Art Fair in Miami. Other shows included exhibits in Dallas at Mighty Fine Arts Gallery, ‚ÄúLo Romantico‚Äù at Glass Curtain Gallery and ‚ÄúLies that Bill Gates told me: Exploring the Digital Divide‚Äù at VU Space in Melbourne, Australia. http://www.mcortez.com

Salvador Jiménez-Flores was born and raised in Jalisco, Mexico where he lived until 2000. Since coming to the United States, Salvador has participated and contributed to the Chicago art scene. His work has been included in various solo and group exhibitions in venues such as The National Museum of Mexican Art, The State Street Gallery, Aurora City Hall, Koehnline Museum of Art, Beverly Art Center, and Casa de la Cultura, Jalisco, M√©xico. in addition, his public art created with youth from the Pilsen, Lawdale, and La Villita communities such as ‚Äúthe Revival of the Struggle‚Äù at the Rauner Family YMCA, ‚ÄúAlternative Remedy‚Äù at Saint Antony Hospital, and the "Declaration of Immigration" at Yollocalli & Radioarte building. Salvador‚Äôs work is also in the State Street Gallery collection (over 30 pieces of work) and other private collections. Salvador is currently graphic designer at CCDA and art teacher at Yollocalli Art Reach. http://www.jimenezdesignart.com/

Jenny Priego is visual and performance artist who draws inspiration from her existence as a feminine being and random beauty. She uses several forms of media to interpret her self exploration, such as technology, her body, voice, and formal fine art technique. Her latest and ongoing project is "Adelita Pata de Perro" a photographic memoir of Adelita, a character that was inspired by the women who fought in the Mexican Revolution. Priego's Adelita is a hyper-ethnic woman wandering the world on an ever changing journey, and on her voyage of discovery she encounters symbols of power, femininity, sex, and cultural imagery. She finds herself in different situations and places that take her from Paris, to Rome and sugar cane mills in Mexico. Priego studied at Columbia College and currently works as a Stewardess. Jenny lives and works in Chicago.

Elvia Rodriguez Ochoa is a multi-disciplinary artist, educator and administrator, active for the past fifteen years. Completed a B.A. in Fine Art from Trinity Christian College in 1992 and earned an M.A in Inter Disciplinary Arts at Columbia College (2005). As an administrator and an artist, she has collaborated in the creation and maintenance of many non profit organizations in Pilsen. Among them are Taller Mestizarte (Mixed Art Workshop) where she served as President in 1998, organizer for La Voz de Los de Abajo, and a board member for Calles y Sueños. Elvia has also contributed to other existing organizations such as the Mexican Fine Arts Center Museum, Fiesta del Sol/ Pilsen Neighbors Community Council, Marshall Square Boys and Girls Club, and Gallery 37 as an educator and an artist. Elvia is the Director of Community Programs at Pros Arts.

ANTENA
1765 S. Laflin St.
Chicago IL 60608
www.antenapilsen.com
antenapilsen (at) gmail.com
(773) 257-3534
Hours: by appointment only

John Hartley, Andrew Rigsby Opening May 14, 2010

2010-05-18T16:31:00.000-07:00

John Hartley and Andrew Rigsby @ Antena

2010-05-05T17:14:00.000-07:00

John Hartley

John Hartley discovered his life’s passion while growing up in Piqua, Ohio. Encouraged to develop his talents in an academic environment, he moved to Fort Worth, Texas in 1982 to study art at Texas Christian University. After graduation, he began building a body of work that includes paintings, prints, and sculpture.

Exhibiting throughout Texas and the United States, his work has been critically received and is included in collections across the country. In 1990, the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth purchased two of his monoprints for its exhibition, Forty Texas Printmakers. His exhibitions include shows at Kidder Smith Gallery in Boston and Martha’s Vineyard, the Arlington Museum of Art, The Barth Galleries in Columbus, Ohio, and galleries in Fort Worth, Dallas, and Houston, Texas.

He continues to make art today and remains active in the Fort Worth art community. He opened Gallery 414 in 1995, an alternative art gallery exhibiting local and regional contemporary artists. He has also been a teacher and a professional art handler, working with museums, private collectors, and blue chip artists from around the world.

His art reflects his many interests: the human figure, toy collecting, social issues, and more. He actively promotes art education, and encourages young people to develop creative talent and thought. And he continues to explore new mediums and push his art to its fullest potential.

Also this month's Project Wall Space: Andrew Rigsby

I was born and grew up on the South Side of Chicago at the cusp of the 70’s, attended Catholic Grade school and all boys Catholic High School, things that are not so unusual growing up on the South Side of Chicago, at least at that time, actually probably the end of a certain time. After High School and a brief stint at St. Xavier University in Chicago, I moved to Peoria and attended Bradley University, where I received my BFA in Painting and Drawing. After Peoria, I moved to Seattle for 5 years prior to Graduate School at Southern Illinois University in Carbondale for my MFA in Studio Art.

I am a Chicago based artist and sometimes curator. I enjoy playing with the modern psychological conundrum through the lens of popular visual semantics and contemporary archetypes in a expanded language of the landscape. Typically preferring to work in an installation format using light box photographs, shaped paintings, sculptures, found objects and video to create multifarious tableaus.

Rigsby was the founder of GARDENfresh, a gallery based out Chicago. He received his MFA from Southern Illinois University in 2000, and his BFA from Bradley University in 1992. Rigsby has shown both Nationally and Internationally, most recently with Mikes Museum in New York, What it is in Oak Park, Il, (Con)Temporary Art Space, Chicago, antena, Chicago, Florida Gulf Coast University, Fort Meyers, Florida, Bridge ArtFair New York, Miami and London. He has also shown in New York, Kansas City and Tokyo.

Opening Friday May 14, from 6pm-10pm
May 14 -June 12, 2010

ANTENA
1765 S. Laflin St.
Chicago IL 60608
www.antenapilsen.com
antenapilsen (at) gmail.com
(773) 257-3534
Hours: by appointment only

Photos from Antena @ NEXT

2010-05-03T06:16:00.000-07:00

See more photos here:
http://picasaweb.google.com/lapsus05/ANTENANEXTARTFAIR?pli=1&gsessionid=ENcGm5oLfLGF3__lOa31Qw#

Antena@NEXT Art Fair

2010-04-07T18:35:00.000-07:00

Antena participates in this year's NEXT Art Fair as part of GOFFO:

NEXT: The Invitational Exhibition of Emerging Art
April 30 - May 3, 2010
http://www.nextartfair.com

2010 Show Hours
Friday, April 30: 11am - 7pm
Saturday, May 1: 11am - 7pm
Sunday, May 2: 11am - 6pm
Monday, May 3: 11am - 4pm

Next art fair will take place on the 7th floor of the Merchandise Mart, located at 222 Merchandise Mart Plaza, Chicago, IL 60654. Click here for directions and a map.

Goffo, a special section at NEXT, focusing on multiples, editions, artist books, prints and handmade objects, will host an exceptional curated selection of presses, artist collectives and small galleries. The 2010 edition of Goffo is curated with Swimming Pool Project Space.

ABOUT NEXT: More than an art fair, NEXT is a showcase for the world’s talents and an adventure in cutting-edge culture. An opportunity to redefine the relationship between art and its public, NEXT is a portal to seeing contemporary art in new, innovative, eye-opening ways. NEXT will include works from both commercial and non-commercial arts organizations--galleries, project spaces, art publications and key private contemporary collections from around the world.

ANTENA@NEXT ART FAIR: BOOTH # 9054

Featuring new works by:
Saul Aguirre
Yong Choi
Miguel Cortez
James Jankowiak

About the Artists:
Saul Aguirre was born in Mexico City, Mexico in 1974, he is a Chicago based artist. The themes of his work are personal and social criticism; some are almost magical realism dream like. He began his career at age 15, exhibiting at a National Juried Art Exhibition at the Museum of Science and Industry. He studied at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Past exhibitions include Escuela Superior de Formación Artística, ANCASH-Huaraz, Perú, West Chicago Museum, Imce General Consulate of Mexico in Chicago,Embassy of Argentina, Washington, DC, American States Organization, and Washington, DC Future shows in 2010 include an exhibit at Gallery 414 in Fort Worth, Texas and at VanBrabson Gallery in Minnesota. http://www.saulaguirre.com

Yong Choi is a Korean artist and sculptor currently residing in Chicago. He was born in Jinju, Korea, and joined Korean Army in 2002. He was a sergeant when he was discharged from the service. He moved to NewYork in 2005 because of baseball. And he accidently went to art school and moved to Chicago because of baseball. He got a BFA degree from School of Art Institute of Chicago in 2008. He is just seeking each day’s happiness, and want to express his feeling, and celebrate and remember some specific moments. Making art is the best way to express himself, and continue growing through the process.

Miguel Cortez is an artist living in Chicago and born in Guanajuato, Mexico. He has studied filmmaking at Columbia College and has a BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Future shows in 2010 include an exhibit at Gallery 414 in Fort Worth, Texas and at VanBrabson Gallery in Minnesota. Past exhibitions included shows in Champaign, IL at the Krannert Museum and at the National Museum of Mexican Art in Chicago, as well as, in Bridge Art Fair in Miami. Other shows included exhibits in Dallas at Mighty Fine Arts Gallery, “Lo Romantico” at Glass Curtain Gallery and “Lies that Bill Gates told me: Exploring the Digital Divide” at VU Space in Melbourne, Australia. http://www.mcortez.com

James was born and raised in the Back of the Yards neighborhood on the south side of Chicago. Although his early forays in the Chicago graffiti scene proved to be influential upon several generations of spray can artists, he always took risks with his art and continues to evolve as a painter and installation artist. His work has been exhibited at several notable institutions such as the MCA, Northwestern University and the SAIC’s Roger Brown Gallery. Plus he just had a solo show at De Zwarte Ruyter in the Netherlands. This summer he will be doing an installation at CoSphere and in October will have a solo show at The Architrouve. http://www.jamesjankowiak.com/

About Antena:
"Antena" is a new project space located in Chicago's Pilsen neighborhood. The spanish word "antena" means a device that is a transducer designed to transmit or receive electromagnetic waves but in this case it is meant to define it as a cultural space that transmits/broadcasts symbolically art ideas, new media and installation projects on a local and global scale.

Religare: Artists explore the concept of Religion

2010-03-12T18:58:00.001-08:00

Religare: Artists explore the concept of Religion

"Religare": according to Tom Harpur and Joseph Campbell the word Religion derives from the Latin word "ligare" which means "bind, connect", and combined with the prefix "re"= re-ligare, i.e. re (again) + ligare or "to reconnect".

For this art exhibit, artists will create work that analizes and critiques the concept of religion.

The exhibit takes place at Antena in Chicago's Pilsen neighborhood from August 6-September 4, 2010 with the art opening taking place on Friday August 6th from 6pm-10pm.

