A Kitchen Without a Knife is Not a Kitchen relies on essential elements to highlight the pivotal role of a kitchen within the home, and hinges on the site at Kitchen Space. By staging and embellishing materials culled from architectural origins, an exaggerated relationship between practical use and the intimate nature of the space intersect. The scale and placement of installation elements restrict movement and renders the kitchen less functional as it commemorates the space as a quirky, sacred and idiosyncratic domestic space in which highly significant and formative experiences take place.

This work is the inaugural collaborative studio effort from Allison Lacher and Jeff Robinson, who have been longtime administrative collaborators. They co-founded DEMO Project, a contemporary project space in Central Illinois, in 2013, and also direct and manage the Visual Arts Gallery at the University of Illinois Springfield.

Allison Lacher is an artist, curator, and educator. She is currently a 2014-2014 HATCH Projects Curator in Residence with the Chicago Artists Coalition, and she co-founded DEMO Project, an alternative contemporary exhibition venue in Central Illinois. Working primarily in installation and sculpture, her work is sincere, playful, and emotionally charged. She has exhibited extensively at venues that include CUAC Contemporary in Salt Lake City, Utah; the Utah Museum of Contemporary Art in Salt Lake City, UT; Center for Contemporary Art in Hammond, LA; Grounds for Sculpture in Hamilton, NJ; and the Sheppard Fine Art Gallery at the University of Nevada in Reno, NV. She has been an Artist in Residence with Spiro Arts in Park City, UT; the Prairie Center of the Arts in Peoria, IL; Vermont Studio Center in Johnson, VT; and with Signal Fire in a week-long residency stationed on US/Mexico borderlands. Her practice and community outreach has been featured on Art Across Illinois, a program produced by WTTW Chicago PBS, and she is a previous recipient of the Illinois Arts Council Artist Fellowship Award.

Jeff Robinson was born, raised, and currently resides in central Illinois. He received his MFA degree from Illinois State University in 2011. Robinson has exhibited locally, regionally, and nationally at venues in Illinois, Ohio, Massachusetts, Minnesota and New York. His work has been published in New American Paintings and Manifest Gallery’s International Painting Annual. In 2014, he received an Individual Artist Support Project Grant from the Illinois Arts Council. In addition to his studio practice, Robinson teaches full-time as Instructor of Art at the University of Illinois Springfield in Springfield, IL, where he teaches courses in Painting and Drawing, and serves as Director for the University’s Visual Arts Gallery. Robinson is co-founder of DEMO Project, an alternative gallery space that emphasizes current trends in contemporary art.

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Tags: Allison Lacher Jeff Robinson DEMO Project