Marvin Astorga: This Is Why We Can’t Have Nice Things
@ No Coast
1500 W 17th St, Chicago, IL 60608
Opening Friday, April 9th, from 6PM - 9PM
On view through Friday, May 7th
Page-turning snippets of foodstuffs, supermarket deals, catalogue crap, beautiful bodies and smiling idiots capture uncomfortable moments. Glossy images of super perfection are cut, collapsed and re-imagined in This Is Why We Can’t Have Nice Things—eight years of collage and mixed media works on paper by Chicago artist and musician Marvin Astorga. The exhibition places the viewer in an imaginary universe where the slick imagery of consumer culture mutates into nauseating landscapes, false deities, sloppy beasts, and diamonds congealed in the sky. Distorting and reconfiguring the picture-perfect, the collages become dense, dynamic visions reveling in the sudden humor of juxtaposition and the meditative joy of cutting and pasting.
Astorga will also display a wall-size collaged mandala that culls its cutouts from an obsessive collection of magazines, circulars, flyers, leaflets, catalogues, product packaging, and other printed ephemera. A small edition of zines featuring collages from the show as well as drawings will be available for sale.
« previous event
next event »