Deadline for submissions: April 1, 2010
Email proposals and images to: antenapilsen@gmail.com

Send a brief proposal of what you would like to show, i.e. installation, 2D work, new media, video, etc. Send jpegs, bio, statement and CV.

Pondering the Universe at Antena Gallery

2010-03-07T12:14:00.000-08:00

by Carrie McGath

I went to Antena Gallery in Pilsen a few days after its opening on Friday, February 19, 2010, making it there the following Tuesday by appointment with Antena’s director and curator, Miguel Cortez. As exciting as openings may be, it was a sigh of relief to walk into an empty gallery faced only with the art I would get to experience fully without people standing in front of it. Another bonus was I got to talk with Miguel about the well-attened opening and the work while with the sounds of The Simpsons scampered in the background. Coincidentally, too, I think it is very much worth mentioning it was an episode where Homer took up art and was becoming an Outsider Artist. This was an atmosphere any art writer would dig.

Christopher Smith’s Inland Architect is a meditation about the clutter of humanity but also about something ever deeper — clutter’s ability to facilitate our very survival. I got the impression this was a sardonic meditation that seemed to be working through itself toward a kind of commentary on the lifestyle of contemporary, panicked human beings in a mad world. In the statement, a la poem, for the installation, Smith writes: “If you prepare to survive, you deserve to survive.” This line, alongside the lines about community being necessary for survival brought to my mind that not-so-eloquent line in the television series Lost: “If we can’t live together, we’ll die alone.” But I digress.

The installation’s focus on trash alongside a haphazard scientific study made me chuckle and “wow”, but it also made me think, and these images followed me into the twilight outside when I walked to the pink line. Then the images were still there with me when I woke in my bed two mornings later, myself surrounded by clutter. I began to piece it all together. When you enter the gallery, after meeting the sweet Miguel, you see Smith’s writing on the wall, look to your left and there is the silver hooded robe that made me both chuckle and cringe at its striking triangularities that reminded me instantly of Hugo Ball, Dada’s prince of the macabre avant garde. Ball’s costumes during performances looked much like this delightful robe in Smith’s Inand Architect piece that obliged to think of disco while I thought of it as one’s protection from destruction.

The other striking element in the installation was the corner of the gallery devoted to the “study” of the very installation. This was the part of the installation that walked the talk from the statement I read when I first entered Antena. There was clutter here, but a premeditated clutter, as if the clutter was being ordered with some kind of system. It appeared to be ground zero for where we would all strive to be during certain disaster according to the artist’s credo at the beginning of the exhibit — the stuff to prepare for certain survival. The title of the installation, Inland Architect, was most captured in this corner, giving the viewer the insider knowledge of how to prepare to survive. This was an exhibit that would have made the Dadaists proud, especially Hugo Ball who once said that “The war is founded on a glaring mistake, men have been confused with machines.” But Smith’s installation strives to save us all not with machines and war, but with one another, even with our all our baggage in tow.

Also included in the exhibition at Antena exhibit is the work of Sarah Best called Daily Photos. A wall in the gallery was devoted to a grid of thirty photos taken with a cellphone camera. These are photos with the commonality of people and things and places that are somehow near or related to the artist’s daily experience — friends, objects, and places that were with her in a single moment and captured using the utilitarian cellphone camera. It is unreal and almost unbelievable these truly gorgeous photos were taken on such a mass-produced, widely used device, but I guess when you got it, you got it, and Best certainly has it. Her eye for a moment is staggering: a friend on an exercise bike, a table setting for someone’s thirtieth birthday party. She creates something momentous out of seemingly mundane moments, making these photographs completely unique to her but also universal to the viewer.

According to Best, this project was in part inspired by Frank O’Hara’s Lunch Poems, in part inspired by Robert Mapplethorpe’s Polaroids. I can definitely discern both of these inspirations, but what makes the work as a whole remarkable is although it was inspired by two other artists and artworks, it is completely its own artwork, and Best is certainly her own artist. The emotion, mood, and even texture in a photo taken on a cellphone would be no small task, and an impossible one for someone lacking the talent Best no doubt has in spades — an eye for a moment. Hers is an eye always open and a finger always on the trigger.

The Antena Gallery located at 1765 South Laflin. This show is on view through March 20, 2010.

http://chicagoartmagazine.com/2010/03/pondering-the-universe-at-antena-gallery/

Antena in The Columbia Chronicle

2010-02-23T18:08:00.000-08:00

Pocket pix
Chicago-based photogs use iPhone camera, applications for art
by HermineBloom

During 24-year-old photographer Jeremy Edward’s walk to the El, he will likely identify a graffitied, abandoned storefront in the city, snap a quick photo, manipulate the image using an iPhone application or two and upload it to his online portfolio—all within the five to 10 minutes before the Red Line appears.

Chicago-based iPhone photographers, much like Edwards, are embracing their point-and-shoot, three megapixel camera phones for a desired aesthetic—one that is akin to a Polaroid—in order to create art with intention, which is then showcased in galleries around the country, as opposed to frivolous party pictures.

While living in rural Kentucky, Edwards discovered peculiar subjects for photographs and began shooting regularly at age 15. But it wasn’t until 2003 that Edwards graduated from college and experimented with digital photography. Though he describes himself as always being “a photographer at heart,” he pursued international development work in both Japan and China after college.

Edwards, now an Edgewater neighborhood resident, launched the “From the Pocket” project in 2008 as a series of pictures taken exclusively with an iPhone camera and edited with iPhone applications. He generally documents fragile parts of the city that have character, he said.

“I think there’s something organically beautiful about the limitations of the iPhone,” Edwards said. “It’s just a simple point and shoot and there’s not that much you can do. What’s unique about it is that all your post-imaging processing is all done in the same place.”

A strong advocate for editing iPhone photography with only one or two applications as opposed to handfuls, Edwards insists that people who wish to take iPhone photography shouldn’t “push the limits of what a camera can and can’t do,” which is one of many tips he listed on his “From the Pocket” Web site blog.

Shake It, an application that transforms an iPhone picture into a Polaroid with a white border, and Lo-mob, an application that alters the color scheme to appear warmer and more distorted, are among five applications that Edwards said he uses regularly to edit his photography.

About 100 of Edwards’ photographs will be featured in a book that he is self-publishing with an expected release date of either April 1 or May 1, he said.

“I wanted to put together something really substantial that gives a good illustration of how something as simple as a phone can actually be artful,” Edwards said.

Chicago-based photographer Sarah Best describes her iPhone photography as an extension of her love for New York poet Frank O’Hara, whose poems were conversational and usually centered around being out around town with his friends, she said.

“I want to make you feel like you know the people who are in my picture,” Best said. “That warmth comes out when the pictures are a little washed out and the colors are distorted with the Polaroid application.”

Trying to create a sense of immediacy is important to Best, which she said adds an element of chance to her art—comparable to any other medium such as ceramics if a pot loses shape in a kiln, for example.

Best, the Web specialist at Chicago Office of Tourism, compiled iPhone photographs for her “Daily Photos, on the Project Wall” exhibit, consisting mostly of portraits of friends. The exhibit is showcasing at Antena Gallery, 1765 S. Laflin St., from Feb. 19 to March 20.

Everyone is invited to bring their cell phones with them to the gallery so that she can send them her work via multimedia message if they’d like to take the image home with them, Best said.

“I like the idea of people being able to own their own art and also experience art while they’re out having dinner or with their friends,” she said.

Whether a photographer can afford an expensive SLR camera is no longer an issue.

Kay Frederick, a 38-year-old accountant, was given a first-generation iPhone as a gift in 2008, which is when she began to take iPhone photography and build a body of work on Flickr, an image and video hosting Web site and online community.

“I can take a picture of those same Marina Towers every single week and how I’m feeling, or what applications I’m into that week will make it totally different each time,” Frederick said.

Though she said she has downloaded about 50 photograph editing applications for her iPhone, she only uses a few applications—occasionally as a layering effect—depending on what the specific picture merits.

Frederick also explained that people are reluctant to change, which is why iPhone photography can be criticized for being amateur.

After submitting her work to a contest, three of her photos were chosen to appear in exhibit at the Giorgi Gallery in Berkeley, Calif., called “Pixels at an Exhibition—the Art of the iPhone.” The 200 selected photographs will comprise a book as well.

For more information about Jeremy Edward’s “From the Pocket” project visit, JeremyEdwards.Tumblr.com. To learn more about Sarah Best’s work, visit TryLessHard.com/Sarah/. For more of Kay Frederick’s work visit, Flickr.com/Photos/SparkyLuck/.

original post: http://columbiachronicle.com/pocket-pix/

Antena in The Chicago Weekly

2010-02-23T18:04:00.000-08:00

Scout’s Horror: Chris Smith’s gruesome survivalist art at antena Gallery
Written by: Ethan Bass

On the ground lies Geoffrey, a cat who has seen better days. His limbs are splayed out and his skin is peeled off. The apparatus that killed Geoffrey is constructed from simple materials: a plastic bag, an air mattress pump, hair, epoxy, and packaging tape. The bag is appended to the twisted form of the animal and can be inflated from underneath in a novel method of torture that only uses household materials. A table, strewn with makeshift construction materials—Styrofoam cups, a plastic fan, clothespins—faces a wall filled with sketches for various other devices. The macabre scene is part of “Inland Architect,” the new installation piece by artist Chris Smith at Pilsen’s antena gallery.

Smith is evasive when discussing the details of his project. It is designed to be “nomadic,” he says, as in, “you can pick it up and take it with you.” When pressed, he describes the show as “the story of cast-off materials, told through a haunted tutorial for survival.” The intention is vague, but productive. His method of assembling detritus is well suited to his purpose; the grisly scenes he constructs seem to present a perspective that is consistent with the nature of materials that compose them. The weatherproofed windows and “backpack pandemic ventilator” probably do not function, but they realistically depict what such inventions might look like. The colorful set-up recalls the chambers of a disturbed mind, obsessed by the possibility of world catastrophe, reacting desperately to an onslaught of threats in a disordered surplus of activity.

Smith says he draws inspiration from his years in the Boy Scouts, where he learned how to whittle and build fires, attaining the rank of Eagle Scout. It is this formative experience, he says, that first drew him to a philosophy of survivalism. “It runs in my blood,” Smith says. One can’t help but wonder what kind of scouting experience Smith had: his artistic vision, and the significant part that sadomasochism appears to play in it, is distinctly at odds with the traditional ethos of the Boy Scouts. The stark worldview implied in the installation is the antithesis of the scout’s commitment to “providing service” and “reinforcing ethical standards,” and it clashes with nearly all of the values encoded in Scout Law, such as Obedience, Kindness, and Charity. Of the ideals championed in the scout’s code, Thriftiness is the only one supported in the show.

By way of context, the artist provides what he claims is a citation from the literature of the U.S. paramilitary organization the Michigan Militia: “Those that have not will attempt to take from those that have. If you prepare to survive, you deserve to survive…If you have the kind of intellect that’s geared to survival, it may be a matter of genetics.” This Darwinian worldview, which exalts survival as the highest value, is amply represented in the show. Smith says that the Michigan Militia is a “sponsor” of the show, but it is unclear if there is any real connection.

