Western Exhibitions is thrilled to present our fourth solo exhibition with Edie Fake. Featuring a new body of gouache on panel paintings in Gallery 1, Fake shifts away from concerns over ecological disaster in favor of a focus on the power and wisdom of plant life, and the pace at which it grows and unfurls. The show opens at our Chicago location on Friday, April 12 with a public reception from 5 to 8pm, and will run through June 1. Gallery hours are Tuesday-Saturday, 11am to 6pm.

Plotted out beforehand using graphite pencil, rulers and protractors, and hand-painted with the illusion of hard-edged precision, Fake’s compositions are reliant on the logic of Tarot card design and draw inspiration from the spiritual diagrams of Emma Kunz. Featuring a newfound focus on fabric patterns and perfume bottles, this body of work is also dotted with flower blossoms, sometimes still attached to daisy chained or trellised stems. Recalling the guided meditation drawing instructions Fake published through the New York Times during quarantine, their bold, graphic line work and luminous color gradation look like an Ernst Haeckel botanical illustration set in stained glass.

While much of Fake’s previous work has focused on what the artist calls “ecstatic architecture,” this new series of paintings evolves that concept through an exploration of what might be considered ecstatic ecology.

Edie Fake (b. 1980, Evanston, IL) is a painter and visual artist whose work examines issues of trans identity in queer space, through the lens of architecture and ornamentation. Fake’s work has been exhibited in solo shows at Berkeley Art Museum and Film Archive; Everson Museum of Art, Syracuse; Providence College Galleries, Rhode Island; in New York City at The Drawing Center, Broadway Gallery, and Marlborough Gallery, and recently exhibited publications, paintings and a large wall installation in “Chicago Comics: 1960s to Now” at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago. Fake’s work is held in the collections of the Billy Ireland Cartoon Library & Museum, Columbus; Des Moines Art Center, Iowa; RISD Museum, Providence; KADIST, San Francisco; Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art, Kansas; and the Santa Barbara Museum of Art, California. His work has been written about and featured in artforum, Art in America, The New York Times, The Paris Review, Art News, Art 21, Juxtapoz, and The Los Angeles Review of Books. Fake received a BFA from the Rhode Island School of Design in 2002. He is represented by Western Exhibitions in Chicago and Broadway Gallery in New York and currently lives and works in Twentynine Palms, California.

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