APRIL 27th-EDRA SOTO

April 27

______PM

WAKE UP! open,

Close out, eyes b

ed, wash tim

haire face, mir

ror bru

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

Chicago's #1 Bathroom Gallery!

The competition was fierce this year but we still managed to come out on top according to NewCity.
Recently the bathroom has acquired a new edition. I got an electric toothbrush! After not being to the dentist in 10 years I realized it's time to take action. I fucking hate dentists.

October 24th-Jesse Mclean!

Side Effects
by
Jesse Mclean
Saturday, October 24th, 7-11pm
Pharmaceutical marketing strategies and scenic nature photography combine to serve up a warning: Don’t get too comfortable on that plateau. While the view is spectacular there are other forces at work, just out of earshot and bubbling their way toward the placid peaks.

Jesse McLean is an artist working primarily with video. She was born in Philadelphia, studied art at Oberlin College and received her MFA in Moving Image from University of Illinois at Chicago. She has shown her work most recently at threewalls, Migrating Forms at Anthology Film Archives, Chicago Underground Film Festival, Portland Documentary and Experimental Film Festival, Director’s Lounge in Berlin, FLEX, Lump Gallery and Space 1026.

Up Next-Michaela Calhoun

Michaela Calhoun

Thalia: Lower Lid Blepharoplasty

oil on Canvas

9x12

2009

+Medicine Cabinet+ is extremely excited to present a diorama by artist Michaela Calhoun. Michaela's work in fabric, sculpture, and painting explores the intersection of her practice as a fabricator of facial prosthetics with her interest in folklore (specifically the superstitions attached to magpies). Like a Cabinet of Curiosities traditionally showcasing medical oddities (even though back in the day the "cabinets" were actually small rooms), the faux wood parameters of the +Medicine Cabinet+ will host a proposal for the rectification of a wound which derived from a direct blow of fairytale violence.

SATURDAY,AUGUST 15th, 7-11pm

UP NEXT-NICHOLAS PETERSON

Nicholas Peterson
Opening-Friday, July 17th, 7-11pm

Nicholas Peterson incorporates his drawings and paintings into found objects, most of which he uncovered while at work in a local greenhouse. Similar to the greenhouse in a bustling metropolis, Nicholas' work explores the infrequent and mostly futile attempts of pre-industrial plant and animal life's re-entry into the post-industrial urban landscape. A coyote in the freezer of a downtown QuizNo's sandwich shop, a miniature gallery in the +Medicine Cabinet+ of a small two bedroom apartment in Bridgeport, a beer, a Smith's mix tape, skateboarding, and mid July heat and humidity. Join Us!

UP NEXT-Kevin Robinson

Kevin Robinson
Opening Reception: June 19, 7-11pm

The connection between our childhood sense of mirth and wonder and our adult desires for stability and a sense of security are explored in the Medicine Cabinet by Kevin Robinson. His installation, "The Magic Medicine Cabinet" looks back at the games of our childhood and the insecurity of adulthood. By channeling the power of the Magic Eight Ball into the Medicine Cabinet, Robinson hopes to inspire participants, rekindling a sense of wonder into day to day life. He invites participants to concentrate and ask the Magic Medicine Cabinet a yes or no question, open the door and receive the answer.

NEXT UP-BEN RUSSELL

BEN RUSSELL IS MEDICINE CABINET
I used to say "I" and "me"
Now it's "us", now it's "we"
A veritable cabinet of curiosities himself, occasionally Chicago-based media artist/performer/curator Ben Russell brings his heretofore unacknowledged skills of video camouflage and virtual mimicry to a one-night only engagement at the fabled Medicine Cabinet. Watch in slack-jawed disbelief as he transmutes the world into his image in reverse, utilizing a battery of tricks and tools in the service of ALWAYS BECOMING that include (but are not limited to): live video performance, light-sensitive electronics, Michael Jackson at age 13, and a makeshift cloak of invisibility.

OPENING RECEPTION
FRIDAY,MAY 22, 7-11pm
RUNS TILL JUNE 12

Next up Burtonwood and Holmes!!!

Burtonwood and Holmes
at
Medicine Cabinet
Saturday, April 18th, 7-11pm

The link between consumption and war are made most apparent in Burtonwood and Holmes' large scale sculptures, paintings, installations and urban interventions. Combining throw away coupon print media with the instruments of the battlefield, Burtonwood and Holmes have been fighting the good fight for quite some time now. Come and witness Saturday, April 18th, how these big builders can operate within the modest parameters of the Medicine Cabinet!

UP NEXT- JT Rogstad

FRIDAY,MARCH 20th, 7-11pm,

3216 s. Morgan St.
Apt 4r
Chicago, IL, 60608

Up next at +Medicine Cabinet+ is artist JT Rogstad. Simply put: a memorial will be constructed. He has created a document of the process to lead up to the final display of his diorama here. You can see previous work by JT, and former Cabinet Member; Noah Furman, here.

From the artist:

Stark Trek::A nervous ensign rebuilds a poor facsimile of the island city of a fallen street racer using the plastic sex tools of a sexless society. A memorial in miniature for a legless wonder and a good friend.

February 20th-RYAN MURRAY

Friday February 20, 7-11 PM,
3216 S. Morgan st. apt 4r
Chicago, Il, 60608

Ryan Murray, a self described "practitioner of both rigorous academic inquiry and deviant epistemic methods" will be next in the Cabinet. However, it is not just the modest interior of the cabinet that will be the site for this abutment of science, mysticism, and psychedelia. A correaliting site, the refrigerator door, will also serve as host to this alchemical interplay. Magnets may be involved.

DIORAMA BY NOAH FURMAN- DECEMBER 19th

Next up, drawer and painter Noah Furman is trying his hand at a diorama within the faux wood parameters of the Medicine Cabinet. It will be the only way for a healthy transition into the holidays. You can check out more of his stuff here. This opening will be one for the history books because it will coincide with the Ping Pong of Gods event in the Second Bedroom. Mark it on your calenders.

Friday, December 19th, 7-11pm
3216 s. Morgan st.
Apt 4r
Chicago, Il, 60608