“Inland Architect” is graphic, disturbing, and ultimately ambiguous in its effect. However, it is successful in displaying a lurid sight of the depths to which the will to self-preservation can reach, and continues the series of provocative shows featured at antena.

antena, 1765 S. Laflin St. Opening reception February 19. Friday, 6-10pm. Through March 20. By appointment only. (773)257-3534. antenapilsen.com

From The Chicago Weekly: http://chicagoweekly.net/2010/02/18/scouts-horror-chris-smith%E2%80%99s-gruesome-survivalist-art-at-antena-gallery/

FAIR: TWO-DAY LOCAL MAKER AND PUBLISHER FAIR

2010-02-23T17:39:00.000-08:00

FA I R
TWO-DAY LOCAL MAKER AND PUBLISHER FAIR
February 26-27 • NOON-6:00 PM BOTH DAYS

Please join us for two days of art, books, talks, things for sale, things for
free, and more from the following people, groups and organizations:

Antena antenapilsen.com
AREA Chicago areachicago.org
Bad At Sports badatsports.com
CAFF “Find us in the real world motherfuckers!”
Gallery 400 gallery400.aa.uic.edu
Esteban Garcia snebtor.chiguiro.org
Golden Age shopgoldenage.com
Green Lantern Press press.thegreenlantern.org
Half Letter Press halfletterpress.com
Terence Hannum terencehannum.com
Harold Arts haroldarts.org
Imperfect Articles imperfectarticles.com
InCUBATE incubate-chicago.org
Clifton Meador & guests cliftonmeador.com
David Moré
No Coast no-coast.org
Onsmith Dog Stew & Monkey Nudd Wine
Pros Arts Studio prosarts.org
Proximity Magazine proximitymagazine.com
Radah & Team
Spudnik Press spudnikpress.com
Bert Stabler bertstabler.com
threewalls three-walls.org
WhiteWalls

Organized by Temporary Services in conjunction with ART WORK: A NATIONAL CONVERSATION ABOUT ART, LABOR, AND ECONOMICS • www.artandwork.us
Art & Design Hall • 400 S. Peoria St. • www.gallery400.aa.uic.edu • 312-996-6114

artnet.com

2010-01-29T15:06:00.000-08:00

CHICAGO BUILD UP

by Pedro Vélez

I think I’ve had it with apartment galleries and alternative spaces, which have been one of the Chicago art scene’s special attractions for so many years. Trust me, I used to run one in the late ‘90s. Chicago has been there, done that, and even reinvented the brand. And as if to prove it, Allison Peters Quinn and Briton Bertran organized "Artist Run Chicago" at the Hyde Park Art Center last spring, a magnificent look back at a decade of such noteworthy hubs as Joymore, NFA Space (which showed Luis Gispert), Dogmatic (where Paul Chan started), Green Lantern, Polvo and Law Office "Artist Run Chicago" also posed one important question: Now what? In New York, young galleries grow into new powers. Chicago has a couple of museums and a couple of good galleries, but they’re stops on the international circuit rather than incubators of local talent. You can have museum shows here and never sell a thing. Let’s be honest, alienation can be depressing.

Well, Chicago can’t exactly fall back on its reputation as a world art center, like New York can. But it wasn’t all bad news. Here’s a brief retrospective of notable 2009 art events in the city.

Michigan Avenue
My top choice is rather predictable: The opening of the Art Institute of Chicago Modern Wing. Renzo Piano’s critically acclaimed, $300-million-plus, 264,000-square-foot addition to the AIC now stands alongside Wrigley Field and the Willis Tower (formerly Sears Tower) as a must-see destination on every tourist list. But what about the locals? At $18 per person, it’s cheaper for a family of four to go to a baseball game than to enjoy a day of culture.

Me, I got my kicks for free (thanks, AICA), especially from Cady Noland’s OOZEWALD (1989), which looks grandiose inside Piano’s glass cathedral. The cut-out newspaper image of Oswald, at the moment of his assassination, peppered with oversized bullet holes, gagged with a U.S. flag, resonates today more than ever, given the Supreme Court’s gut-wrenching decision to turn the election process over to deep-pocketed corporations. It is also a sad reminder of how Barack Obama upholds the Bush Doctrine while the American voter plays the role of captive audience.

Cleverly installed next to Noland was Sue Williams’ early psycho-narrative It’s a new age (1992), a painting that dirties up the place with its beautiful yet aggressive take on misogyny. "I chose fat thighs," it reads, "ass holes, sew ‘em up." The experience is like watching hardcore porn starlet Sasha Grey going mainstream in the Girlfriend Experience.

Across the street from the Art Institute is the Museum of Contemporary Photography, which did better with Chicago talent with its "Midwest Photographers Project," which featured Stacia Yeapanis, Curtis Mann (selected for the 2010 Whitney Biennial) and John Opera, the stand out, in a show called "MP3." Opera juxtaposes small geometric abstractions with large, sleek and threatening visions of nature.

Close by on Washington Street the Chicago Cultural Center hosted FMEL, a two-day "Festival de Musica Electronica Latina" that ran concurrently at the National Museum of Mexican Art in the neighborhood of Pilsen. Among the participants were the respected sound artist Manrico Montero, founder of net label Mandorla, and the New York-based ambient duo Arturo en el Barco (José Olivares and Angélica Negrón).

The couple -- a sort of adorably geekier version of Thurston Moore and Kim Gordon -- played an intimate live set by building sounds digitally using diverse objects (a music box, bubble wrap, toy instruments) to make dreamy and emotional compositions that were quite capable of elating the crowd.

The West Loop
Sarah Hicks proved herself a force to be reckoned in her first solo exhibition at Thomas Robertello Gallery. Seductive, erotic and borderline decorative, Hicks’ brightly glazed ceramics are small objects suggestive of bits of coral reef, alien life forms and sex toys, were exhibited placed on top of a glass table. It was a strange brew of forms.

Another young artist to make an impact was my good friend Joseph Hardesty at Western Exhibitions (the gallery that represents me). Hardesty’s delicate handmade renderings on paper, almost transparent, of phrases, statements and verses seem to fade in and out, and exude a certain insecurity. The artist, who spent a year in Berlin thanks to a Gelman Travel Fellowship, articulates his feelings through vivid narrative metaphors involving horses, Vikings, gray cobblestones and flying monkeys.

Next door, at Three Walls, the renowned nonprofit cultural platform and residency, the art producer, DJ and all around personality Philip von Zweck had a suite of pretty, clumsy and conceptual figurative paintings that served as backdrop for a series of lectures organized specifically for the occasion.

Censorship on the South Side
Controversy is never in shortage when it comes to Chicago’s police and politicians. Such was the case when a mural by Gabriel Villa in the ethnically varied neighborhood of Bridgeport -- a mural, not graffiti -- was erased under the orders of alderman James Balcer. True, the artwork did show Jesus crucified on top of a CPD blue-light camera surveillance box, but it was privately commissioned for private property.

"I believe that was a threat," Balcer told the local news. "The dead deer, the skull, the cross, RIP, rest in peace was in there, that symbolizes death. And I don't know if it will incite gang violence or more trouble." Sad, that Latino religious iconography and customs celebrating the dead, not to mention urban displays of social discomfort on Chicago’s South Side, should provide an excuse to exercise bias and art censorship.

The incident is especially ironic considering the hopeful words from National Endowment for the Arts director Rocco Landesman quoted in the Chicago Tribune on Aug. 27. "Chicago has a mayor who sees the value of art in urban areas," Landesman said. "We have a president who is a writer, an artist, who gets artists. We have a first lady who understands the importance of the arts in education. We have a new era coming. Chicago will be ground zero."

Luckily, Antena, a space in Pilsen run by artist Miguel Cortez and one of the best the city has to offer, did not wait on Rocco’s promises and mounted an impressive survey of Villa’s large-scale drawings, as well as a recreation of the original lost work.

Off the Loop
Honorable mentions go to "This Shadow Is a Bit of Ideology"at UIC 400 and the Davis Langlois show at the Chicago Cultural Center which I wrote about last March; Merchant Adams for his hilariously serious mutations of stuffed animals representing racial mixes produced by the Spanish colonization of the Americas at Prak-sis; and Chelsea Knight’s "I Lay Claim to You"(with Khalia Frazier), a joyous single video projection of a dance loosely based on Margaret Mead’s 1938 description of a Balinese cremation at Julius Caesar.

Also, Deb Sokolow’s site-specific diagram about her Jewish heritage, and the fictitious narratives elaborated over corned beef at the Spertus Museum; and Dann Gunn’s post-minimalist constructions at Lloyd Dobler. In the end, nothing was as exciting as White Sox ace Mark Buehrle’s no-hitter on July 23 against the Tampa Bay Devil Rays. Twenty-seven batters retired -- a true masterpiece.
"Italics" at the MCA

Last but not least, a show that remains open for the upcoming College Art Association 2010 Annual meeting Feb. 10-13, 2010, is star curator Francesco Bonami’s "Italics: Italian Art between Tradition and Revolution, 1968–2008," Nov. 14, 2009-Feb. 14, 2010, at the Museum of Contemporary Art. Bonami, who during his tenure as MCA senior curator made quite an impression on the local artists by never leaving his office, originally presented this show at the Palazzo Grassi in Venice, where it was met by a barrage of negative reviews.

The revisionist survey pretends to make a political statement by salvaging lesser-known artists from the annals of Italian history. Bonami has washed his hands publicly on this issue, claiming that he is not a historian. We couldn’t agree more; he is more like a Sergio Leone of curators, presenting canned Italian culture for American audiences. But for a show that insists in resurfacing underrated or unknown names, it begins curiously with current market favorite Maurizio Cattelan.

Overall, "Italics" is not bad; it’s a dynamic ride, and most viewers could find something amazing in the 75-plus artist lineup. My favorite is Compagni, Compagni (1968) by bad-boy ‘60s painter Mario Schifano (1934-98), a spray-painted monochrome encased in translucent red plastic, depicting three silhouettes of "comrades," in this case seeming to be Vietnamese peasants (typically they hold a hammer and sickle, symbols of the "just solution to social contradictions," as Schifano inscribed other versions of the image).

Schifano, who might be called the Italian Andy Warhol -- which would make him a lover as well as a Pop artist; he supposedly stole Marianne Faithfull from Mick Jagger -- also made art from commercial logotypes, put on music events and made video art, and in 1967 released one great psychedelic recording, The Stars of Mario Schifano. It has an astonishing 17-minute-long jam or freak-out session comparable to the styling of Arthur Brown or the 13th Floor Elevators.

