From a Strange Place
Marzena Abrahamik and Jordan Martins
March 13th-April 26th

From a Strange Place is a two person exhibition joining the work of Marzena Abrahamik and Jordan Martins to ponder questions of hallucination and psychedelic experience. Abrahamik’s photographs integrate objects and references from her research into both the cultural history of psychotropic substances in the twentieth century as well as the potential these substances have for creating a feeling of connection with nature for those who take them. Martins approaches painting as an intrinsically hallucinogenic practice, using patterns and colors that seek to confound and tease the perceptual faculties of those viewing his surfaces. Running through their varied approaches to materials and image making is a shared attempt at blurring boundaries, destabilizing appearances, and pointing to tensions that exist in the day-to-day. By incorporating signifiers from various communities and discourses that have formed around psychedelic practices, Abrahamik invokes the range of lived experience (with pleasure and pain) that these practices tap into. Martins intertwines processes of photography, collage, and painting to create surfaces reveal subtle distortions of scale, surface and materiality.

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Marzena Abrahamik received her BA from Loyola University in 2002 and her MFA from Yale University in 2013. Her recent solo exhibitions include presentations at Johalla Projects, Chicago (2017, 2015), the Gallery of Classic Photography, Moscow (2013), and the Turchin Center for the Visual Arts, Boone, North Carolina (2012). Group exhibition highlights include the Silver Eye Center for Photography, Pittsburgh (2016), Weinberg/Newton Gallery, Chicago (2016), Soccer Club Club, Chicago (2016), Sushi Bar, New York (2014), the International Photography Festival, Tel-Aviv (2014), and Aperture, New York (2013). Her work is included in the collections of the Art Institute of Chicago and Haas Family Art Library at Yale University. Her work can currently be seen in the Whitney Houston Biennial in New York.
http://www.marzena-abrahamik.com/
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Jordan Martins is a Chicago based visual artist, curator, and educator. He received his MFA in visual arts from the Universidade Federal da Bahia (UFBA) in Salvador, Brazil in 2007, and is a lecturer at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and North Park University. He is the executive director of Comfort Station, a multi-disciplinary art space in Chicago. Martins’s visual work is based in collage processes, including painting, photography, video and installation, and he has exhibited nationally and internationally. His work has been featured in exhibitions at Goldfinch, The Mission, Evanston Art Center, LVL3, The Franklin, The Museu de Arte da Bahia, Zeitgeist, and Experimental Sound Studio. He was a resident in the Chicago Artists Coalition’s HATCH program in 2013. Martins is co-director of the Perto da Lá Close to There, a multidisplinary project with international artists in Salvador, Brazil and Chicago.
http://www.jordanmartins.com/

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Tags: Chicago, Heaven Gallery, Jordan Martins, Marzena Abrahamik, West Town