APRIL 27th-EDRA SOTO

April 27

______PM

WAKE UP! open,

Close out, eyes b

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sh, face dress look

ing teeth moisturizing

emails, tim t

aking dry, make-up

keys, WAKE UP!

Edra Soto (b. Puerto Rico 1971) is a Chicago based artist. In 1995 Edra received the Alfonso Arana Fellowship to work in Paris for one year. She obtained an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2OOO. Immediately after, she was awarded the SAIC Trustees Grant to attend Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture.

She has exhibited nationally and internationally. Her work has been feature in New American Paintings and The Museum of Cotemporary Art of Chicago. Soto has lectured at El Museo de Puerto Rico and The Art Institute of Chicago among others.

She is currently a participant at the Hyde Park Art Center’s The Center Program, granted by The Joyce Foundation.

Upcoming exhibitions include Now See Hear at Believe Inn and Point of Departure, curated by Amy Zahi at The Arcade, Columbia College Chicago and et aliae, curated by Beatriz Santiago at Galeria Agustina Ferreyra, San Juan, Puerto Rico.

Soto and her husband Dan Sullivan design, fabricated and currently run operations of The Franklin, an artist run exhibition space located in their home’s backyard in East Garfield Park, in Chicago.  This project has been funded by Northeastern Illinois University, 3Arts Foundation, and a grant from The Propeller Fund. 

OPENING RECEPTION: SATURDAY, APRIL 27th, 7-10PM

3216 s. Morgan St. Apt 4R

Chicago, IL, 60608

UP NEXT: HEATHER MEKKELSON

HEATHER MEKKELSON

Saturday, March 9th, 7-10pm

My great-grandfather haled from Stopnica, Poland where his occupation was forester. Upon immigrating to America he settled in North Central Pennsylvania where the only work he could find was as a coal miner. He missed the sun. The following historical account made national news but few believed his eyewitness account.

In the summer of 1928, Stanislaw Jendruch arrived at the coal mine outside of Coudersport, PA for another fourteen hour shift. The time was 5:48 a.m. At 5:46 a.m. the explosion that ripped apart the shaft walls and collapsed the main entrance killed all 43 men and boys who were inside. Stanislaw heard no blast; he was hard of hearing from working with black powder for the last several years. But as he approached the mine, he could recognize the absence of sound all around him. There was no possible way to remove the rubble blocking the portal. Stanislaw, alone at the mining site, ran to the obstructed entrance, and through a small opening, peered in. He could not sufficiently describe in English what he saw, but the closest translation that his wife, Amelia Angeline, could tell the newspapers was that "a glow suggestive of the stopping of stars" poured through.

Heather Mekkelson’s solo and two-person exhibitions include threewalls (Chicago), Roots and Culture (Chicago), Old Gold (Chicago), and STANDARD (Chicago). Her work has also been included in group shows at The Museum of Contemporary Photography (Chicago), The Figge Art Museum (Davenport, IA), The Poor Farm (Manawa, WI), Raid Projects (Los Angeles, CA), and Vox Populi (Philadelphia, PA). She has had her work published in Art Journal, Broadsheet (The Contemporary Art Center of South Australia), Time Out Chicago, Chicago Tribune, andArtforum.com. Most recently,Mekkelson became an Artadia Award Chicago 2012 awardee. 
 