PEDRO VÉLEZ is an artist and critic living in Chicago
http://www.artnet.com/magazineus/reviews/velez/chicago-build-up1-29-10.asp

Cheat Codes: Lessons in Love @ Flavorpill

2010-01-25T19:52:00.000-08:00

Eunjung Hwang, Future Creatures, 2009

Watching curator Amelia Winger-Bearskin's Cheat Codes: Lessons in Love, an hour-long presentation featuring the works of 12 video artists, feels like watching cable access back in the 1980s. The single-channel low-resolution screening at Antena gallery leaves a lot to be desired for the usual HD and Blue Ray viewer — but that's the point. Evocative, ridiculous, and nostalgic, the program progresses in seemingly random order, including Game Boy-inspired animations from Eunjung Hwang, kaleidoscopic video landscapes from Jennie H. Bringaker and David Horwitz's presentation of newly found footage from Bas Jan Ader. The collage of videos proves the lingering influence of cybernetic and analog aesthetics on digital work.

– Beatrice Smigasiewicz

http://flavorpill.com/chicago/events/2010/1/8/cheat-codes-lessons-in-love

Decoding the Cheat Codes: “Lessons in Love” at antena

2010-01-22T15:04:00.000-08:00

Decoding the Cheat Codes: “Lessons in Love” at antena

Written by: Tobi Haslett

The turquoise title screen at the beginning of “Cheat Codes: lessons in love” puts love in terms of video games: juxtaposing cheat codes with relationships and comparing players to the viewers of the exhibit. The new video art installation at antena gallery uses this opening statement more as a caution than a credo. This short, playful definition sets the tone for a show whose connection to video games and digital culture is far from obvious, but whose overall meaning is derived from references and influences that are as contemporary and relevant as electronic media themselves.

Curated by Amelia Winger-Bearskin, the show features work by twelve video artists and animators whose styles differ significantly, often to a powerful effect. Bubbling beneath the surface of Eunjung Hwang’s animations is an apt, if hackneyed, commentary on our society’s technology-induced atavism. In Hwang’s piece, two-dimensional figures hump and harm one another with disturbing rapidity, all the while maintaining vapid, expressionless faces that reflect as much on Hwang’s choice of medium as they do on the video’s overall motif of passionless stimulation.

Another standout piece is Amber Swanson’s video, in which a blow-up sex doll is battered and abused in three different settings: a wedding, a park, and a trade show for the adult entertainment industry. In the first circumstance, trendy young Chicagoans point at and joke drunkenly about the eerily lifelike object, all the while remaining acutely aware of the odd nature of its presence. Later, in what is probably the most moving moment in the entire show, two women wearing hot pants and shirts emblazoned with the Girls Gone Wild logo pose suggestively for an off-screen camera. Each time they freeze for a photo, their likeness to the doll is overwhelming. It seems that to Swanson, both the doll and the girls are hollow, disturbing byproducts of the objectifying tendencies of the culture that produced them.

In some ways, “Cheat Codes” benefits from its disjointed arrangement. Although Grant Worth’s psychedelic video collage bears little resemblance to Jason Martin’s green-screened performance art, the pieces hang well together precisely because they lack obvious similarities to each other and to the work’s ostensible theme. The superficial incongruity between the pieces is a reminder to the viewer that the show is devoted to what is unseen or unobvious.

But not all of the works in “Cheat Codes” present these contradictions gracefully. Jennie Brinkager’s piece features a neon-clad belly dancer being raped by and eventually wrestling with men dressed as Vikings in what appears to be a strip mall parking lot. Text detailing the artist’s views on immigration runs along the bottom of the screen, providing an awkward accompaniment to what is already a somewhat questionable subject. Jay Schleidt’s video has a more comfortable setting. His grainy footage of two amateur musicians plucking the tune of “Sweet Home Alabama” is one of the less gripping pieces in the show, but it also has one of its more poignant moments: one of the musicians starts howling incomprehensible lyrics into a microphone and the camera cuts to a dim and cluttered room, with the young performer still wailing off-screen. The haunting image seems to represent the collapse of the hopes of the musicians at the hands of frustration and domesticity.

Cheat Codes is less about game consoles and onscreen avatars than it is about the treacherous nature of identity. The videos that make up the show all provide insight into a culture whose constituents must maintain several personas at once, be they sexual, political, or virtual. While some of the pieces seem to falter in illustrating this idea, there are quite a few jewels embedded in this eclectic collection.
antena, 1765 S. Laflin St. Through February 6. Hours by appointment. (773)257-3534. antenapilsen.com

Georgina Valverde: Moral Geometry

2009-11-19T19:03:00.000-08:00

Opening Friday December 4, from 6pm-10pm
December 4 - January 2, 2010

With performance by Microgig starting at 8:00 p.m.

In the introduction of The Book of Tea, Okakura Kakuzo speaks of “moral geometry” to explain how ‘The Philosophy of Tea,” or “Teaism,” embodies Eastern ideals related to purity, simplicity, and a sense of proportion to nature and the cosmos. “Teaism is a cult founded on the adoration of the beautiful among the sordid facts of everyday existence,” says Kakuzo.

Moral Geometry makes sense out of the “sordid facts” of the quotidian: repetition, waste and consumption. Using the components of over 1600 teabags donated by friends and acquaintances, Georgina Valverde creates a body of work exploring the potential for repeated small actions to manifest form, beauty and meaning.

The centerpiece of Moral Geometry is a small building titled Teacage based on the Wardian case, a precursor of the modern terrarium. Working for the British East India Company in 1848, Robert Fortune used Wardian cases to smuggle 20,000 tea plants from Shanghai to start the first plantations in Assam, India. Teacage is a flexible structure that can be broken down into a series of screens or space dividers. As such, Teacage is a forum for performance, workshops and social encounters. The first event is a performance by Microgig. Other events will be announced.

Georgina Valverde was born in Mexico City in 1962. She has a BFA, 1987, in Painting and Printmaking and a BA, 1987, in Modern Languages from James Madison University, Va., and an MFA, 2003, from the University of Illinois at Chicago. Georgina’s work has been most recently featured at the Centro Jaime Sabines in Tuxtla Gutiérrez and the Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Tamaulipas, México, the University of Texas Pan-American, Edinburg, and the Hyde Park Art Center in Chicago. Her work has also been exhibited at the former Bodybuilder & Sportsman Gallery and the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago, the Palm Beach Institute of Contemporary Art and the Cullacht Residency program at the Galway City Arts Center, Ireland among other venues.

This project is partially supported by a Community Arts Assistance Program grant from the City of Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs and the Illinois Arts Council, a state agency.

Also this month's Project Wall Space: Chris Wood

Recomposition:
The project, Recomposition, is the culmination of a five year long process. The first four years involved building the collection. It started off rather casual, but became more serious as time went on. The very initial collecting of the foods happened more out of a general aloofness toward the state of my refrigerator, but soon developed into a curiosity: What will grow next? Why are these milks aging differently? Hummus... really? In time, I grew attached to certain items of interest and refused to part with them, even at the prodding of friends, roommates and those who helped move them to a new apartment. Though the final product carries with it a touch of absurdity, it is an earnest representation of a set of objects I find interest in, particularly when viewed as a set. Through documentation and presentation, the characters are presented in a slightly more permanent, though still liminal condition.

Chris Wood, a native of Pittsburgh, earned a BFA in Illustration from the University of Dayton in 2001 and an MFA in Painting from Northern Illinois University in 2005. His work has appeared in solo and group exhibitions nationally. Currently he lives and works in Chicago, where he runs his studio and teaches at the Illinois Institute of Art Chicago. His recent work uses a diverse range of materials, from graphite, charcoal and acrylic to digital, photography, foil and food.

Opening Friday December 4, from 6pm-10pm
December 4 - January 2, 2010

ANTENA
1765 S. Laflin St.
Chicago IL 60608
www.antenapilsen.com
antenapilsen (at) gmail.com
(773) 257-3534
Hours: by appointment only

Art review in the Loyola Phoenix

2009-11-11T16:19:00.000-08:00

On the state of the zombie:
Antena Gallery offers an introspective.
By by Stan Golovchuk

Walking through Zombie: A Mindless Affair, I couldn’t help but feel alive. The exhibit is an ambitious sprawl of mixed media art whose ideas on death and the unnatural manage to stand out in the onslaught of Halloween-themed entertainment offered in Chicago. Zombie could even be this season’s best kept secret, so it’s a good thing the Antena Gallery is keeping it active until Nov. 21.

Antena is a wing of Miguel Cortez’s studio apartment. Part zombie gallery exhibit, part living space surely sounds like an unnatural creation, but it’s actually less weird than it may seem.

The gallery is located in the heart of Pilsen, around the corner from the Jumping Bean Café and behind a green metal door. After knocking on the door thrice (because that seemed appropriate) I was welcomed by the smiling, laid back owner. Inside, I was led to the gallery and let loose on the exhibit. The grotesque, peculiar and chilling creations immediately absorb the viewer’s attention.

Zombie consists of 35 different works done by 32 artists. Practically every medium and material imaginable went into creating this exhibit, from oil on canvas, to film, meat, prose, leather and music, just to name a few. Every work is somehow unique and brilliant in its own way, but all together, the collection is mesmerizing.

A piece that I thought quite frightening was Andrea Jablonski’s “Clare and the Captured Moonlight.” Half of the piece is a painting of a tortured baby doll with torn hair and a gouged eye, adjacent to a bright crescent moon behind a railed window. This installation is accompanied by a clever poem that tells the story of how a doll named Clare was tormented by her owner and the revenge that followed suit.

A few feet down lies Jacob C. Hammes’ “Meat Phone.” This creation looks just like it sounds, and is vaguely reminiscent of a rejected prop from David Cronenberg’s movie, Videodrome.

On a few occasions, small or seemingly more discreet installations can startle, ones that jump out at the viewer when seen from the right angle.

Bert Stubler’s “Anabaptism” serves as a perfect example. It’s made from fimo, paint and wire, but it basically looks like an androgynous figurine sliding down the wall with a trail of blood. Its simplicity and small size might make it incongruous at first glance, but it becomes unforgettable once seen.

Some of the work is for sale, including a painting called “The Pure Harmony.” This oil on canvas painting by Vladimir Kharitonsky is priced at $3,000. If not for the cost, I would have bought it immediately. The 28” x 34” painting shows a man with a cabbage head posing next to his wife, who has a rabbit head. The work looks like a photo of an old sideshow act, both odd and intriguing. The subtle commentary on gender roles makes me wonder if it was painted after a break up.

On the opposite side of the room is a wall with two portable DVD players. At these stations, viewers can see short zombie films made by local filmmakers.

Organ Factory, which can be bought on DVD for $25, is a six-minute homage to the gore and conventions of traditional zombie cinema. Lots of organs are eaten in this short film, and the make-up looks as though legendary horror makeup artist Tom Savini might have designed it.

The other film is a funny commentary on the frustrations of dating zombie men. I’m SOOO over Zombies tells the stories of two girls and the challenges they face dating the undead. But to be honest, the women in this movie sound awfully shrewish: It’s surprising that their boyfriends haven’t eaten them yet.

