reception | 6pm
April 04 2015
Midway Studios, Great Hall
University of Chicago
6016 S. Ingleside Ave.
Chicago, IL 60637
(enter from the courtyard side of the building, between Midway Studios and the Logan Center for the Arts)

www.axisandallies.info

Axis and Allies is an exhibition and conversation series seeking to pair MFA-holding or seeking artists from different institutions in an effort to expand contextual circles and encourage critical discourse between geographically and/or educationally disparate practices through conversation and exhibition. Such an exhibition series allows for the creation of productive relationships through both harmonious and incongruent associations.

Brit Barton is an artist and writer. She is a MFA candidate at the University of Chicago.

Erin Hayden is a multi-media artist working in Chicago, Illinois. She is currently pursuing her Master of Fine Arts in Art Theory and Practice at Northwestern University. She received her Bachelor of Fine Arts in Painting from Illinois State University. Her work has been exhibited at venues in Illinois, Michigan, and New York. She has been featured in such publications as Studio Magazine, and Mutantspace. She has also been featured on Studio Break, a contemporary art podcast.

Devra Freelander is an American sculptor who was born in New York in 1990. She works primarily with industrial materials such as epoxy resin, fiberglass, and enamel. Her sculptures explore the perceptual ramifications of having grown up immersed in digital landscapes, while being rooted in a geologic vocabulary. She received her BA Cum Laude in Studio Art from Oberlin College in 2012, and is currently obtaining her MFA in Sculpture from the Rhode Island School of Design. She has shown nationally and internationally, in New York, New Jersey, Providence, Austin, Richmond, Chicago, and Paris.

Anna Showers-Cruser is a visual artist originally from Richmond, VA. Her practice arises from moments of interaction between materials and the contemporary Queer body. She is interested in burlesque, the erotic, the banal, the performative, the abject, the radical, and the serious endeavor to play. She holds a BFA in Painting from Maryland Institute College of Art (’11) and is currently pursuing her interdisciplinary MFA at the University of Chicago.

From Tori Whitehead: “My work pulls from a menagerie of artistic disciplines. I have been combining my interests in drawing, sculpture, performance, and film to make performances, videos, and installations with handmade elements. My body and my experience of the world has always been the subject of my practice. I am often pointing to the overtly narcissistic impulse of my own art-making to call out that impulse in others. I firmly believe that an artist cannot separate him/herself from the artwork, and that the product is always a self-portrait. There is a loose narrative in my work, metaphorical relationships and happenings with a short attention span. Call these things a portrait of a hyperactive thought process.”

And from Dylan Rabe: “My recent drawings and paintings begin with a process of automatic mark-making in black ink. The accretion of lines on the surface, whether accidental or intentional, serves the dual purpose of limiting the array of pictorial options available on the blank page, and revealing imagery that seems to come from the furthest recesses of my subconscious. As the image emerges, I try to strike a balance between recognizing and elaborating on the familiar, the nostalgic, or the absurd; while pushing myself to explore and embrace the world of chance.”

Official Website

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Tags: Anna Showers-Crusier, Axis and Allies, Brit Barton, Devra Freelander, Dylan Rabe, Erin Hayden, Hyde Park, Tori Whitehead