ANDREW RAFACZ commences the 2018 fall season with Natural Light, a solo installation of new paintings, photographs, sculpture and furniture by New York-based artist Wendy White. The exhibition continues through Saturday, October 27, 2018.

Natural Light is kind of a take back. All the years of subtle signals: this isn’t for you; you’re merely the accessory, the decoration. It’s like finding hope in love’s darkest corners, or exploring the personal caverns of one’s devotion. As the American narrative that white men have controlled for the past 200 years careens towards buffoonery and bloat, a certain resolve is necessary. To that end, Natural Light is a scrubbing, a re-organization (mash-up?) of so-called boys-will-be-boys culture. It’s an American panorama of jeans, cars, beer and road tripping.

Keep on Truckin’ (2018) is a multiple-canvas, mixed-media piece measuring more than 18 feet and dominating one wall of the gallery. Comprised of re-purposed jeans, digital prints and Dibond wall reliefs, it grapples with the grandness of America’s gestalt by way of counterculture fashion, co-opted from the working class.

A new series of photo works based on vintage advertisements further an exploration into photography while riffing on themes of freedom, hope, and the unfettered American landscape. They were made while the artist traveled by camper van through Colorado, Arizona, New Mexico, and Utah.

A functional denim bench is a space for viewers to peruse vintage books, in which nearly each page features a unique intervention. These serve as both travelogue and conceptual metadata for the exhibition.

The exhibition’s title, Natural Light, is primarily a riff on photography, but also landscape, and the quintessential popular beer by the same name.

WENDY WHITE (American, b. 1971) lives and works in New York, NY. She received an MFA from the Mason Gross School of the Arts (New Brunswick, NJ) in 20013 and a BFA from the Savannah College of Arts & Design (Savannah, GA) in 1993. She has had recent solo exhibitions at Kaikai Kiki (Tokyo, Japan), SCAD Museum of Art (Savannah, GA), David Castillo Gallery (Miami, FL), VAN HORN (Düsseldorf, Germany), Eric Firestone Loft (New York, NY), Galerie Jérôme Pauchant (Paris, France), and Sherrick & Paul (Nashville, TN). She has had recent two-person exhibitions with Brian Calvin at Cabinet (Milan, Italy), and Justin Aidan at CAPITAL (San Francisco, CA). Recent group exhibitions include Marlborough Contemporary (New York, NY), Pérez Art Museum Miami (Miami, FL), Dio Horia Gallery (Mykonos, Greece), The Museum of Modern Art, Gunma (Gunma, Japan, Shulamit Nazarian (Los Angeles, CA), and Maruani Mercier Gallery (Brussels, Belgium). Her work is included in numerous private and public collections. This is her third solo exhibition with the gallery.

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Tags: andrew rafacz, Chicago, Natural Light, near west side, Wendy White