The entire exhibit was put together by Cortez’s friend and contributing artist, Edra Soto. Visits are by appointment only, contact information for the artist and information on the exhibit is available at www.antenapilsen.com

Original post: http://www.loyolaphoenix.com/2.541/diversions/on-the-state-of-the-zombie-1.858989

(re)load : new media art

2009-04-29T18:49:00.001-07:00

Artists:
Catherine Forster
Amanda Gutierrez
Patrick Lichty
Shane Mecklenburger
Mari Ortiz
Rob Ray
Sara Schnadt
Michael Una

Opening Friday May 15 from 6pm-10pm
May 15 - June 13, 2009

New media art is an art genre that encompasses artworks created with new media technologies, including digital art, computer graphics, computer animation, virtual art, Internet art, interactive art technologies, computer robotics, and art as biotechnology. The term differentiates itself by its resulting cultural objects, which can be seen in opposition to those deriving from old media arts (i.e. traditional painting, sculpture, etc.). This show is a small portion of what some artists have created in Chicago.

ANTENA
1765 S. Laflin St.
Chicago IL 60608
www.antenapilsen.com
antenapilsen (at) gmail.com
Saturdays noon-5pm or by appointment

from Proximity Magazine

2009-04-13T16:21:00.000-07:00

Primal Dildo

Paul Nudd and Nick Black at Antena
February 20 - March 21, 2009

A myth within a myth spoke to us unconsciously of a time before history in which a group of ape-people, known as the “primal horde,” cowered in fear before the arbitrary but absolute brutality of a male who neither shared nor gave away anything, but ate, penetrated, defiled, and pummeled anything and anyone he pleased. Eventually the feared male is killed, and the guilt causes the group to project reverence onto a “totem,” an animal or other such image that serves as a common ancestor and protector of the group, while the horror at communal castration causes the totem to be represented in magical erotic objects, or fetishes. Just as Freud’s archetypal birth of perversion was declared obsolete by the evolving consensus of the supposedly scientific psychoanalytic community, it became apparent that the anxiety caused by the desire to kill the violent, cruel, jealous, animalistic “primal father” was a strikingly appropriate motif for the denuded manhood of a sedentary, rootless, commodity-worshipping modern culture.

Mutant Toy by Nick Black. Courtesy of Antena Gallery.

In their show at Antena, “The Pour Rubber,” Paul Nudd and Nick Black have created a cabinet of curiosities that indexes every form of phobic jizz dripping from the hindbrain of modern masculinity. Among Nick Black’s frisky Frankensteined toy automata, a suspicious duck-billed Santa Claus farts loudly while bouncing a naked Chinese baby doll on his knee. In another, a brown-skinned baby dominatrix yanks the chain leash for a half-naked smiling white anchorman type on all fours in a little “Pet Shop” set, accompanied by the immortal strains of House of Pain’s “Jump Around.” Evil smoke pours from sundry openings in Paul Nudd’s large black sculptural heads. Nudd’s pieces also feature large drawings advertising unseemly balms, salves, and chutneys, and video screens portraying colorful fluids and solids emerging from and retreating within frantically quivering orifices. The ideas could be partially summarized as tongue-in-cheek dioramas of implied profanation, but Black’s delicate DIY engineering and Nudd’s effortless repurposing of graphic design and video production are so ruggedly handsome in their presentation than they elevate pubescent naughtiness to a level of Baroque grandeur.

This installation could be considered as a museum of triggers for anxieties linked to buried traumas and/or violations of deeply instilled boundaries. A museum, rather than a chamber of horrors, because the artists put their visual provocations into a well-lit space and abstract them beyond any clear depictions of brutality or obscenity. This taxonomically impersonal defanging of psychological and moral strictures recalls the analytical, affectless cruelty of the Marquis de Sade, a “primal father” for modernity if there ever was one.

But what the show celebrates is hilarity, playing off the letter against the spirit of laws around taboo. Black and Nudd express their mischief through imaginative fetishistic props that create erotic drama, a practice Gilles Deleuze associates with Leopold von Sacher-Masoch, namesake of sadism’s partner syndrome, masochism. Deleuze claims, opposing him to Sade, that “Masoch aspires to a world of suspense and waiting, and thus aestheticizes the real as a series of tableaux vivants.” These fetishes erase the “lack” of the mother’s phallus, and so this immersively titillating show leaves us with the secret truth of our era: the “primal father” is a dominant mother, an amazon lurking in the scat-fantasies of a few dozen generations with no fatherhood ideal. But through the corrosive power of office humor, the male employee of the MILF CEO secretly retains control. Without apology or vulgarity, Black and Nudd’s elegantly crafted work portray dilemnas at the heart of the modern gender divide with tenderness and some uncanny awe.

by Bert Stabler

http://proximitymagazine.com/2009/04/primal-dildo/

secret school opening april 3, 2009

2009-04-04T13:37:00.000-07:00

See photos from the opening here:
PICASA: http://picasaweb.google.com/lapsus05/SecretSchoolAntena02#
or FLICKR: http://www.flickr.com/photos/lapsus5/sets/72157616260972589/

next show opens April 3, 2009

2009-03-24T17:01:00.000-07:00

Secret School 05: Food at Antena, Chicago
In Collaboration with Alexander Stewart

Also this month:
Project Wall Space: Anni Holm
Monthly Video Series: Amelia Winger-Bearskin

Secret School is pleased to collaborate with Alexander Stewart to examine the importance of food in fostering social networks and the possibilities of barter exchange in decentralizing market systems. A food for art supply swap will begin the event at 6PM and last until 8PM, followed by a 90 minute program of videos that explore cultural relationships with food, including those of Patty Chang, Cecilia Ramirez-Corzo, Joey Frank, Andy Cahill, Liz Magic Laser and Dafna Maimon, Sophia Peer, Karen Tam, Pizza Dog, and a few other food-themed surprises. Secret School and Stewart will issue a corresponding book of recipes, essays, and anecdotes about food.

Bring a homemade dish or art supplies for entry. Arrive early for the swap, stay for the screening.

Return for open format crafting and snacking sessions, a.k.a. Crafternoons.
Noon-5PM every Saturday from April 4 - May 2. Bring snacks, crafts, and friends.

Secret School explores the importance of the hidden and invisible in the social identity of a community through a series of time-based events and collaborations. Ranging from the political to the personal, epic to the quotidian, unknown to unknowable, how do secrets function in the transfer and preservation of power? At a time in which oversaturation of readily available information already exceeds our capacity for adequate synthesis, how can the poetics of secrets cut through the logic of facts? When does the form of a secret supersede its content, and under what circumstances must information remain a secret? Secret School spans an indefinite number of sessions and range of spaces and extends from the aesthetic practice of building systems of social exchange.

For more information, visit secretschool.wordpress.com or email s3Cr37.5ch00l@gmail.com

Opening Friday April 3, 2009 from 6pm-10pm
April 3 - May 2, 2009

ANTENA
1765 S. Laflin St.
Chicago IL 60608
www.antenapilsen.com
antenapilsen (at) gmail.com
Saturdays noon-5pm or by appointment
773.344.1940

Refreshments provided by Red Stripe:

review in the Chicago Weekly

2009-03-02T16:06:00.000-08:00

The Surreal Life: Paul Nudd and Nick Black bring the weird to antena gallery
Written by: Melanie Treuhaft

One of Nick Black's Mutant Toys; courtesy of antena gallery

It was cold enough outside to catch me off-guard with the momentary conviction that Santa had set up shop in Miguel Cortez’s antena gallery. Sounds of running motors and clicking machinery came from an array of colorful objects placed sporadically throughout the room, creating a mechanical harmony. Viewers engaged with their surroundings, pulling knobs and tinkering with little objects: experiencing the artwork required participation. But the wholesome aspect of this first impression was disrupted upon surveying the small, high-ceilinged space more closely. The contraptions lining the walls revealed themselves not as charming teddy bears and dolls, but instead as mildly perverted reconstructions of old children’s toys. Artist Nick Black had dismantled the playthings, rearranged parts, and reassembled them into an “Orgy of Mutant Toys.”

Rubber seems to be almost entirely absent from the scene…until one sees it seeping through the walls by way of Paul Nudd’s drawings. Slimy greens and dirty browns assume organic forms resembling hairy amoebas and other oozing blobs. Each drawing features a short message, either a humorous catchphrase or a random combination of words, absorbed into the flow of the composition.

Nudd also furnishes the gallery with a large, black, smoke-emitting sculpture which blends in with its environment by clouding its own image. One corner of the room is dominated by its four hollow heads, each taller than the people staring through its eyes to the back inside surface. Each is connected to a tubular post, all four of which merge into one long tube at the base. A smoke machine positioned at the opening of the communal tube generates white smoke which slowly creeps into the room through the facial orifices. After a few rounds of smoke machine magic, the small room takes on a hazy atmosphere through which the distorted sculptures shimmer like relics from mystical religious ceremonies.

Amid the drawings, the mutant toys, and the four-headed smoke beast, podiums are dispersed throughout the room, supporting more darkly fanciful works of sculpture. This almost cluttered organization creates a surprisingly comfortable space in which viewers can feel right at home. Despite what some would probably consider unsettling imagery, the room facilitates a friendly, open environment in which to embrace such a collection. The curator seems to have meticulously thought out and arranged the objects in the space. What could have easily turned into a random muddle is successfully distributed throughout the gallery. In addition, the warm lighting helps maintain an atmosphere at ease with the disturbing art objects.

At the opening, Black fit right into the scene. He hurried to join any interested viewers, excited to share the story of the piece before them. His enthusiasm illustrates the vibe of the gallery and the type of genuine enthusiasm about experimentation in the arts that antena promotes. In the spirit of Cortez’s space, everyone excitedly engages with the art before them and shares ideas about new projects and events.

