Starting with our next show “Quad Core” opening on Thursday February 9th, 2012, we will be producing exhibitions and events from our new location in the Loop. We’re working with the Chicago Loop Alliance through the Pop Up Art Program to host exhibitions at the new space through 2012. We have invited Book Club organized by Kimberly Kim to collaborate with What It Is at our new location. Book Club features artist books, zines and other multiples. Contextual texts, art books, critical writing and other works will be available. Kimberly Kim recently had a hippie revelation that everything is connected and influences each other while studying for her Quantum Mechanics exam. Kim makes artist books, photography and video installations. She was raised in South Korea, currently lives and studies in Chicago.

*NEW EXHIBITION*
“QUAD CORE”
Theodore Darst, Paul Hertz, Selena Jones and Sabina Ott

Opening reception Thursday, February 9th, 2012. 5 – 8pm
Exhibition continues through March 10th, 2012.
Gallery hours Weds – Saturday noon – 5pm

Our first exhibition at the new space will be “Quad Core” a group show featuring Theodore Darst, Paul Hertz, Selena Jones and Sabina Ott. It opens on Thursday February 9th and runs through March 10th, 2012. “Quad Core” exhibits four different artists whose core processes connect aesthetically and conceptually in interesting and surprising ways.

Theodore Darst’s art works are an attempt to fight nostalgia by giving it some notion of physicality. He uses video gaming platforms to make interactive environments that serve as snap shots to his formative years. These cyberspaces are a time machine to a lost mindset that he is trying to recover. Drawing from remembered experiences such as church, playing basketball, video games and robotripping Darst creates fictive spaces that are at once mysterious and engaging. By appropriating 3d models from the Internet as “ready-mades” he taps into a collective unconscious melding his memories with our own interpretations of what these virtual objects mean and refer to. Paul Hertz works in digital and traditional media, with particular interest in intermedia, algorithmic composition, and performance. For “Quad Core” Hertz will exhibit “Tree Jive” a series of thirteen digital images created by algorithms he has written and implemented. The resulting images are printed on Hahnemühle Rag Bright paper. For Hertz his process is part scientist creating an experiment – establishing parameters and letting it go; and part editor, sifting through the outcomes, and culling a body of work from the many permutations the algorithms create. For Selena Jones the process of construction is vital to the character of her creature-like forms and totems. Often choosing to create pieces with materials that physically challenge her both in terms of scale or method. Jones intentionally selects materials that are ubiquitous and readily available in order to create a feeling of familiarity with these strange forms. Sabina Ott challenges the viewer with objects that are at once all things and none. Her sculptures, paintings, mixed media works and video installations draw upon many reference points and perspectives. Are they plants or paintings? Landscapes or topographical surveys? Ott is a neo cubist – using the Internet to synthesize many different viewpoints and perspectives into a single cohesive body of work.

Theodore Darst graduated from the School of the Art Institute (BFA 2011). Recent projects and exhibitions include “gli.tc/h-Birmingham” @ vivid, birmingham-uk, “notes on a new nature” @ 319 scholes, brooklyn-ny, “byob chi 2” @ byobworldwide + museum of contemporary art, chicago-il. Darst is the curatorial assistant for Two Hundred and Fifty Six Colors a 16mm film that traces the arc of increased complexity and pointed use of the animated gif organized and produced by Eric Fleischauer and Jason Lazarus.

Paul Hertz has exhibited his interactive installations, performances, and digital prints have been exhibited at many international media conferences and festivals. He currently teaches in the Department of Art History, Theory and Criticism at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. A master digital printmaker, Hertz has recently started his own print studio, Ignotus Editions. He currently resides in Chicago, his home for over 25 years.

Selena Jones is interested in the relationships humans can have with art objects, and how objects can provoke thoughts and new experiences. She incorporates animal forms to help evoke a sensation based on generalizations or mythologies associated with that form. Selena Jones graduated from the School of the Art Institute (MFA 2011) recent exhibitions includes MDW Fair (with What It Is), “Weddings/Proms/Corporate Events/Beauty Pageants/Bar Mitzvahs/Quinceaneras” at Zhou B Center, Chicago. She currently teaches at SAIC and Westwood College.

Sabina Ott deploys a fundamental strategy of jettisoning logic by messing with scale, perspective and hierarchies of knowledge. She creates a fantastical landscape made from debased craft materials. The resulting pieces move between two, three and four dimensions, becoming plateaus and tables, cliffs and chairs, light, lamps and video projections. Exhibiting since 1985, Ott has participated in over 100 solo and group exhibitions. Her paintings and prints are in museum collections nation- wide while her installation work has been included in international exhibitions such as the first Auckland Triennial in Auckland New Zealand, the Australian Contemporary Arts Center in Melbourne, Australia as well as the Contemporary Arts Center in Cincinnati, Ohio, the Contemporary Art Museum in St. Louis, Missouri and the Cleveland Center for Contemporary Art, Cleveland Ohio. She has received a National Endowment for the Arts Individual Artists Grant and a Howard Foundation Grant from Brown University, Her work is in the collection of the Corcoran Museum of American Art, Washington DC; the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, California; the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, New York; The Saint Louis Art Museum, St. Louis, Missouri; the University Art Museum, University of California, Berkeley, California, and the Orange County Museum of Art, Newport, California among others. She is Professor of Art at Columbia College Chicago, Chicago, IL

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Tags: Paul Hertz, Sabina Ott, Selena Jones, Theodore Darst, What It Is