 http://www.heathermekkelson.com/

December 15th, Chris Hammes, How to Repel Wolves

Chris Hammes

How to Repel Wolves

Opening Reception: Saturday, December 15th, 7pm-10pm

If a man was locked in a bathroom with a wolf, he wouldn’t take a shower or attempt to shave his face.  He would pound on the door and scream for help.  He would scramble around the room, hoping to keep the wolf at a distance.  He would climb onto the window sill, or up on the sink and clutch the vanity mirror for stability.  Hoping to deflect the appearance of fear, he would make loud noises in order to frighten the animal, losing his words and speaking in primal high pitched screams and guttural grunts.  Objects in the room once intended for washing away the dirt, oil, loose hair and dead skin from his body now become projectiles; the proximity of these objects take precedence over their effectiveness as weapons.  He would frantically throw deodorant, bodywash, toothpaste, sponges, hand lotion, Aspirin, towels, laxatives, cough syrup, tweezers, eye drops, vitamins, and exfoliating scrub.  He would instinctually grab the nearest sharp object and imagine himself stabbing the animal, finding a razor, a pair of scissors, or fingernail clippers.  If he can’t find anything sharp, he might instead go for a blunt object, something that could crack the animal’s skull:  a shampoo bottle, a hairdryer, a soap dish, a jar of Vaseline, or a plunger.  

This room, his claimed space intended for bathing, defecating, and grooming, now no longer feels like his.  While the man entered intending to clean his body in the same manner as he has done his entire adult life, a shower and a shave now seem irrelevant to his current situation.  His plans change in seconds, along with his physiology, his cognitive function, and his relationship with every object in the room.  Now standing on the sink of this bathroom with the last bottle of Pert Plus conditioner in his hand, he fears that he isn’t even capable of fighting back at all.  The man, mentally equipped for life in the human world, now finds himself unprepared.

Jacob C Hammes is an interdisciplinary artist living and working in Chicago. Hammes' work is a broad exploration of the ambiguous distinction between perception and belief, and the physical and psychological conditions that inform the experience of space and sensory perception. Hammes has exhibited and performed throughout the US and internationally, most recently at The Hills Esthetic Center, Roots and Culture (Chicago), The Grunwald Museum (Indiana University) and Te Tuhi Centre for the Arts (Auckland, NZ). Hammes' work and various projects have been reviewed in publications such as Art Papers, Proximity Magazine, Bad at Sports, and the Leonardo Music journal.

up next! HANDSFREE double decker onslaught!

HANDSFREE PRESENTS

DR.LUNCH

Peeing is private but those flaming hot cheetos are for the public. INDULGE! Light a match!

Opening: Saturday,June 26th, 7-11pm

Up Next-Philip von Zweck

+medicine cabinet presents Philip von Zweck's medicine cabinet

by Philip von Zweck

No metaphors, no similes.


Opening Reception: Saturday, May 15, 7-11pm

UP NEXT-CLARE BRITT

THE LONGER YOUR INSTRUMENT IS THE MORE POWER IT HAS

by Clare Britt

Opening Reception: Saturday, April 10th, 7-11pm

Taking it's title from countless spam email subject lines, for +medicine cabinet Britt has decided to pay homage to the male anatomy. Incorporating imagery of dicks, balls, roosters, sausages and more, Britt addresses her personal psyche and sexual frustration with the tools (heh heh!) of play, humor, and crudeness. Playing with different slang vocabulary she will construct a layering of pictures from magazines and books based on cocks and balls. Finally, a dick joke show!!! Just in time for spring.

Up Next-Christa Donner

Non-Prescription
by
Christa Donner

This time around in the cabinet, we are very lucky to have Christa Donner grace us with her representations of viscera as they flicker between organs and ornament while blurring what is anatomically correct with the imagined. Join us for this most non didactic (and less awkward) lesson in human anatomy since your 8th grade sex ed class!

Mining the language of folding medical charts and pop-up books, Christa Donner creates alternative anatomies based on sensation and imagination. Her work has been exhibited internationally and across the US, including major projects for the Museum Bellerive (Zurich, Switzerland), Kravets-Wehby Gallery (New York, NY), POST (Los Angeles, CA), the Museum of Contemporary Art Cleveland (Cleveland, OH), the ANTI Festival (Kuopio, Finland), and the Centro Columbo Americano (Medellin, Colombia), and is interwoven with a wide variety of community-based projects, including zines, audio interviews and public workshops investigating body image, art and activism.

Opening Reception: Friday, February 12, 7-11 pm