Black and Nudd have successfully created an environment in which the fanciful and bizarre both find a comfortable retreat. But while the installation provides an interesting aesthetic challenge, the art maintains itself at a certain relational distance from the observer. There is limited potential for breaking the ice between the fluidity of human emotion and the explicit absurdity of the images. That said, if you find yourself having a weird day, this exhibit will be thoroughly engaging, even refreshing.

antena gallery, 1765 S. Laflin St. Through March 21. Saturday, noon-5pm or by appointment. (773)344-1940. antenapilsen.com

http://chicagoweekly.net/2009/02/26/the-surreal-life-paul-nudd-and-nick-black-bring-the-weird-to-antena-gallery/#more-987

The Pour Rubber

2009-01-26T16:04:00.000-08:00

"The Pour Rubber"
Individual & Collaborative Works by Paul Nudd & Nick Black

Opening Friday February 20, from 6pm-10pm
February 20 - March 21, 2009

The Pour Rubber is... Black Nudd - Smoldering Heads - ThunderCRUSTS - Two Rerouted Thrift Store Fog Machines - Black Blisters - Feb-lloweenies - Oozing Pour Rubber - Inflatable Heads - Open Rivers of Primal Muck - Werewolves in Pilsen - Double Tongues - Black Bush Cream - Canned Crusts - (((Wonky Thunderstick SOUND))) - Bathroom Glowballs - Double Deer Head Karaoke - Inflatable Godhead & Hair Gel Fountains - An Orgy of Mutant Toys - Melted Fun - Hyperactivity - Skunk Apes - Murky Streams of Ripened Sludge - Gallons of Sticky Fog Juice - Black Pig, Dog & Ape Tongues - Seven Heads & Headstones - Misc. Black Salves, Creams, Balms & Chutneys - Black Bush Pus - Rubber Masks in Black - Hard Black Great Stuff - Pour Rubber Molten Flesh - (((BLACK NUDD : NUDD SOUND))) - Thunderlusts - Warm, Slimy Cakes of Fake Rare Meat - Cave of the Mounds - Forty Black Dog & Donkey Tongues in Sticky Sweet Creams - KlusterLUSTS - Oceans of Dried Rubber - Black Fun Furs & Clays - Old Crusted Wigs and Loose Black Curly-Q's - Modern Art - Weeping Death Heads - Portraits of the Doomed - Rubber Blubber

Keith Herzik poster and Michael Bulka writing available.

PLUS!!!

"Beneath the Human Soul There Runs a River of Sludge: An Exhibition of Anonymous Children's Drawings from the Collection of Paul Nudd"

Paul Nudd was born in Harpenden, England in 1976. He graduated in 2001 with an MFA from the University of Illinois at Chicago. Recent exhibitions include Jack the Pelican Presents, Brooklyn, Western Exhibitions, Chicago and the Hyde Park Art Center, Chicago.

antena
1765 S. Laflin St.
Chicago IL 60608
www.antenapilsen.com
antenapilsen (at) gmail.com
Saturdays noon-5pm or by appointment
773.344.1940

article by Daniel Tucker

2009-01-22T16:09:00.000-08:00

Critical Culture in Chicago – Article #2: Groups and Spaces

by Daniel Tucker

Hey Obamacrats! Lets learn about Chicago!

Since the time of my first article in this series on social/political art in Chicago, the whole world has had an introduction to this city through the lens of Barack Obama – who adopted the city as his hometown 20 years ago. What this event means for the world is yet to be seen. What this event means for Chicago is that the local culture and politics are going to come under greater scrutiny and more people are going to be trying to learn about and be introduced to this city.

The extraordinary amount of cultural production in Chicago wasn’t missed by Obama in his time in the city – he was actually on a foundation board (the Woods Fund) that gave out grants to community organizers and socially engaged art.

Visitors observations of artistic practice in Chicago consistently cite an extreme commitment and openness to collaboration. It could be that this derrives from some lack of pretention or commitment to egalitarian living. It could also be a pragmatic response to scarity of resources for cultural work. Regardless of the root cause, the city is undoubtedly ripe with art collectives and small collaborative initiatives. Interestingly, a number of those groups actually run cultural spaces or venues. Both the groups and the spaces will be discussed here, in an attemp to give an international audience a sense of the range of practices coexisting in this newly founded Obamaland.

One key art group HAHA began in 1988, initiated by Wendy Jacob, John Ploof and Laurie Palmer. Their twenty year long practice shifted focus regularly from the highly local and public to whimsical works made for galleries and museums throughout Europe and the U.S. Their forms ranged from Flood - a storefront community center on the north side of the city where vegetables for AIDS patients were grown and distributed, to a rooftop advertising unit on a taxi cab which could be programmed with site-specific text messages controlled by a GPS unit. Their approach to community, participation and pedagogy has had a strong influence on the local art scene, not least of which on the group Temporary Services (TS) directed by Brett Bloom, Salem Collo-Julin and Marc Fischer. TS has strongly defined the field of collaborative art in the city, with over ten years of public work, self-publishing and the facilitation of at least three different venues for presenting the work of other artists. TS’s work about ecology and economy has had a clear influence on collectives like Material Exchange, JAM, People Powered and InCUBATE. Their approach has made the nature and style of collaboration their material and subject matter with a number of projects literally dealing with how groups work together – most notably in their recent book simply entitled “Group Work.” As a group they have collaborated closely with other artists like Brendan McGaffey, Melinda Fries of ausgang.com and the couple duo Rob Kelly and Zena Sakowski aka The Biggest Fags Ever – sometimes leading to the renaming of a super-group known as the Biggest Temporary Gang Ever!

TS maintains groupsandspaces.net, a virtual platform for documenting collaborative art practice and has initiated a venue for forming new collaborative relationships known as Mess Hall – another storefront on the north side of the city just blocks away from where HAHA produced Flood in the mid 1990s. Five years later Mess Hall has minimal involvement from the original TS members and is run by a group of “keyholders” who are responsible for maintaining and coordinating the space’s weekly free events ranging from yoga to sewing workshops to reading groups and lectures by traveling activists and thinkers.

Other groups running venues in the city include the artist-run bookstores Golden Age and No Coast, both in the southern Pilsen neighborhood. Just down the street is Antena, the project space of Miguel Cortez and the Polvo collective who have also run magazines and galleries together for ten years.

Publishing and the administration of venues seem to go hand in hand. Three other important spaces – the Green Lantern Gallery, ThreeWalls residency and gallery, and the Co-Prosperity Sphere all publish their own magazines and pamphlets. All three venues are committed to educational festivals, seminars and workshops. They have also been committed individually and collaboratively to cataloging the proliferation of “alternative spaces”, non-commercial galleries and the ubiqutous apartment galleries that Chicago is known for. One important apartment gallery to collaborate with nearly everyone mentioned in this series is Vonzwek, founded by Philip Vonzwek in 2005.

Fortunately the city boasts several theoretically oriented group learning projects, including ARC109, Finding Our Roots, Freedom School Communiversity, Chicago Political Workshop/49^th st. Underground, the Midwest Radical Cultural Cooridor, Platypus and FeelTank. The latter three have strong commitments to considering the intersections of art and politics. All of the projects have significant, though unofficial, connections through their membership to local universities – leaving the significant challenge of making rigerous educational projects trancend the academy partially unresolved. Their contribution to the intellectual and theoretical development of the city’s self-identified political artists is hugely important.

The city has a rich theater tradition exemplified in the 200 producing neighborhood based theaters, forming an impressive constallation of hyper-local live entertainment within walking distance of peoples homes. David Issacson of Theater Oobleck has said “it is a point of pride that Chicago does political theater.” The theater scene is divided from the visual arts community, which is unfortunate because their physical infrastructure of venues could easily facilitate collaboration with other disciplines, serving as a home to multi-use activities of other artists and activists operating without a stable home.

There are a number of performance troupes blurring the lines between visual and performing arts with their art actions including Lucky Pierre, Chicago County Fair, the Neofuturists, and the now defunct Goat Island. Groups like the Drag Kings and Teatro Luna put gender politics on the stage, while the FeFees, Young Women’s Action Team and the now defunct Pink Bloque took them to the streets.

Public art groups like CAFF Collective, You Are Beautiful and Anti Gravity Surprise ask people to participate in the production of their own public space. Similarly, the youth-centered art groups Cooperative Image Group, University of Hip Hop and Kuumba Lynx all blend street art and graffiti in public space with Pedagogy of the Oppressed inspired educational and political work.

This city is indeed ripe with collaborative and social art and venues that faciliate its presentation and evolution. Without being able to pinpoint the source or motives for this, it is undoubtedly a virtue and a feature which makes working here easier and more sustainable for those interested in cultivating an artistic practice which can hope to transcend the logic of the commodity.

My previous article in this series dealt with the local history which preceeded these examples of groups and spaces. The next article will deal with the institutions both large and small, which hold the city’s culture together, or in some cases which keep it from evolving.

Daniel Tucker is the editor of AREAChicago (areachicago.org). For more information see miscprojects.com

the first 2009 art opening

2008-12-19T17:59:00.001-08:00

Sebastian Alvarez

Project Wall Space: Huong Ngo
Monthly Video series: Patrick Holbrook

Opening Friday January 9, 2009 from 6pm-10pm
January 9 - February 7, 2009

"Words feel beneath" by Sebastian Alvarez is a piece that exists in different forms, as an image, as an installation, and as a performance. This work reflects about the human relation with the earth, the disappearance of the language of storytelling, and the environments to which we depend in order to create culture. What has ultimate value, is not what is measured and seen but what exists in the many realms of meanings and connections that lie beneath the tangible realities of the world, linking all things.

Sebastian Alvarez, born in Lima, Peru, is an interdisciplinary performance artist, who is interested in transforming his personal vision into social responsibility with new cultural imperatives that include a renewed sense of community, an ecological reintegration, and greater access to the mythic and archetypal bases of bio-restoration.

Also this month
Project Wall Space: Huong Ngo

Bio:
"Though I grew up in the verdant piedmont area of North Carolina, one of my earliest memories is closely inspecting the minute grid of a window screen and imagining the endless horizon of high-rise buildings in my birthplace, Hong Kong. Mine was one of only a handful of Vietnamese families in this area which Nascar racers and elementary school teachers alike fondly call "The New South." As a child, I devoted all of my creative energies towards making wearable gifts for loved ones, which they typically used once and then politely hid away. By middle school, I had already raised a brood of baby hamsters, started a small business, and learned to sew with a machine. With these achievements under my belt, I began reading only psychology textbooks, absurdist plays, and science journals in my attempt to understand the world.

My art investigates the tenuous nature of survival. Born as a refugee, my experiences are shaped by a sense of statelessness, flux, and displacement. I explore these themes to their utopian and dystopian ends through the creation of shelter, both physical and psychological. I appropriate futurist aesthetics to reposition the story of the refugee as contemporaneous with mythologies of the modern nomad. I combine the language of design and craft movements with the use of recycled industrial materials in order to challenge traditional notions of technological progress and question dominant modes of consumption and production. At the same time, I use strategies of collaboration, humor, and play, to allow for new economies of personal exchange and broach darker aspects of humanity such as war, fear, and isolation.

I received my MFA from The School of the Art Institute in Chicago, and my BFA from the University of North Carolina. I have exhibited my works at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago, the National Gallery in Prague, the Yerba Buena Art Center in San Francisco, the Neuberger Museum at SUNY Purchase, the Anahuacalli Museum in Mexico City, as well as numerous non-profit and artist-run spaces. I have received the LMCC Swing Space Grant, the Chashama artist studio, and the Community Arts Assistance Program Grant from the City of Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs."

