Mar 20th 2015

Daniel Luedtke & Ben Seamons: Spine Crack Transfigure

@ Roots & Culture

1034 N Milwaukee Ave., Chicago IL

Opening Friday, March 20th, from 6PM - 9PM

On view through Sunday, April 19th

In new works by Daniel Luedtke, negative shapes, cracks and edges demarcating walls, windows and bodies are remade and rearranged using painted and resin-treated surfaces resembling ceramic or metal. Figurative and abstract paintings, drawings and sculptures trace, index and exchange the dynamics of formal and narrative exclusion in order to recombine them within different hierarchies. Negative become positive and new negatives emerge. These formal mediations on the identity and character of difference generates space for unseen figures to appear.

Ben Seamons’ recent paintings depict human figures that arise out of a painting process that sets the subject matter and the paint on a collision course. The use of gestural abstraction in relationship to the figure conjures unanticipated moments where figures are caught in metaphysical experiences. The paint is the medium that transmits a kind of psychic reality and elicits themes of boundary dissolution: between material and spirit, the body and space; between the violent and the ecstatic, the concentrated and the diluted.

Daniel Luedtke lives, labors and loves in Chicago and makes art between several mediums such as drawing, painting, sculpture, video and music. He received his MFA from the School of the Art Institute in 2013 and has exhibited work nationally and internationally in spaces such the Walker Art Center – Minneapolis, Devening Projects – Chicago, the Tom of Finland Foundation – Los Angeles, Sue Scott Gallery – New York and NP3 Gallery – Netherlands.

Ben Seamons, 38, originally from Chicago, which he still considers him home. Graduate of the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (BFA) and University of Tennessee Knoxville (MFA). Currently lives and works in Knoxville, TN. This is his second exhibition at Roots & Culture. He has also shown at The DePaul Art Museum and Corbett Vs. Dempsey in Chicago and Fluorescent Gallery in Knoxville.

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