Lovey Town
@ Mana Contemporary Chicago
2233 S Throop St, Chicago, IL 60608
Opening Saturday, February 18th, from 5:30PM - 7PM
Lovey Town
“a sudden and peculiar pleasure, a feeling of protection”
Curated by Matt Morris
Featuring: Andre Alves, Claire Arctander, Emmy Bright, Robert Burnier, Jenny Crowe, Molly Donnermeyer, Mohamad Kanaan, Judd Morrissey, Aay Preston-Mint
For this exhibition, a sudden and peculiar pleasure, a feeling of protection, Lovey Town has become a hideout for tenderness amidst a shifting, scary social and psychological climate in our world. This is a place for compartmentalized affect, little feelings, sad pastel colors, and subtle nuance. As these artists have drawn their practices and thought lives down to the intimate scale of the gallery, a love language has formed from material and incident. This syntax of form—an “emotional minimalism”—works against repression, and goes underneath the brutish handling of words and people’s differences that we witness too often these days. The title is drawn from a passage from Denton Welch’s In Youth Is Pleasure, in which a slight, emo-queer boy hero named Orvil carries around a broken saucer in his pocket, “pressing gently against his side,” giving him “a sudden and peculiar pleasure, a feeling of protection in an enemy world.”
Lovey Town is a miniature project space created by the artist Michael Velliquette. The audience participates in Lovey Town by having their photographs taken and made into paper doll cutouts, which are then placed in the gallery.
How it works:
—Strike a pose and get photographed for your custom paper doll!
—Take a spin around the opening while we make your mini you.
—Come back, have a drink, and in about 20 minutes you can find yourself in Lovey Town.
—Take pictures in the gallery—cropping in close with your smartphone camera makes the image come to life.
—Share your experiences online at #loveytown
—Take your paper dolls home with you at the end of the night.
About Lovey Town:
Founded in 2013 by the artist Michael Velliquette, Lovey Town is a miniature, mobile project space dedicated to the exhibition of small original artworks in all media. Lovey Town exists in multiple formats—through online photographic documentation, in print publications, as a physical exhibition space, and as a social practice where the viewing audience participates in the creation of a sculptural community
Official Website
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Tags: Aay Preston-Mint, Andre Alves, Chicago, Claire Arctander, Emmy Bright, Jenny Crowe, Judd Morrissey, Lovey Town, Lower West Side, Mana Contemporary, Matt Morris, Mohamad Kanaan, Molly Donnermeyer, robert burnier
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