Monthly Video series: Patrick Holbrook

Bio:
Patrick Holbrook lives and works in Chicago. His work examines the spaces and movements of commodities and people, the intersections of power structures, ideological expression in engineered and cultural forms, cultural memory, and speculative possibilities of alternative ways of living. Based in video and digital media, but including other materials and objects, it has been shown at venues such as the Atlanta Contemporary Art Center and the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco, and in solo exhibitions at Eyedrum and the Saltworks Gallery Project Room in Atlanta, A\V Space in Rochester NY, and Washington State University Tri-Cities. He is an Adjunct Professor at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and Columbia College, has been a visiting artist at Rhode Island School of Design, Scripps College, and The University of Memphis, and was an Assistant Professor at the Georgia College & State University Art Department from 2002 to 2007, where he started the digital media area. He grew up in New Hampshire and received an M.F.A. from the University of Massachusetts - Amherst, a B.A. from Hampshire College, and plays music with The Wood Knots.

antena
1765 S. Laflin St.
Chicago IL 60608
www.antenapilsen.com
antenapilsen (at) gmail.com
Saturdays noon-5pm or by appointment
773.344.1940

antena @ bridge art fair in miami

2008-11-19T18:34:00.001-08:00

Antena @ Bridge Art Fair Miami Beach
December 4-7, 2008

BRIDGE MIAMI BEACH
Following its enormous critical and commercial successes in 2006 and 2007, Bridge is pleased to announce our third installment in Miami Beach. Held at both the Catalina and Maxine Hotels, Bridge Miami leads the South Beach satellite art market, located a mere two blocks from Art Basel. Visitors can browse nearly 80 rooms of the freshest and most innovative works in international emerging and contemporary art.

Arguably the largest convergence of contemporary art and design takes place during Art Basel Miami in this annual, star-studded, citywide celebration of new art internationalism. Consistently a muscular destination market, Miami shows absolutely no signs of stopping, and continues to astound as far and beyond the top-performing art-fair circuit in the United States.

The Catalina and Maxine Hotels
1732 Collins Avenue
Miami, Florida
GOOGLE MAP

ANTENA
Room #201

Artists exhibiting with Antena:
Edra Soto
Gisela Insuaste
Gretel Garcia
Huong Ngo
Jaime Mendoza
Jesus Oviedo
Miguel Cortez
Saul Aguirre

See full schedule HERE

Time Lapse: a video art group show

2008-11-05T18:49:00.000-08:00

Time Lapse:
a video art group show curated by Amelia Winger-Bearskin

Works by:
Bidzina Kanchaveli
Joseph Winchester
Leanneau White
Arthur Augustynowicz
Robert Milton
and more...

Opening Friday November 21, 2008 from 6pm-10pm
November 21 - December 20

Time Lapse is last in a series of four exhibitions: Time Travelers, Time Machine, Time Lapse, and Time Lapse: Antena, curated by Amelia Winger-Bearskin. Time Travelers, was shown at Polvo in Chicago, 2007; Time Machine in Washington DC at Meat Market Gallery this past summer; Time Lapse in Nashville, Tn at Vanderbilt University and Time Lapse: Antenna will be shown in the same Chicago space where the project began bringing us back in time to the beginning.

Time Lapse is single channel video art show; all videos are displayed through a single projector one after another in the style of film screenings and time-lapse photography. Time unfolds and is captured systematically by an optical lens and/or digital media, the subjects of the videos are often overlapping, there is not an intimate knowing but a careful study of sequence, there are also holes, lapses and mistakes, there are doubts in the work.

And while it may appear obvious to time travelers that there need only be ONE time based art show for travelers to coordinate their time machines to that exact date and place, no time traveling devices were detected at the first show and the subsequent efforts have been made to make sure there is progress in this time space continuum while leaving open the idea that once this information is recorded it will likely be changed by the time travelers, machines and lapses who frequent these events from a future and past date in "time".

Amelia Winger-Bearskin is a Video/Performance Artists who is currently teaching at Vanderbilt University, Nashville Tn in the areas of Video, Performance and Drawing. She is a featured artists for the Perpetual Art Machine [PAM] and is currently creating solo video and installation works about Andrew Jackson and his home in Nashville Tn. She is also currently working on a new series of video art curations in the near future.

Patrick Lichty's opening

2008-10-29T19:06:00.000-07:00

Antena featured in the Chicago Reader

2008-09-11T21:37:00.000-07:00

Best Bets | Antena

In 1996 Miguel Cortez cofounded Polvo, a Pilsen collective whose ventures included print and online magazines and one of the city’s best independent galleries. Polvo closed the gallery in 2007, but Cortez’s new space, Antena, is keeping up the same high standards of diverse and thought-provoking work. October brings a solo show by Patrick Lichty, whose CV includes work with anticorporate pranksters RTMark. Lichty’s Spire Reloaded comprises various electronic depictions of Berwyn’s late, beloved “car-kebab,” from straight-up photos to an online “virtual sculpture” and a ten-minute expansion of the 12-second appearance of the spire in Wayne’s World.

That’s followed in November by Time Elapse, curated by Amelia Winger-Bearskin, who’ll present her own video art as well as that of a selection of artists largely from Austin, Texas. A trained opera singer, Winger-Bearskin takes a meditative approach to everyday experiences, creating mesmerizing work that combines the layered harmonics of mantra-like vocals with blurry, manipulated imagery of landscapes and bodies. A continuation of a project begun last year at Polvo, Time Elapse will also feature work by Joseph Winchester—whose elegant abstractions evoke the history of experimental film, video, and sound art—and Lanneau White, whose lo-fi battledork aesthetic evokes the west coast performance troupe, My Barbarian, and the Dungeon Majesty fantasy serial, but adds depth by addressing issues of race and otherness. Antena is just one facet of the bustling Pilsen art world; Plaines Project, Vega Estates, No Coast, and Golden Age are all worth visiting in the coming months too. Arrow Spire Reloaded opens Fri 10/10, 5 PM, and runs through 11/8. Time Elapse opens Fri 11/21, 6 PM, and runs through 12/20. Sat noon-5 or by appointment, 1765 S. Laflin, antenapilsen.com. —Albert Stabler

http://www.chicagoreader.com/features/stories/fallarts08/art/antena/

Jaime Mendoza opening night - August 29, 2008

2008-09-03T17:31:00.000-07:00

see more photos here: http://picasaweb.google.com/lapsus05/JaimeMendozaOpeningAugust292008Antena?pli=1#

article in NEW CITY

2008-09-03T17:20:00.000-07:00

Fall Openings: Art Not Necessarily for Sale

Many new and established art galleries function as gallery spaces and homes. Outside the clusters of galleries, these spaces, such as Pilsen’s Antena, Oak Park’s Suburban and Albany Park’s Swimming Pool Project Space make room for art beside the furniture. Profit is not the motive; rather, it’s all about exposure, for artists and viewers, and creative expression. “We have an art world that doesn’t value artists,” notes Michelle Grabner, co-owner of the nine-year-old Suburban gallery. “Dealers and curators are running the shots, artists really don’t have the kind of control and decision making they once had.”

Filling that void, art spaces such as Suburban and Antena allow artists free reign in terms of artistic and curatorial control. Antena, a new space that opened in March, is run out of founder Miguel Cortez’s apartment. “Artists are allowed to repaint the walls, transform the space for a show,” Cortez says, who shifted focus to his new space after running Pilsen’s Polvo gallery for years. Polvo continues to publish a quarterly magazine with artist profiles.

Art openings at both Suburban and Antena provide a gathering spot for the arts community. At Suburban, openings now take place on Sunday afternoons in the yard of Grabner’s house, with bratwurst and beer during the warm months, coffee and sweets during the winter. Antena’s openings, which take place in Cortez’s apartment, are equally informal. And through these events artists gain access to networks and visibility.

“We are neither a commercial nor a non-profit space,” notes Grabner. And the same goes for Antena, which aims to be a forum for artists in need of a middle ground alternative space.

Swimming Pool Project Space, opened July 2008, appearing as a commercial storefront, provides a springboard for emerging contemporary artists from Chicago and abroad. Pool parties—openings that take place around the glossy blue wooden floor that resembles a swimming pool—provide a place for artists and community members to interact. “This where people meet, artists or not, it’s public space where conversation occurs, not a bar but an art space,” says co-owner Liz Nielsen. The next exhibition, “Video as Video: Rewind to Form,” is curated by art critic Alicia Eler and artist Peregrine Honig, and opens September 20. (Marla Seidell)

http://art.newcity.com/2008/09/03/fall-openings-art-not-necessarily-for-sale/

Tania Kupczak review from Timeout Chicago

2008-08-07T19:17:00.001-07:00

Tania Kupczak

Tania Kupczak, 3 losses (still), 2008.

A young woman in a heavy coat trudges through snow-covered fields. It’s unclear how much fun this is for her, but on a hot Chicago summer day, Seattle-based artist Tania Kupczak’s encounter with the deep snows of Vermont—the subject of her video 3 losses (2008)—is a refreshing reminder we won’t always feel as though we’re moving through a soup of grime and humidity.

In the video, the artist’s ambiguous voiceovers allude to romantic troubles without specifying what has happened or who was involved. The second of its three sections, which begins with a tearful Kupczak lying in the snow and ends with her calmly continuing her journey, clearly suggests a connection between her stormy external and internal conditions. But this isn’t a cheesy chick flick: Kupczak cleverly incorporates the weather into the monologues she delivers to unseen listeners, explaining that one relationship featured “a flurry of touches, but no accumulation.”

In her mixed-media installation snow_leylines (2003), Kupczak plays a recording of herself walking the same path through the snow at different times. As we hear every crunch and crackle of her steps when the temperature is low and then watery, sliding sounds as it rises into the 40s, the artist’s catalog of her everyday movements—she recites the temperature and other details (“full moon”)—leaves us in a meditative state. Kupczak’s meteorology-inspired abstract “system maps” (pale networks of symbols such as clouds and raindrops) are less compelling than her video and audio work, in which she reveals the beauty of our mundane struggles with winter.

— Lauren Weinberg

-----Gretel Garcia and Frank Wick preview----

2008-06-05T23:21:00.000-07:00

review in Chicago Weekly newspaper

2008-05-17T13:10:00.000-07:00

What Makes a Man Start Fires?: A new exhibit at the antena gallery mediates the relationship between the viewer and the world

By Emma Ellis

You haven’t felt the meaning of stimulus overload until you’ve felt it in the hands of artist Noelle Mason. Immediately upon walking into the one-room antena gallery, a barrage of slaps, gasps, and giggles welcomes the newcomer. You progress through the physically interactive show, weaving across cables, tiptoeing over broken bits of a chandelier that lies crashed in the center of the gallery’s floor, and bending over to view certain pieces properly. While standing near the two walls where about half the pieces are located, you can’t even step backwards without bumping into “Li’l Sparky”—an electric chair.

Using an intrusive shock therapy-type method, Noelle Mason created the show “What makes a man start fires” with the intention of getting people “to act, to really metaphorically start this fire—to cause change towards something that is better for us as a society.” Much of her work in the show serves to demonstrate how inured the audience is to what she calls “mediating objects,” and force viewers’ participation in ideas from which their culture tends to distance itself.
In “Bob and Weave,” for example, the audience witnesses a video of a fistfight between Mason and a large man projected onto a wall. As the tussle progresses, Mason’s bloodied face bumps in and out of the camera’s frame, the back of her opponent’s head impeding our view most of the time. The viewer is confronted with an image physically too large and too loud to avoid.

