Jerome Acks: Big Sky
@ 65GRAND
1369 W Grand Ave, Chicago, IL 60642
Opening Friday, November 12th, from 7PM - 10PM
On view through Saturday, December 18th
This grouping of painted, dyed, sewn and sculpted works illustrate Acks’ process oriented approach on and off the walls.
The painted construction from which the show takes it name, Big Sky illustrates Acks’ attempt to cram the whole heavens into a burlap sack. As with several other works in the show, it both reveals and conceals its subject matter, reframing, mediating and slowly metabolizing it.
Acks revels in turning imagery into objects (Where the Sun Don’t Shine) and in conflating the relationship between object and image (Faith). These works challenge the viewer’s relationship to them, with the former turning itself inside out, problematizing the dichotomy of front/back, and the latter simultaneously acting as symbolic shrine and functional table top, complete with coasters.
Again and again, faith, in an almost spiritual sense, is tempered by skepticism, and Acks’ doubts in the most basic materials, function and even history of art are the meta-narrative of the works on view. And it’s this self-same skepticism that finds him making work out of the stuff most others are content taking for granted.
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