John Wanzel: Daylight
@ Butchershop/Dogmatic
1319 W Lake St, Chicago, IL 60607
Opening Saturday, July 23rd, from 6PM - 10PM
On view through Saturday, August 27th
“In his solo show, John Wanzel presents a diaristic account of walking the
Chicago streets while watching lampposts in the sky. In sculpture, sound, video,
and drawn works, Wanzel reveals a loving obsession with astronomy, Copernicus,
and trigonometric ratios. Droopy mounted models of lampposts and sidewalks line
the walls; drawings on paper narrate advanced lessons, with one explaining the
equation of time; reel-to-reel tracks play softly in the front room while a
lecture read by Wanzel (“Lecture on the Potential Energy of the Summer”) plays
in the backroom, accompanied by a tuba. This attractive show succeeds in
combining different media to stimulate science crushes.”
-flavorpill
BSD is proud to present Daylight, new work by John Wanzel. The exhibition
is in search of unmitigated truth and light within a world without. Daylight
expounds on the form of the streetlight and the surrounding real-estate.
In the ever changing landscape of the city (four unit apartment buildings
rehabbed into 2 unit condos, vacant lots replaced by 3 condos, a dry
cleaners and a bouquet of posh stores) all that remains are the sidewalks,
the street signs and the cobra head luminaries atop metal poles.
Scientists create models to prove theories of nature; artists examine nature
through prose, image and sound. In this exhibition, Mr. Wanzel creates
miniature aesthetic amalgamations of the walkways that connect the city to
itself and explores old theories of the geocentric and heliocentric universe
through sculpture and drawing, in hopes of finding the Good within this new
composition of the city.
This search is not done in the dead of night, but in the sweltering heat of
the summer, underneath our daytime star, the Sun; a place where the
luminance of sodium vapor lights have no use.
John Wanzel is a Chicago based artist, writer and radio producer. He
received his BFA from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 1999.
He is a Co-Founder and Executive Producer of Blind Spot, a weekly live
experimental radio show on WLUW 88.7 Chicago. In 1999 he founded
stopGOstop.com, a portal/collective website for several writers, artists,
and cultural workers living in Chicago. He has also served as the Assistant
Director of The School of the Art Institute of Chicago’s Gallery 2 since
2002.
BSD is open Saturdays Noon – 6pm or by appointment through August 27
Rhizome, Listing (10 August 2005)
Daylight, show card back
Installation, A Lecture on the Potential Energy of Summer (2005)
Installation, Summer Jam (2005)
Installation (2005)
Ukranian Village Near Cortez and Hoyne, Brahe goes to get bread
Brain Cloud
Official Website
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Tags: BSD, Butchershop Dogmatic, Chicago, Daylight, John Wanzel, near west side, Rhizome
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