The John David Mooney Foundation is proud to announce Tectonics, a solo exhibition of new work by Frances Lightbound at the International Currents Gallery. The exhibition opens September 21st, 2023, with a public reception from 5:30–7:30pm.

Tectonics is about things in process; objects out of place and/or out of time. About buildings as condensations of human and non-human activity. About navigating the tides of sensation while being occasionally anchored to islands of familiarity; about objects and spaces that rhyme. As a vandal let loose in the library of the metropolis, Lightbound uses architecture as a lens to examine spatio-temporal relationships between bodies, built spaces and landforms, rearranging aspects for one to lose authority against the backdrop of the other. The exhibition becomes an intimate act of readership on the magnetic nature of materiality in the medium of building.

Tectonics presents a series of anecdotal installations, incorporating print, sculpture, drawing, and site-responsive works on paper. Variable screen print editions take a single photographic image as their starting point; their surfaces threatening to evolve through ongoing, iterative processes. Salvaged architectural fragments from elsewhere are sent off on new voyages, thickening their associative dexterity. Heavyweight graphite rubbings formed through Lightbound’s sustained bodily engagement with the gallery, shift paper to sculptural relief. Relativizing meaning and transforming trace materials like graphite to breaking point (where meaning is lost and found) the works encourage a deeper consideration of surface and structure, deconstructing and at times collapsing, human and geologic timelines to redistribute raw materials toward more salient truths; towards elemental nature and the enigmatic charge of spatial gesture.

Frances Lightbound (b. 1989, Sheffield, UK) works at the intersection of printmaking, drawing, sculpture and architecture. Her work has been exhibited nationally and internationally, including projects at Paris•London•Hong Kong, Chicago; Bianca Bova Gallery; Blue Star Contemporary, San Antonio; Hyde Park Art Center, Chicago; MONACO, St Louis; and 68projects, Berlin. She has collaborated on projects with designers, dancers, and fellow artists, and was a co-founder of 2|1|4|1 artist collective, Scotland. Lightbound is a faculty member of the Printmedia Department at School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC), and a Luminarts Visual Arts Fellow. She holds a BA (Hons) from Glasgow School of Art, and an MFA from SAIC.

Tectonics is on view September 21st till October 29th, 2023. Regular gallery hours are Tues–Fri 12–6pm. Sat/Sun by appointment only – kindly email jdmstudio@jdmf.org to schedule a weekend visit.

Alongside EXPO Chicago Exhibition Weekend, join us for Brunch in the Gallery on Saturday, September 30, 10am – 12:30pm. Also open without appointments 9/30 and 10/1, 12pm–5pm.

This project is generously supported by Luminarts Cultural Foundation.

Official Website

More events on this date

Tags: Chicago, Fran Lightbound, Frances Lightbound, John David Mooney Foundation, Near North Side, Tectonics