In The Sun, Over The Grassy Knoll
Opening Reception: September 18th, 2017 2 – 6 pm
Exhibition: September 18 – October 23, 2016

That men do not learn very much from the lessons of history
is the most important of all the lessons that history has to teach.
-Aldous Huxley

…I want only to capture a minute part of reality.
-Henri Cartier-Bresson

South of the Tracks is pleased to present In The Sun, Over The Grassy Knoll, a group exhibition featuring work from Peter Skvara, Kayle Karbowski, Hyegyeong Choi, Mike Rea, and Curtis Mann.

Activated by the mid-20th century period of upheaval, and Times subsequent collapse onto itself in this contemporary moment, the titular Grassy Knoll acts as the locus for latent psychological, and imperial forces, be they real or otherwise. It is at this site, where speculative timelines diverged, that we can lay out in absorption, ambivalent to history. The works of Peter Skvara, and Curtis Mann speak to the veracity of history but also to the expenditure of signifiers, and language, to which it ultimately loses its anchoring over time and from production. The codified maritime language found in Skvara’s color field paintings allude to a mode of language in human development and capitalism yet the ghostly appearance of these paintings subdues the proposed concrete nature of any language, and pushes the paintings further towards liminal space. Likewise, the burnt out fields of nothingness found in Curtis Mann’s seminal works congruently examine both the loss of language, albeit visual in this instance, and the historical and contemporary secret movements of war by imperial powers. The anxiety from this lack of, or impotence that has resulted from the historical displacement of resources, and capital has caused a rift not throughout contemporary U.S. society but also the globalized world in which further displacement occurs. As such the ego is found throughout but no less than in the work of Hyegyeong Choi, Kayle Karbowski, and Mike Rea, whom acting as some cross generational psychedelic band, present differing works concerning the uncertainty of ego/identity in the contemporary moment. Yet as Choi’s dick-strewn scenes belie the seemingly apocalyptic setting, and nature of her neon palette and gestural overabundance, the painting nevertheless counterbalances the wooden tombs to a typical male ego trope in Mike Rea’s sculpture, and the youthful, feminine inquiry found in Karbowski’s astrological fabric works, and absurdist video resulting in a post-modern syncopation amongst the work that synonymous to contemporaneity.

The opening reception for In The Sun, Over The Grassy Knoll, is September 18th, 2 – 6 pm and the exhibition runs till October 23rd.

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Tags: Chicago, Curtis Mann, Garfield Park, Hyegjeong Choi, Hyegyeong Choi, In The Sun Over The Grassy Knoll, Kayle Karbowski, Mike Rea, Peter Skvara, South of the Tracks