Mason’s other visual work is geared to achieve a similarly jarring response. She explains that, normally, “the television is kind of a wall, but also a window in some ways.” The television screen, like a car’s windshield or a white picket fence, is a “mediating object” in that it serves to separate the viewer from what it portrays. The show, however, compels the viewer to transgress these divisions and in so doing makes the audience more aware of the gap created by such mediating objects.

After taking part in “Mise en Scene,” another work that creates understanding by involving the viewer, one cannot help but wonder how many television screens it takes to make us savages. During “Mise en Scene,” the screens serve as a visual gateway to the interior of a white eight by eight foot cube, within which a barely clothed performer stands on a box with wire electrodes attached to her legs and arms. The viewer watches and listens to a television video of other viewers pressing a red button and observing, on another television set, the woman convulsing in pain.

The video-recorded audience members sought to connect with the woman inside the box, but as one of the audience members shrewdly observed, “the only way to communicate with her is to shock her.” In a telling shot a man with black-rimmed glasses repeatedly jabbed the button while looking at the screen, and turned to an off-camera friend while laughing and pointing at the television.

Mason also uses mediating objects to explore the transformation of traditionally cherished American individualism, which she describes “as a very noble kind of effort that got mangled and turned into [a] fearful position where you lock yourself inside of your tract home.”

In the piece “Open House,” the viewer is treated to posters of the detailed architectural plans of “Cul de Sac,” which the program says was made “using prefabricated building materials” such as plastic siding, and then watches a video performance of Mason and several others who built themselves inside this suburban equivalent of Thoreau’s house on Walden pond. It might take more than an axe and some whiskey to change the new individualism they are fighting, but at that moment that’s all it takes to destroy the pristine house from the inside out.

antena, 1765 S Laflin St. Through May 24. Saturday, 12-5 pm, or by appointment. http://www.antenapilsen.com/current.html

photos from Noelle Mason show

2008-05-10T14:17:00.000-07:00

Noelle Mason

2008-05-09T10:12:00.000-07:00

CRAZY: Gretel Garcia and Frank Wick

2008-05-05T18:29:00.000-07:00

CRAZY
Gretel Garcia and Frank Wick

Opening Friday June 6, 2008 from 6pm-10pm
june 6 - july 5

"Love can sometimes be magic. But magic can sometimes just be an illusion."
- Ali Javan (Inventor of the gas laser)

Gretel Garcia and Frank Wick are artists and ex-lovers. Their show, Crazy, brings together artwork that deals with love, intimacy, illusions and magic. There's an interaction of these terms that coexist and mingle to create an area that can be perceived as love or the absence of it. The artists question this interaction and how its plays into their personal lives and how its exists within social paradigms. The materialization of this is evident in things like personal ads. love songs, glamor shots and perfume.

Gretel Garcia Cuba was born in Havana Cuba and raised in Miami Florida since the age of 3. She received her BFA from the University of Miami with a concentration in Sculpture and a minor in Print-making. Her exhibitions include 15/Caliber (Barbra Gilmen Gallery- Miami), No Home Show (curated by Robert Chambers, Home of Eugena Vargas, Miami), Blanc,( Mexican Cultural Institute, Washington D.C.), Echelon: who is watching you? (POLVO, Chicago), Stiching Deluxe (Orleans Street Gallery, Chicago) and more recently several exhibitions in Happy Dog Gallery in Chicago. Her curatorial work includes the Motel Show - a one night exhibition in the San Juan Motel in Calle Ocho of Miami. She currently resides in Chicago.

Frank Wick was born the morning of December 4th,1970 in southern Illinois. Since then he has managed to show artwork at the Miami Art Museum, Projektraum 54 in Basel Switzerland, 2020 Projects in Miami and had his one and only solo show at The University of Tennessee Chattanooga: White Elephant. He pays his taxes like everyone else, eats and drinks too much and generally makes an attempt at keeping sane in light of what could be considered a mad world. His work tends to reflect upon that world and its inherent problems. He once said, quietly, “The world is grossly over-populated.” He didn’t elaborate but continued to sip his beer and stare at the Joey-heavy episode of Friends on the television mounted above the bar. He was also heard to mutter, “ Fuck all this. ” The statement went largely unnoticed but the sentiment was there. Frank works in a major natural history museum faux-painting replicas and making mounts for prehistoric objects and Native American artifacts.

DOWNLOAD PDF (1.2mb) PRESS RELEASE HERE

antena
1765 S. Laflin, St.
Chicago, IL 60608
info (at) antenapilsen (dot) com
myspace: http://www.myspace.com/antenapilsen
Hours: saturdays Noon-5pm or by appointment

current show recommended by timeoutchicago

2008-05-02T18:22:00.000-07:00

Art & Design

Time Out Chicago / Issue 166 : May 1–7, 2008

Dust might

Noelle Mason, Bob and Weave, 2008.

Polvo’s closure last December was a sad loss for Pilsen’s gallery scene. But cofounder Miguel Cortez says antena, his new project space around the corner, should pick up where Polvo—which took its name from the Spanish word for dust—left off. In antena’s first show (“What makes a man start fires?”) Noelle Mason uses cultural phenomena such as Superman’s X-ray vision to investigate America’s violent and security-obsessed culture. It runs through May 24.

— Lauren Weinberg

tonight's opening

2008-04-25T21:46:00.000-07:00

Noelle Mason

2008-04-24T18:16:00.000-07:00

2008-04-18T11:39:00.000-07:00

Grand Opening April 25th, 2008

2008-04-09T20:37:00.000-07:00

What makes a man start fires?
new work by Noelle Mason Opening

Friday April 25, 2008 from 6pm-10pm
April 25 - May 24

"antena" is a new project space headed by Miguel Cortez of the Polvo Collective. The Polvo space closed in Dec 2007 after 4 years of non-stop shows and this new space in Chicago's Pilsen neighborhood continues where the previous one left off. The spanish word "antena" means a device that is a transducer designed to transmit or receive electromagnetic waves but in this case it is meant to define it as a cultural space that transmits/broadcasts symbolically art ideas, new media and installation projects on a local and global scale.

For the first show we will showcase the work of Noelle Mason. Noelle received her MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and has a BA from the University of California-Irvine. Her past exhibits include Alagon(Chicago), Thomas Robertello Gallery(Miami), Track 16(Santa Monica, CA), la Space(Hong Kong), Polvo(Chicago) and Wendy Cooper Gallery(Chicago).

"'What makes a man start fires?' is an autobiographical investigation of the contemporary American cultural climate as seen through the lens of video games, night vision, and super-mans x-ray vision. "What makes a man start fires?" questions the atomization of society and the futile attempt to shake an addiction to anesthesia, the safety of the The picket fence; the nuclear family and perpetual childhood of privilege. The electric fence; the misplaced violence of school shooters, vigilantes and ultimate fighting champions. The virtual fence; xenophobia and the unauthorized desires of the sexually repressed. " - Noelle Mason

antena
1765 S. Laflin, St.
Chicago, IL 60608
773-344-1940
www.antenapilsen.com
info(at)antenapilsen(dot)com

antena will open in April

2008-03-12T18:02:00.001-07:00

antena

Short Court: Tropical Aesthletics

Antena @ Verge Art Miami

Art Sale for Antena @ VERGE ART FAIR

New City Review: El Stitch y Bitch/Antena Gallery

Antena @ MDW

Review: Renovation Creep/Antena Gallery

Stitch and Bitch

Article in ArtSlant

Renovation Creep: Joe Cassan, Dan Bruttig and Erin Thurlow

Closing Reception: PLUGGED OUT: New works by Salvador Jiménez Flores

"Is this thing on?: The art of comedy"

ANTENA @ THE TRANS FORMIDABLE

PLUGGED OUT: New works by Salvador Jiménez Flores

PLUGGED OUT: New works by Salvador Jiménez Flores, June 24, 2011

PLUGGED OUT: New works by Salvador Jiménez Flores

Is this thing on?: the art of comedy

Daisy Chain: An Anarchic Performance Event

ANTENA @ MDW ART FAIR, April 23-24, 2011

images from Duk L. Kim show

Antena @ The MDW Fair

Vicissitude: Duk Ju L. Kim

photos from PaintFX opening

Paint FX @ Antena

Poetry - Open Mic @ Antena

Amelia Winger-Bearskin opening pics

AMELIA WINGER-BEARSKIN: TRANSFORMATION OPERA

Photos from the opening in Fort Worth, Texas, Sept. 11, 2010

Shikaakwa

From the Wash: Mark Nelson

Religare: Artists explore the concept of Religion

Antena @ The Texas Theatre

Photos from the opening June 25, 2010

Sangre, Sudor y Papeles: Artists examine the immigration issue

John Hartley, Andrew Rigsby Opening May 14, 2010

John Hartley and Andrew Rigsby @ Antena

Photos from Antena @ NEXT

Antena@NEXT Art Fair

Religare: Artists explore the concept of Religion

Pondering the Universe at Antena Gallery

Antena in The Columbia Chronicle

Pocket pixChicago-based photogs use iPhone camera, applications for artby HermineBloom

Antena in The Chicago Weekly

FAIR: TWO-DAY LOCAL MAKER AND PUBLISHER FAIR

artnet.com

Cheat Codes: Lessons in Love @ Flavorpill

Decoding the Cheat Codes: “Lessons in Love” at antena

Georgina Valverde: Moral Geometry

Art review in the Loyola Phoenix

On the state of the zombie:Antena Gallery offers an introspective.By by Stan Golovchuk

(re)load : new media art

from Proximity Magazine

Primal Dildo

secret school opening april 3, 2009

next show opens April 3, 2009

review in the Chicago Weekly

The Pour Rubber

article by Daniel Tucker

the first 2009 art opening

antena @ bridge art fair in miami

Time Lapse: a video art group show

Patrick Lichty's opening

Antena featured in the Chicago Reader

Jaime Mendoza opening night - August 29, 2008

article in NEW CITY

Fall Openings: Art Not Necessarily for Sale

Tania Kupczak review from Timeout Chicago

Tania Kupczak

-----Gretel Garcia and Frank Wick preview----

review in Chicago Weekly newspaper

What Makes a Man Start Fires?: A new exhibit at the antena gallery mediates the relationship between the viewer and the world

photos from Noelle Mason show

Noelle Mason

CRAZY: Gretel Garcia and Frank Wick

current show recommended by timeoutchicago

Dust might

tonight's opening

Noelle Mason

Grand Opening April 25th, 2008

antena will open in April

Pocket pix
Chicago-based photogs use iPhone camera, applications for art
by HermineBloom

On the state of the zombie:
Antena Gallery offers an introspective.
By by Stan Golovchuk