Come on down to the opening reception at Mars Gallery as listed above. Event closes September 25th. Facebook doesn’t let the post list for the whole run. Anyway… details below with artist statement etc….

Show Location / Mars Gallery 1139 W. Fulton Market Chicago
Artists’ Reception: Thursday, September 8, 2016 / 6 – 9 PM.

Closing Reception during EXPO Chicago:
Sunday, September 25, 2016 from 1 – 3 PM.

Exhibition Dates: September 8 – September 25
Gallery Hours: Wed 12 – 6, Thur 12 – 7, Fri 12 – 6, Sat 11 – 5PM

Krista Hoefle / quilts and prints My creative practice is aimed at revealing the underlying or unexpected aspects of videogame structure that may not be apparent during regular game play. There are three trajectories I use in this ongoing investigation of videogames: existing games are used as a basis for artworks that amplify play-conditions; existing games are directly interrupted, subverted or adapted (through computational means or game-based performance); artworks theorize a new game environment -or- approach to game play altogether. Additionally, my research questions the culture of gaming—expanding the perception of the gendered nature of these spaces–and imparts the emotional impact games can have in/on real life. Are videogames an art form? Despite a vibrant indie-game design community, the videogame industry is highly market-driven which may problematize a perspective that games are a form of art. Related to investigating game mechanics, structure, and design, I’m also attempting to expand the definition of what games are, what ‘counts’ as a game, and why games are important, individually but more so collectively.

Nancy Mladenoff / work on paper In the past three years I have been working on a series about the lives of women. These include notable women of historical significance: scientists, inventors, entrepreneurs, performing artists, and sports figures, as well as those who were unrecognized or completely anonymous. These portrait-like paintings on paper mine various graphic traditions, such as frakturs and samplers (both early forms of American folk art), early photography, collage, printed textiles, and visual storytelling. My interests is less in documentation of these women in a realistic sense than in conveying their iconic significance through an imaginative visual rendition. In addition, I have been working on a series about girl bands. My fascination with this musical subculture derives from their anti-aesthetic rebellious spirit and passion, which, in the performative moment, surfaces as a microcosm of radical change.

Lorraine Peltz / photographs and paintings These works reflect on my time in Austria this summer, specifically in Vienna and Krems, during an artist residency with my husband and daughter. I took photographs, concentrating on details of places, and then altered them to create new images as photos and paintings. This process is akin to how places and things come back to us somewhat changed as we reconsider and remember them. This body of work deals with aspects of the complicated past of Austria and how it is connected to my life as a daughter of a mother who once lived near the remarkable Danube but was displaced by the painful events of history, and also with the incredible beauty that I found there.

Jennifer Yorke / collage on paper My work exposes the uneasy relationships between consumption, identity, the physical body, and the natural world. Through collage, drawing, and installation, I conflate fashion’s celebration and distortion of the body with the day-to-day experience of its flaws, failures, and expellants. Despite our best efforts to create controlled, socially-appropriate selves, our bodies are leaky vessels, often filled with unruly desires. I demonstrate the absurdity of these efforts at control through humor—and humors. The moments of duality and uncertainty that my work at once represents and creates are moments of possibility, in which our preconceptions about each other and ourselves are dissipated.

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Tags: Aron Packer Projects, Chicago, Jennifer Yorke, Krista Hoefle, Lorraine Peltz, Mars Gallery, Nancy Mladenoff, near west side, pop up