WHAT IT IS: is pleased to announce our participation in this years artXposium 5.0. We have curated 14 artists who produce work in a range of media.

artXposium 5.0 takes place on the weekend of 09/11 – 09/12 at 203 West Turner Court, West Chicago, IL, 60185.

West Chicago is about an hours drive due west of Chicago, see this google map or hop on the Metra and ride in style!

Dates / times:
09/11/10: Noon – 9pm [opening reception 6pm - 9pm]
09/12/10: 1pm – 6pm

RSVP on our Facebook event page: http://tinyurl.com/2ewj8du

Man Bartlett, Bradley Bullock, Lauren Carter, Colleen L. Coleman, Troy Hagenbart, Selena Jones, Nathan Keay, Erica Moore, Sabina Ott, Adam Trowbridge, Jessica Westbrook and Oskar Westbridge as TWo Projects, Jeremy Tubbs, Michelle Wasson

Man Bartlett

Colleen L Coleman

Troy Hagenbart

Nathan Keay

Erica Moore

Sabina Ott

Selena Jones

Jeremy Tubbs

Michelle Wasson

Bradley Bullock

TWo Projects (Adam Trowbridge, Jessica Westbrook, Oskar Westbridge)

The Chromatic number of objects in a room
Susan Gargiulo and Troy Hagenbart
Opening reception Sunday August 29th, 3pm – 8pm
Exhibition continues through 09/24/10 by appointment

The chromatic number of graph G is the smallest number of colors y (G) needed to color the vertices of G so that no two adjacent vertices share the same color (Skiena 1990, p. 210).

This is similar to the method that is used to color a map, where each face of a country is colored differently to those adjacent to it.

I suppose I would start with an anxiety about belief or at least with an anxiety about the assumption that something has to be believable, not everything can be a falsehood.

The setup is easy enough.

In thinking about making work in a home setting I simply went with the obvious and wanted to create a living room. I immediately looked back to a memory of what a living room usually or once consisted of. The objects appeared to me very quickly.

I begin with a couch, being the bulkiest of any object in a room; from it all the other objects seem to revolve. The couch shares many traits to a chair, maybe a chair extended. A chair holds many qualities of a table. In the simple step of erasing the back of a chair you can be left with a table or the representation of a table. It occurred to me that many objects in a room could be placed in line with one another, erasing parts and accentuating others. Objects can associate themselves with other objects. On the table is a bowl of diamonds made from aluminum foil. A simple construction but the association is two-fold, a candy in a wrapper and a diamond by design.

Above the couch is a railing, constructed from 3 main parts. First, a typical but complex wooden railing covered in aluminum and paint. Its form, molded to the shape of a hand, becomes ornate outside of its function. Attached are two cylindrical forms, one of wood the other of chromed steel. The wooden rod is also covered in aluminum and paint.  Together the 3 pose a relationship of similarities.  The most obvious being the form and materials used.  The ornate wooden form with the reflective tape is meant to mimic the activity of the chromed steel. The chromed railing pulls the reflection to the furthest edges of odd lines of definition; the molded edges are an extreme example of this act.

Above the railing are 2 identical images of loons, both paint-by-number.   One executed in the prescribed fashion and the other in the form of a gray scale. This is my attempt to equate an image to the conditions imposed by chromed steel. There is always a loss of information in a reflective surface and I believe we should be thankful to this; otherwise we might lose the barrier of exterior from interior of a shop window. In the end both paintings do represent the image given but the question of what constitutes the object named is addressed. The distortion can be clearly described but the steps from one to the other can fall in line with associating a table with a chair. It is a simple twist of parts of the object made.

This goes inline with the steps of identifying a chair from a table. In an attempt to further complicate this idea I have constructed a mirror, or at least my notion of the function of a mirror: Wall molding, laminated to a frame and covered it with aluminum; a surface that reflects but ultimately distorts. Attached is a plank of wood, painted with the profile of the molded form.  The effect, in parts, created by the flat painted form of the profile reflected in its three dimensional form is a reflection of a straight line

The mirror extends itself to an association of other forms of display, namely a newspaper and a television. These are the final objects in this room. The newspaper is a collection of writings about chrome, mostly collected from people I know and some appropriated from other sources. In posing the simple and open task of writing about chrome a variety of themes and styles have been offered.

On the television is an animation, a new challenge. Through distress, struggle and thoughts about chrome and graph theory came an animation about static. Static can be said to be a lost article of television but ultimately it is a loss of signal. In a stop motion animation of small 1 ¼ “ blocks painted white with gray dots, the illusion of static worked well enough but seemed a bit redundant. To pull the original question of objects being similar to one another to light, I have made crude dot drawings of the objects in the room with black dots on the gray static. Accompanying the animation is an original score by Daniel Blake, a fantastic improve saxophone player who added to the dimension of time and shape of the piece.

All in all it comes down to the quote below the header of the Chrome newspaper: Some see personally, some see infinity, some see in chrome. If you place your finger on a chrome railing you can see finger reflected, a bit distorted but it is there. If you look outside your finger you can see a collection of what surrounds you. But if you look somewhat out of focus you can see the surface of just chrome.

Please join us the closing reception for Sara Schnadt and her site specific installation at What It Is, Network, Domestic Intervention. For further images of her piece take a look at this flickr set Sara created

UPDATE: Sara’s installation is featured on Minus Space blog.

