Join us for the June session of Balut Artist Salon.

This month’s featured artists are José Santiago Pérez and Michael Lopez

José Santiago Pérez will share new plastic and ceramic work that will be part of a new series called Memory Palace.

Michael Lopez will discuss new works that are at the same time objects, plinths, and containers.

About the Artists
José Santiago Pérez is a Chicago based artist from Los Angeles. He works between the languages and methodologies of craft, sculpture, and performance; weaving plastics into markers of time and materials of intimacy. His work has been exhibited in group shows in Chicago, Philadelphia, and San Francisco. Solo exhibitions of his craft based sculptures and wall hangings have been presented at Ignition Project Space (2019) and Wedge Projects (2018). José’s curatorial projects have been exhibited at the Leather Archives & Museum. He has been featured in reviews and interviews in Sixty, Newcity Art, and Art Intercepts. José received his MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

Michael Lopez is a public school educated, recently married, Chicago native whose interdisciplinary practice skirts around and sometimes focus directly on systems, personal narrative, and craft. He received his MFA from the University of Illinois at Chicago and his BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, is deeply in debt, fearful of the future, as well as frustrated with lack of discussion of class.

The Balut Artist Salon brings together two artists to present and dialogue with an audience about an artwork they are currently working on. Art making, to some extent, is a solitary activity yet the artwork itself is enfolded within a social and historical sphere. This salon is an attempt to open up the art making process.

Named after the famed delicacy of the Philippines, balut conjures up exoticism, otherness, tradition, social gatherings, adventure, risk taking, and poverty. Curious thrill seekers chalk up the challenge to taste the partially developed duck fetus in hopes to simultaneously induce and subdue gag reflexes or find an authentic foreign experience. In reality, balut is quite pedestrian. It is a cheap street food for the poor and a quick snack for laborers before a long commute home. And it goes well with knocking back some beers with mga kaibigan. Balut, also spelled balot, is “wrapped” in the Tagalog language and when shelled each distinct section of the egg can be seen folded into the other, forming an interconnected mass.

This artist salon is a wrapping of sorts. Artists are invited to share partially formed projects or inklings and dialogue with an audience to co-mingle diverse perspectives and co-constitute material and ideas.

Official Website

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Tags: Balut Artist Salon, Chicago, Illinois, José Santiago Pérez, Mark A. Diaz, Mark Diaz, Michael Lopez, PO Box Collective, Rogers Park