devening projects + editions invites you to The Sensible Range, Nathaniel Robinson’s second solo exhibition with the gallery. In the off space, Variety Lights features recent work by Thora Dolven Balke and Sam Lipp.

Join us at an opening reception for the artists on Sunday, October 20th from 4 – 7pm. The exhibition continues until December 7th.

Nathaniel Robinson’s recent sculptures and installations make approaches to the complexity, variety, constraints and freedoms within The Sensible Range, or the field of contact with the world afforded by perception. Taking familiar objects and states of affairs as its starting point, the work addresses itself to the general and particular problems of locating the self in relation to the world. Viewed as a whole it begins to integrate a range not only of scale and structure, but also of significance and status. In their disparate ways of being made–the various routes they take to representation–the works seem to place very different demands on the viewer and the maker; but on inspection and consideration they may offer, if not shared understanding, the possibility of common access.

Nathaniel Robinson began exhibiting with devening projects + editions in 2008 and has been part of several exhibitions with the gallery including de facto his first solo show in 2010. He received his BA from Amherst College in 2002 and an MFA from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2005. Nathaniel Robinson was born in Rhode Island in 1980 and currently lives in Brewster, NY. In New York, he is represented by Feature, Inc.; Outer Air, his most recent show at the gallery received critical attention from both the New York Times and Art in America among other publications. In addition to an extensive exhibition record in the US, Nathaniel Robinson has also shown in Brussels, Leipzig, Dusseldorf and Melbourne.

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Director Federico Fellini’s debut film (and his first of many collaborations with his wife, actress Giulietta Masina), tells a story of a young woman who begs and eventually buys her way into a struggling group of vaudeville performers. Though she labors to convince the group to let her join, she quickly becomes the focal point of their performances, stealing the spotlight from the group. Taking the title from this film, the exhibition Variety Lights features Sam Lipp and Thora Dolven Balke, whose works conflate the individual figure or subject with — or against — a fractured, abstracted field. A portrait or a body in motion become obscured through layering: a physically layered surface, in the case of Lipp’s wooly paintings, or through the tiered sequencing of discontinuous images in the case of Dolven Balke’s ambient films and photographs. From the chorus of the band, a figure emerges, stepping forward into wide-eyed focus only to hiccup back into the chorus’ clamor, looking to her feet while spinning in place.
Variety Lights is curated by B. Ingrid Olson and John Henderson.

Thora Dolven Balke currently lives and works in New York as a resident at the International Studio and Curatorial Program. In 2008 she was part of Lights On – norsk samtidskunst, which took place at the Astrup Fearnley Museum of Modern Art. Her work was later part of ‘The Collectors’, an exhibition curated by Michael Elmgreen and Ingmar Dragset as the official representation in the 2009 Venice Biennale. She was one of two curators of Lofoten International Art Festival in 2011 and co-founded and programmed the artists-run space REKORD in Oslo from 2006 – 2010. She has upcoming group exhibitions at Scandinavian Foundation in New York and Michael Thibault Gallery in Los Angeles.

Sam Lipp lives and works in Chicago. He is a co-director of the project gallery Queer Thoughts (QT), and is a member of the artist group PplSft. Recent group exhibitions include Great Skin at Bodega, Philadelphia and Guyth at Dos Perros Projects, Chicago. He has a forthcoming solo exhibition at Free Paarking, St. Louis this November.

Finally, we’re looking forward to presenting the next iteration of Seth Hunter’s Ecotone project, a new program at the gallery featuring interventions triggered by the interstitial spaces between our main gallery and the off space. For the second in a year-long series of projects, Chicago artist Seth Hunter will present slow, even, fast at the October 20th opening. As a resident artist in the gallery from July 2013 to July 2014, Hunter continues to work with, in and around the space to reveal links between his own conceptual interests and the physical space. slow, even, fast is comprised of three works and an edition made to exemplify a human need to modify pace. Hunter is interested in the barrage of visual information encountered daily which requires editing and generalizing to survive.

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