Fey: Drawings by Joe Sinness

In Joe Sinness’s recent drawings, portraiture and still life become glossy, yet melancholic, tributes to queer performance. These meticulous works filter cinematic performance, sharp humor and sexual desire through carefully staged still lives and closely observed portraits. Sinness considers this performance a type of strip tease that creates an erotic tension loop between what may be broadly considered sacred and profane.

ABOUT THE ARTIST:

Sinness received his BA from St. John’s University and an MFA in Studio Art from the Minneapolis College of Art and Design. In 2013 he was awarded a McKnight Visual Arts Fellowship and an Artist Initiative Grant from the Minnesota State Arts Board. Notable past exhibitions include Ace Art in Winnipeg, Manitoba, the Rochester Art Center and MAEP Gallery of the Minneapolis Institute of Arts. Sinness was recently chosen as a recipient of an artist residency with the Fire Island Artist Residency (FIAR) during the Summer of 2015.

Fey: Drawings by Joe Sinness
September 25 – October 21, 2015
Law Warschaw Gallery
Macalester College St Paul, MN

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Strandbeest: The Dream Machines of Theo Jansen at the Peabody Essex Museum

The Peabody Essex Museum (PEM) announces the first U.S. exhibition tour of Theo Jansen’s famed Strandbeests (“beach animals”). Working along the Dutch seacoast, Jansen has spent the last 25 years developing and evolving his Strandbeests, which today have become a global phenomena.

An annual rhythm structures the Strandbeests’ life cycle. Innovations are imagined and explored in the studio in winter, then tested and adapted on the beach in summer. Each new species of Strandbeest boasts new tactics and adaptations for their seaside survival. By fall, the creatures have outlived their evolutionary use and become part of Jansen’s fossil record. Like evolution itself, this process is ruthless, searching and unending.

Animaris Umerus (2009), Scheveningen beach, The Netherlands. Photo by Lena Herzog.

Animaris Percipiere (2005). Courtesy of Theo Jansen. Photo by Loek van der Klis.	Theo Jansen, Scheveningen beach, Netherlands (2011). Courtesy of Theo Jansen. Photo by Loek van der Klis.
Animaris Gubernare, Stille Strand, Netherlands (2011). Courtesy of Theo Jansen.	Animaris Umerus, Stille Strand, Netherlands (2009). Courtesy of Theo Jansen. Photo by Loek van der Klis.

ORIGIN OF THE SPECIES
With a singular focus and sense of play, Jansen has developed his Strandbeests from rudimentary structures into intricate, autonomous creatures that can respond to environmental changes by storing wind power, anchoring against oncoming storms and tacking away from the water’s edge. Originally inspired by the threat of rising sea levels, Jansen imagined a mechanical creature that could pile sand back up on the dunes. As time went on, Jansen became more fascinated with exploring ideas around the origins of life.

A selection of large- scale kinetic sculptures are accompanied by artist sketches, immersive video, and photography by Lena Herzog, who spent more than seven years documenting the Strandbeests’ evolution. Herzog’s work – which represents the most in-depth and sympathetic record of Jansen’s relationship to the beests – has recently been published by TASCHEN.

THEO JANSEN
The artist first came to prominence in 1980 when he flew a “UFO” across the skies of Delft, Holland. For the past 20 years Jansen has been creating and exhibiting his dramatic, kinetic Strandbeests. He has appeared on multiple TED Talks, been the subject of a New Yorker profile and shown his work in Asia, Europe and now the United States.

LENA HERZOG
Lena Herzog is a Russian-American photographer. Her work has been featured and reviewed in numerous publications including The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times Magazine, The Paris Review, Harper’s Magazine and Cabinet Magazine. She is the author of several books of photography and her work has been internationally exhibited.

Exhibition Tour
Peabody Essex Museum (PEM)
September 19, 2015 – January 3, 2016

Chicago Cultural Center
February 6 – May 1, 2016

Exploratorium
May 27 – September 5, 2016

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Michael Bentley at Gruen Galleries in Chicago

In his new series, Bentley continues to take on the challenge of scale with his works on paper, which size up to 4 x 8 feet. As he explores abstract seascapes with his signature application of gouache, Bentley infuses the work with an atmospheric serenity. Though not site specific, the imagery summons a stirring familiarity of place that truly resonates.

Bentley works on multiple pieces simultaneously, standing over them due to their sheer size. A profusion of layers is applied over months to build the tranquil complexions evoking expanse and calm. He describes that this medium generates a daily metamorphic process, much like the sea that inspires, creating further connectivity to his subject. Living near water all of his life, he has been captivated by its ardent curative qualities and the simple beauty of its universal effect.

Michael Bentley Untitled 65, 2015
Gouache on Arches
36 x 84″

Michael Bentley Untitled 68, 2015
Gouache on Arches
24 x 72″

ABOUT THE ARTIST

Living on the pristine eastern shore of Nova Scotia, the gift of the changing seas are a wealth of inspiration of which he never tires. On his earlier works on paper, the highly regarded former Curator of Contemporary Art at the Brooklyn Museum, Charlotta Kotik noted, “…the serenity of Michael Bentley’s watercolor speaks about the artist’s eternal fascination with the elements of nature …”

Bentley was born in 1957, and lives in Nova Scotia, Canada. Traveling extensively through the US and Canada, he has lived and painted in many regions. He has exhibited in galleries and museums across the US. and his work can be found in numerous corporate and private collections.

Michael Bentley
Abstract Seascapes – New Large Works on Paper
Opening Reception: Friday, September 11, 2015, 6-8pm
September 11, 2015 – October 31, 2015
Gruen Galleries
226 Superior Street,
Chicago, IL 60654

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Deana Lawson at the Art Institute of Chicago

The first installment of the biennial Ruttenberg Contemporary Photography Series features the work of New York–based photographer Deana Lawson. For nearly a decade, Lawson has been investigating the visual expression of global black culture and how individuals claim their identities within it. Her staged portraits, carefully composed scenes, and found images speak to the ways in which personal and social histories, familial legacies, sexuality, social status, and religious-spiritual ideas may be drawn upon the body.

Lawson began her work in and around her Brooklyn neighborhood but has recently branched out nationally and internationally to places such as Louisiana, Haiti, Jamaica, Ethiopia, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. While her themes have remained consistent, her landscapes have shifted and broadened—the global scope of the pictures, in her words, “concern and affirm the sacred black body” and speak to a collective psychic memory of shared experiences.

Lawson starts her process by researching communities she has chosen for their cultural histories. Once on site, strangers met through chance encounters become her subjects, selected for a particular expression, mannerism, style of dress, or cultural or religious affiliation. The resulting images are often inspired by multiple trips or planned well in advance. They draw upon Western and African diasporic conventions of self-presentation, popular culture, mythology, and religious rituals and beliefs—emphasizing dialogues among the past, present, and future of black culture.

Sponsors
The Ruttenberg Contemporary Photography Series is generously supported by the David C. and Sarajean Ruttenberg Arts Foundation.

Deana Lawson. As Above So Below, Port-au-Prince, Haiti, 2013. © Deana Lawson. Courtesy of Rhona Hoffman Gallery, Chicago.

Exhibition
“Deana Lawson: Ruttenberg Contemporary Photography Series”
September 5, 2015 – January 10, 2016
Art Institute of Chicago
Chicago, IL

FRAMING SPECIFICATIONS AND ADVICE

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