In Gallery 1, Stan Shellabarger, a performance artist known for his 12-hour long walks made in celebration of Equinoxes and Solstices, will show several printed objects and artist-book hybrids that are derived from his continued interest in issues relating to the body, the Earth and for devising alternative methods of drawing.

In Gallery 2, Maria Petschnig will present “With the Door Closed”, a mixed-media installation that will include the single-channel video “An Evening at Home’” and a new series of photographs. This is Petschnig’s first show at Western Exhibitions and her first solo show in Chicago.

Both shows open on Friday, September 9 with a free public reception from 5 to 8pm and will run through October 15, 2011. Gallery hours are Wednesday through Saturday, 11am to 6pm and by appointment. On Saturday, September 17, Shellabarger will discuss his conceptual concerns and his process in creating the work in the show in a Gallery Talk that will start at 4pm. This talk, part of Gallery Weekend Chicago, is free and open to the public.

In Gallery 1, Stan Shellabarger, a performance artist known for his 12-hour long walks made in celebration of Equinoxes and Solstices, will show several printed objects and artist-book hybrids that are derived from his continued interest in issues relating to the body, the Earth and for devising alternative methods of drawing.

The centerpiece of the show is a long accordion-fold artist book, presented stretched out across a low-slung pedestal in the middle of the gallery, features a 6-color reductive woodcut made by Shellabarger’s repetitive pacing atop wooden panels while wearing special boots, with coarse grit sandpaper affixed to their soles. For his “Dragging Book”, another accordion-fold piece, Shellabarger hung 10 steel plates on a wall and while wearing sandpaper-covered gloves, dragged his hands across the plates while pacing parallel to the wall. He printed the plates like one would a drypoint, in red ink in an edition of 10, and affixed one of the steel plates on the cover of each book in the edition. Two colorful reduction woodcuts resemble welcome mats, where Shellabarger again created the image by stepping on the wooden substrate with sandpaper-covered boots. Western Exhibitions will also show two framed black-and-white documentary-style photographs from Shellabarger’s first walking performance — he walked intermittently in a circular path for an entire year in 1993.

Shellabarger will also show a selection of new Walking Books, a body of work he introduced in his last show at Western Exhibitions in 2008, in which he marries his performance and book-making impulses by pacing on long sheets of rag paper with graphite-soled shoes. His footsteps create a luminous graphite/gray drawing that betrays the pattern of the surface trod upon. The verso side of the drawing simultaneously becomes a beautiful blind embossment of this same surface. He folds the paper accordion style and affixes the ends to waxed MDF panels that function as the covers of the book.

Petschnig will transform Gallery 2 at Western Exhibitions into a familiar domestic setting – viewers enter through a newly installed door and will encounter unframed photographs on walls painted a taupe color, throw-rugs on the floor and a small flat-screen monitor on a TV stand in the corner. Her photographs are carefully cropped selections of the artist performing alone in front of a mirror while wearing colorful sculpture/clothing hybrids of the artists making. While the images point to voyeuristic impulses, body art, pin-up photos, and even BDSM imagery, Petschnig sees these photographs very much as paintings: formal, abstract compositions that she creates with the body and fabric (she was originally trained as a painter).

On the monitor “An Evening at Home” plays. This single-channel video, created specifically for this show, seems to depict a surreptitiously recorded tape of the artist in a bedroom in the evening, dressed in one of her sculptural pieces that she uses for her photographs. She poses in various situations, unaware of the camera, leading the viewer to assume these are the moments that take place in between her intimate performances, the time to unwind after she has taken photographs of herself, in that particular room. This room functions as the private stage for her actions.

Petschnig’s performances, videos and photography investigate the boundaries of body and self, juxtaposing an eroticized self-exposure with elements of social and sexual repression. Petschnig’s repetitive use of costuming acts as a performative device, visual signifier and method of relational engagement. Petschnig’s carefully considered viewing environments deny the privilege of safe and passive observation, further heightening the awareness of one’s voyeuristic inclinations.

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Tags: West Loop, Western Exhibitions