ACRE and ROOTS & CULTURE present an opening reception on FRIDAY, JAN 13, 2012 from 6-9pm at 1034 N Milwaukee, Chicago 60622. ACRE has partnered with ROOTS & CULTURE to host SOFT GROUND: new works by EMILY CLAYTON + EILEEN MUELER, the next installment in ACRE’s year-long series of exhibitions by 2011 ACRE summer residents.

SOFT GROUND
Emily Clayton’s recent work began as a series informed by sunsets, occult photography and stage curtains. Charged with spacial impossibilities, each are asking the viewer for the same thing, to willfully suspend disbelief. Distilling from this a sense of illusion and visual deception, the works are reduced to an atmospheric gradient of color. The series examines the two dimensional plane of an artificial horizon in relation to the stage and studio photography. They are backdrops, scenery, simulated landscapes all void of subject or performer. Situated within the historical tenet of process driven practices the work aims to exhibit a calculated control of material and form.

Eileen Mueller’s work focuses on the material history of the photographic image and its role in confounding unwritten or inaccessible histories. Her latest work links her own practice within communal educational spaces and the historic progeny of the Bauhaus, Black Mountain College. While making a pilgrimage to Black Mountain, Mueller sought out the vistas wherein the landscape served as an emulsion, fixing the ghosts of American Modernism. Through embedding her own images into an anomic archive that also contains material mined from historic materials she poeticizes existing histories to build a mythology of the artist.

EMILY CLAYTON is a Nashville based artist who works primarily in sculpture, installation and painting. After receiving her BFA from University of Tennessee in 2004 she spent several years in Chicago helping to organize exhibitions and events with the Co-Prosperity Sphere, Version Festival and Mule Magazine. Her work has been shown in Chicago, New York and Nashville.

More information about Emily Clayton can be found at www.emilyclayton.com

EILEEN MUELLER has studied at the Maryland Institute College of Art and the School of the Art Institute of Chicago where she recently received her BFA. She is the recipient of the Fred Endsley Memorial Fellowship and the World Less Travelled Grant as well as a finalist for the Gelman Travel Fellowship. Eileen recently showed in Ceaseless Blooms in Jobless Colors at Johalla Projects and is scheduled to show at the Kohler Museum this coming fall. Eileen is the co-founder of GURL DON’T BE DUMB, a curatorial project that is currently based out of Chicago.

More information about Eileen Mueller can by found at www.eileenmueller.com

ROOTS & CULTURE The mission of Roots & Culture Contemporary Art Center is to provide exhibition opportunities for leading-edge emerging artists and to develop the city of Chicago’s cultural community as a center for art production and a destination for artistic discourse. Through two person shows, curated group shows, lectures, community gatherings and time arts events, Roots & Culture aims to provide a platform for the inventive practices of young artists. This programming helps to develop a dynamic community for the arts in Chicago and dialogue with the international discourse of contemporary art. Roots & Culture is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization. Programming and general operating costs are partially funded by The Illinois Arts Council, a state agency and The Gaylord and Dorothy Donnelly Foundation.

More information about Roots & Culture can be found at www.rootsandculturecac.org

ACRE (Artists’ Cooperative Residency and Exhibition) was founded in 2010 with the ambition to provide the arts community with an affordable, cooperative, and dialogue-oriented residency program. The residency itself takes place each summer in rural southwest Wisconsin and brings together artists from across disciplines and levels of experience to create a regenerative community of cultural producers. Over the course of the following year ACRE endeavors to further support its residents by providing venues for exhibitions, idea exchange, interdisciplinary collaboration, and experimental projects.

More information about ACRE can be found at www.acreresidency.org

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Tags: ACRE, Eileen Mueller, Emily Clayton, Roots and Culture, Wicker Park