Jun 5th 2015

Alex Bradley & Kelly Lloyd

@ Carrie Secrist Gallery

835 W Washington Blvd, Chicago IL

Opening Friday, June 5th, from 5PM - 8PM

On view through Saturday, July 25th

Paintings by Alex Bradley Cohen investigate identity through a spectrum of cultural, spiritual and political experiences. Influenced by tropes and techniques found in traditional figure painting, Cohen composes new canvases from scumbling brushstrokes alongside flat, planar forms. Emphasizing color, pattern and shape, Cohen paints his own psychological and autobiographical truths. Existential studies of self commingle with playful portraits of family and tableaus from African American history, folding the artist’s own narrative into a larger history.

Kelly Lloyd considers the idiosyncrasies that structure normalcy, and the devices we form to navigate systems in our daily lives. For her debut project with Carrie Secrist Gallery, Lloyd exhibits a site-specific mural, its content borrowed from billboard advertisements for Montana tourism. Torn entirely from its context, the imagery challenges the rhetoric used to promote natural spaces. In addition, Lloyd exhibits new text pieces that use language to deny and reinforce cultural symbols and mediated signifiers. By restructuring commonplace materials – house paint, toilet paper rolls, vinyl – Lloyd incites uncanny and inconsistent combinations of meaning in a manner both highly critical and sincere.

Alex Bradley Cohen (b. 1989, United States) lives and works in Chicago, IL. Cohen is an alumnus of The School of the Art Institute of Chicago and Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture. He is recipient of the 2014 James Nelson Raymond Fellowship. Recent exhibitions include The Craft and Folk Art Museum, Los Angeles, CA and The Elmhurst Art Museum, Elmhurst, IL. His work was featured on the cover of New American Paintings (issue 113, 2014).

Kelly Lloyd (b. 1986, United States) lives and works in Chicago, IL. Lloyd received a dual MFA and MA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2015. She is currently in residence at the Chicago Artists’ Coalition. Recent projects in Chicago include Hyde Park Art Center, Roots and Culture, Valerie Carberry Gallery, Kavi Gupta Editions, and Ballroom Projects. New City Chicago recently named Lloyd a 2015 Breakout Artist.

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