Extraordinary Effort, Spectacular Failure is the culminating group exhibition for Liz Gadelha, Lori Felker, Wolfie E. Rawk, Nora Renick Rinehart, Jesse Seay, Sebura&Gartelman and Erin Toale.

Inspired by David Foster Wallace’s depiction of the “anti-rebel” (one who values sincerity over irony), the artists and curator embraced earnest creative struggle during their yearlong HATCH Projects residency. As they harnessed their anxieties into work ethics, driving themes of absurdity, masochism, idealism, isolation, collaboration, burdens, buddies, pathos, and wonder emerged. Overly ambitious and unabashedly emotional, Extraordinary Effort, Spectacular Failure is ultimately a reflection on the unattainability of conventional success in pursuit of a multi-hyphenate artistic practice.

Featuring new works by:

Liz Gadelha
Lori Felker
Wolfie E. Rawk
Nora Renick-Rinehart
Jesse Seay
Sebura&Gartelmann (Jonas Sebura and Alex Gartelmann)

Curated by Erin Toale

Liz Gadelha has lived in Chicago since childhood. She graduated with a BFA in Photography from UIC in 2011. Her photographic practice is influenced by a decade and a half of extensive dance training and performance. She dresses female subjects in custom-made garments to produce photographic series and performances with underlying narratives rooted in fiction in order to reveal fact. Her work is motivated by the notion that fabric and skin, enclosures for the human body, as well as the objects these enclosures brush against are components of a performance-based language, structures with which we communicate.

Wolfie E. Rawk is an artist who lives and works in Chicago, IL.

Nora Renick Rinehart has a BFA in Fibers from the Maryland Institute College of Art. Her conceptual work, which includes sculpture, textiles and photography, has been exhibited all over the US and is included in private collections in Philadelphia and Chicago. For ten months of 2013, she determined the color of the sky by finding the perfectly matching Behr commercial paint swatch and documented the match with a photograph. She is currently working as a freelance/studio artist in Chicago and has been teaching all things textiles at the Lillstreet Art Center since 2010.

Lori Felker is an artist/filmmaker, teacher, programmer and cinephile. Her moving image work focuses on the ways in which we process, share and disseminate information, via screens, dreams, gestures, games, and conversation. By employing and pushing these structures, she attempts to study the ineloquent, oppositional, delusional, frustrating, and chaotic qualities of human interaction. She is currently a Visiting Assistant Professor at the University of Illinois Chicago and the Film/Video programmer at Roots & Culture Gallery.

Jesse Seay is an artist and professor in the Audio Arts & Acoustics program at Columbia College Chicago. She holds an MFA from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago and an MA from UNC-Chapel Hill. Her sculpture has shown at the Hyde Park Art Center, the Peggy Notebaert Nature Museum, the Chicago Children’s Museum, and is on permanent display at the University of Chicago. Her current practice uses knitting machines to manipulate traditional electronics into complex systems that function both as textile and as working circuitry.

Sebura&Gartelmann is the collaborative of Jonas Sebura and Alex Gartelmann. The pair has been working together since 2010. Their work has been included in exhibitions at NADA Miami, Carrie Secrist Gallery (Chicago, IL), UICA (Grand Rapids, MI), 2739 Edwin (Hammtramck, MI), John Michael Kohler Art Center (Sheboygan, WI), and The Charlotte Street Foundation (Kansas City, MO).

Erin Toale is an artist, advocate, writer and curator who works to make contemporary art accessible to and enjoyable for all audiences. She earned Dual MAs in Modern Art History, Theory, and Criticism and Arts Administration and Policy from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2013, and a BFA in 2D and 3D Fine Arts from Moore College of Art and Design in 2006. She has worked with a variety of non-profits, galleries and research centers including the Seattle Art Museum, the Rebuild Foundation, the Social Impact of the Arts Project, the Society for Contemporary Art and the Sullivan Galleries at the Art Institute of Chicago. She is currently a HATCH Projects Resident Curator at the Chicago Artists Coalition, a Resident Artist in the Hyde Park Art Center’s Center Program, and a contributing writer for Newcity. She makes art about buildings, words, and people.

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Tags: Alex Gartelmann, Chicago Artists' Coalition, Jesse Seay, Jonas Sebura, Liz Gadelha, Lori Felker, Nora Renick-Rinehart, Wolfie E. Rawk