It is with great pleasure that Devening Projects presents Eleanna Anagnos’s first solo exhibition in Chicago, titled Lucid, opening Sunday, April 7. Anagnos works with paper pulp to create objects and vessels that function as active agents capable of containing and projecting worldviews and perceptions and of creating magic. Her artistic practice lies at the unique intersection of painting, sculpture, architecture and construction. Concerned with researching and — literally — digging into the material substratum of the locales where she lives and the rich cultural history of the people who live there, Anagnos brings to life a rarified and visceral viewing experience that requires not just looking, but also absorbing and consuming.

This new body of work combines sculpted paper pulp, pigment, found material and cast objects to bridge the gap between the corporeal and the spiritual. Earthen tones dominate abstract pieces that investigate expanded consciousness, primal memory, symbol-making, touch, ritual, color and meaning formation. Anagnos’ process leads to work that is haptic, tactile and introspective.

This debut in Chicago — an important opportunity to present a new body of work to her hometown community — is a significant step for an artist whose life has been built around establishing connections in other rich and diverse settings. Most recently, living, working and raising her young daughter in the Condesa neighborhood of Mexico City, she sought out artists and craftspeople with expertise in nuanced areas of art making, learned from them and responded with her own enigmatic and visionary objects. She finds inspiration and discovers new matrices for her creative concerns within these varied contexts. What the artist encounters, sees, breathes, feels and hears at each place she lives adds layers of sensation to each work. This combination of immersion, collaboration and exposition brings a vital depth and richness to Anagnos’ practice. Lucid will open April 7 and continue until May 18.

Eleanna Anagnos (b.198O, Evanston, Illinois) is a Greek American artist and curator. She works interdisciplinarily and shifts perceptual values by manipulating material hierarchies and processes. Anagnos earned an MFA in Painting from the Tyler School of Art at Temple University and a BA with honors and distinction from Kenyon College with a concentration in Women’s and Gender Studies. Her work has been nexhibited in the United States and internationally at High Noon Gallery (New York), Material Art Fair (Mexico City), Tiger Strikes Asteroid (Brooklyn), 68 Projects (Berlin), and Galerie Vaclava Spaly (Prague), among others. She has been honored as a Fellow at The Grant Wood Art Colony, The Rauschenberg Foundation, Yaddo, BAU Institute at The Camargo Foundation, The Anderson Ranch and The Atlantic Center for the Arts. Anagnos received grants to support her work from The Joan Mitchell Foundation, The Mayer Foundation and the Artists’ Fellowship, Inc.

Anagnos has been a visiting critic and given lectures at numerous institutions, including Brooklyn College, University of Florida, University of Texas, Austin, Universidad Iberoamericana, The Cooper Union, The Stanley Museum at The University of Iowa, Columbia University, Wassaic Projects and SUNY Purchase University. For eight years — 2O14 to 2O22 — Anagnos was Co-Director at Ortega y Gasset Projects, an artist-run, non-profit gallery in Brooklyn, supporting artists from marginalized and underrepresented communities. Those artist collaborations resulted in long-term creative relationships.

Her curatorial projects have been reviewed or featured in Art in America, The New York Times, Artnet, The Brooklyn Rail and the New York Observer. She continues to curate independently, including her recent curatorial project at Cromatica in Mexico City titled Danielle Firoozi, Let Me Cascade from My Highest Ground.

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