Photo credit: Charles Heppner

Photo credit: Charles Heppner

Photo credit: Charles Heppner

Sara Schnadt
Network, Domestic Intervention
July 31st – August 21st, 2010

Opening reception Sat July 31st, 3pm – 8pm
Exhibition continues thru Sat Aug 21st by appointment

Sara Schnadt is a Chicago-based performance/installation artist. Raised on an international commune in Scotland, an ‘alternative’ context which considered itself as a social experiment outside of conventional culture, she spent formative years understanding herself as an outsider, an observer. Since moving to the United States in 1986, Sara has become fascinated with the unifying rituals and values that are common threads in contemporary western culture, and has made work that frames and resonates with those common threads.

Formally, Sara makes performance and installations that use task, found objects, interactivity, projection, and movement derived from common gestures. Her work creates environments that shift the audience regularly from spectator to participant as the performer constantly moves between pedestrian and more stylized or evocative activity and the viewer negotiates spacial immersion in the work.

Works often take shape as installations and live activities that translate data visualizations of large quantities of socially-resonant information into material, gestural and poetic form.

Network, Domestic Intervention

Since November 2009, site-specific versions of Network have been created in Chicago for an unused store front downtown and a gallery space at Hyde Park Art Center. For What it is, a version of Network will be created to inhabit the entire house that is the project space and artists’ live-work space and extend out into the garden.

Visualizing the idea that we simultaneously live in a real and virtual world, and that the virtual is infinitely expansive, Network uses large quantities of electric yellow twine (tied in patterns based on both social network structures and Internet network infrastructure) to suggest a virtual network landscape cutting through an otherwise ordinary space.

Artists/curators/residents Tom Burtonwood and Holly Holmes will also live with the work in their home for a month, negotiating their routines around it. A series of photographs will document their activity for the project catalog.

Sara Schnadt is a Chicago-based artist working in new media, installation and performance art. She has shown her in work in Chicago at Hyde Park Art Center, Pop-Up Art Loop temporary gallery series, 12×12: New Artists New Work at the MCA Chicago, Looptopia, the Site Unseen Performance Festival, Balloon Contemporary, and at Antena Gallery. National and international shows include Exchange Rate public projection series in LA and New York, Upgrade! – Chain Reaction in Skopje, Macedonia, CINEA Paris, FreeManifesta in Frankfurt, and the Busan Biennale in Busan, South Korea.

http://saraschnadt.com/home.html

“INnside Out-outSidE iN »
To invert. To take out of context. To place out of order.
To reinvent. To transform.

the process: revisiting, revising, regenerating

“From the outset my work as an art maker the figure is central to my work, but as a means to an end and not an end in itself. It is not its literal representation that inspires me but its less tangible essence that I attempt to project outward from within: inside out as opposed to outside in.

‘What It Is’ has become the starting point, the pallet on which the structure of my exhibit is built. The show was organized organically, as a work in progress. One piece suggested the need for yet another. Some works are defined by existing architecture as in the location of a wall or window or passageway while other installations were site specific. Works ordinarily hung inside on walls are now free standing outside in the yard, in the elements and vice versa.

The show refers to my interests in interpersonal relationships and the conflicts that may occur in the process of revealing and concealing emotions, thoughts, ideas, even gestures. What to give, what to take. What to say, when to say it. What to see, how to listen. The list goes on. The essence of the work is quite abstract and yet it is intuitive and accessible. But all of these issues intersect in the realm of mystery and in how expectations can be perceived, interrupted and transformed.”

BIOGRAPHY
Born in Michigan, the son of a civil engineer, Jonathan Franklin spent much of his childhood in Vietnam, Bangladesh, and Indonesia. After studying art at the University of Michigan, he moved to Israel where he lived on a kibbutz and first began painting and working as printmaker. During that period he also served in the Israeli Army.
Jonathan has been a visual artist for well over 30 years. Besides painting, Jonathan enjoys writing, doing set design, and periodically performing in local theater. Currently he is a teaching artist and conducts art workshops and residencies in public schools throughout Chicago.

Closing Reception
Sat 29th May, 4 – 7pm

To the power 3.

1. Closing reception for current show Frequently the Woods are Pink by Sabina Ott / Michelle Wasson.

2. One year anniversary ov What It Is.

3. Wedding Anniversary ov Holly and Tom. AKA What It Is.

Please join us for garden party (weather permitting) and closing reception. Bring something to grill. There may be music too if we can get our act together.

Michelle Wasson, I’ll Cavern You, 2010

Sabina Ott, Frequently the Woods are Pink, 2010

Michelle Wasson, I’ll Cavern You, 2010

Sabina Ott, Frequently the Woods are Pink, 2010

Michelle Wasson, I’ll Cavern You, 2010

More images for Sabina and Michelle can be found here and here.

April 24th – 25th we’ll have a booth at the Version Fest NFO XPO at Benton House in Bridgeport, featuring work by Christopher Holmes and Ye Olde English Tea Shoppe. Please come by and check out our installation.

Then a week later What It Is will be taking part in the Next Art Fair at the Merchandise Mart in Chicago, April 30 – May 3. We will be showing work by Tom Burtonwood, Troy Hagenbart, Anni Holm, Holly Holmes, Mike Lash, Sabina Ott and Andrew Rigsby. Anni will be performing several times during the fair, we will update her schedule as things firm up. We will also post preview images of some of the work we will be showing. Hope to see you at the fair!

Sabina will also be showing some new work in conjunction with Michelle Wasson at our next exhibition here in Oak Park that opens the sunday of the fair, ideally the weather will be nice and we’ll fire up the grill, so if you’re coming in from out of town for the fair and want to check out the space this is a good opportunity to do that!

Happy days!

Love Tom + Holly