For his first solo exhibition in Chicago, Brendan Fernandes will continue his ongoing exploration into the physical act of falling through new works in glass sculpture, installation, photography and performance, offering an extended metaphor for contemporary queer politics. Beginning with an opening night performance, Fernandes will take over the entire gallery, including a timely new installation piece as part of the gallery’s on the wall exhibition space: forty-nine handmade crystal coat hangers, symbolizing the forty-nine victims of the Orlando massacre. This project will continue inside the gallery, along with new blown glass sculptures evoking ghostly bodies, created during his recent residency at the Museum of Glass, Tacoma, WA. Unique photographic compositions comprising dancers’ limbs and African artifacts printed using the chine-collé method will accompany the sculptures. Presented together, these bodies of work will illuminate Fernandes’ ongoing occupation with the falling form, suggesting contemporary notions of desire and loss through bodily movement.

A fully illustrated digital catalogue featuring an interview with philosopher and critic Francey Russell will be available.

Brendan Fernandes (b. 1976, Nairobi, Kenya, lives and works in Chicago) is a Canadian artist of Kenyan and Indian descent. He completed the Independent Study Program of the Whitney Museum of American Art (2007) and earned his MFA from the University of Western Ontario (2005) and his BFA from York University in Canada (2002). Fernandes has exhibited widely domestically and abroad, including exhibitions at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; Museum of Modern Art, New York; Museum of Art and Design, New York; Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal; The National Gallery of Canada, Ontario; The Brooklyn Museum, New York; The Studio Museum in Harlem, New York; Mass MoCA, North Adams, MA: The Andy Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh, PA; Deutsche Guggenheim, Berlin; Bergen Kunsthall, Norway; Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; The Sculpture Center, New York; The Quebec City Biennial; and the Third Guangzhou Triennial in China. Fernandes has been awarded many highly regarded residencies around the world, including The Canada Council for the Arts International Residency in Trinidad and Tobago (2006), The Lower Manhattan Cultural Council’s Work Space (2008), Swing Space (2009) and Process Space (2014) programs, and invitations to the Gyeonggi Creation Centre at the Gyeonggi Museum of Art, Korea (2009) and ZKM, Karlsruhe, Germany (2011). He was a finalist for the Sobey Art Award, Canada’s pre-eminent award for contemporary art in 2010, and was on the long-list for the award in 2013 and 2015. He was a 2014 recipient of a Robert Rauschenberg Residency and Fellowship. A national Canadian tour of his work recently concluded and culminated in a monograph produced by Black Dog Press in London (Fall 2016). Fernandes will present a new performance at The Armory Show, New York in March 2017. He is currently artist in residency and faculty at Northwestern University in the Department of Art Theory and Practice.

on the wall is generously funded in part by a grant from the Wicker Park Bucktown SSA #33.
Complimentary refreshments provided by Perrier.

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Tags: Brendan Fernandes, Chicago, Free Fall, moniquemeloche, West Town