What It Is, is moving!

*NEW LOCATION*
23 East Madison, Chicago, IL, 60602
Madison & Wabash
http://g.co/maps/cg692

Starting with our next show “Quad Core” opening on Thursday February 9th, 2012, we will be producing exhibitions and events from our new location in the Loop. We’re working with the Chicago Loop Alliance through the Pop Up Art Loop to host exhibitions at the new space through 2012. We have invited Book Club organized by Kimberly Kim to collaborate with What It Is at our new location. Book Club features artist books, zines and other multiples. Contextual texts, art books, critical writing and other works will be available. Kimberly Kim recently had a hippie revelation that everything is connected and influences each other while studying for her Quantum Mechanics exam. Kim makes artist books, photography and video installations. She was raised in South Korea, currently lives and studies in Chicago.

*NEW EXHIBITION*
“QUAD CORE”
Theodore Darst, Paul Hertz, Selena Jones and Sabina Ott

Opening reception Thursday, February 9th, 2012. 5 – 8pm
Exhibition continues through March 10th, 2012.
Gallery hours Weds – Saturday noon – 5pm

Our first exhibition at the new space will be “Quad Core” a group show featuring Theodore Darst, Paul Hertz, Selena Jones and Sabina Ott. It opens on Thursday February 9th and runs through March 10th, 2012. “Quad Core” exhibits four different artists whose core processes connect aesthetically and conceptually in interesting and surprising ways.

Theodore Darst’s art works are an attempt to fight nostalgia by giving it some notion of physicality. He uses video gaming platforms to make interactive environments that serve as snap shots to his formative years. These cyberspaces are a time machine to a lost mindset that he is trying to recover. Drawing from remembered experiences such as church, playing basketball, video games and robotripping Darst creates fictive spaces that are at once mysterious and engaging. By appropriating 3d models from the Internet as “ready-mades” he taps into a collective unconscious melding his memories with our own interpretations of what these virtual objects mean and refer to. Paul Hertz works in digital and traditional media, with particular interest in intermedia, algorithmic composition, and performance. For “Quad Core” Hertz will exhibit “Tree Jive” a series of thirteen digital images created by algorithms he has written and implemented. The resulting images are printed on Hahnemühle Rag Bright paper. For Hertz his process is part scientist creating an experiment – establishing parameters and letting it go; and part editor, sifting through the outcomes, and culling a body of work from the many permutations the algorithms create. For Selena Jones the process of construction is vital to the character of her creature-like forms and totems. Often choosing to create pieces with materials that physically challenge her both in terms of scale or method. Jones intentionally selects materials that are ubiquitous and readily available in order to create a feeling of familiarity with these strange forms. Sabina Ott challenges the viewer with objects that are at once all things and none. Her sculptures, paintings, mixed media works and video installations draw upon many reference points and perspectives. Are they plants or paintings? Landscapes or topographical surveys? Ott is a neo cubist – using the Internet to synthesize many different viewpoints and perspectives into a single cohesive body of work.

Theodore Darst, "Still from Farnham", interactive PC environment. 2011

Theodore Darst graduated from the School of the Art Institute (BFA 2011). Recent projects and exhibitions include “gli.tc/h-Birmingham” @ vivid, birmingham-uk, “notes on a new nature” @ 319 scholes, brooklyn-ny, “byob chi 2″ @ byobworldwide + museum of contemporary art, chicago-il. Darst is the curatorial assistant for Two Hundred and Fifty Six Colors a 16mm film that traces the arc of increased complexity and pointed use of the animated gif organized and produced by Eric Fleischauer and Jason Lazarus.

Paul Hertz, "Sparks", Archival Inkjet Print on Hahnemühle Rag Bright paper, 18 x 7 inches, 2011

Paul Hertz has exhibited his interactive installations, performances, and digital prints have been exhibited at many international media conferences and festivals. He currently teaches in the Department of Art History, Theory and Criticism at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. A master digital printmaker, Hertz has recently started his own print studio, Ignotus Editions. He currently resides in Chicago, his home for over 25 years.

Selena Jones, "Coyote and Two" installation view, 2011

Selena Jones is interested in the relationships humans can have with art objects, and how objects can provoke thoughts and new experiences. She incorporates animal forms to help evoke a sensation based on generalizations or mythologies associated with that form. Selena Jones graduated from the School of the Art Institute (MFA 2011) recent exhibitions includes MDW Fair (with What It Is), “Weddings/Proms/Corporate Events/Beauty Pageants/Bar Mitzvahs/Quinceaneras” at Zhou B Center, Chicago. She currently teaches at SAIC and Westwood College.

Sabina Ott, "beautiful beautiful beautiful beautiful" 2011 polystyrene, ink jet print on paper mounted on sintra, spray enamel, flashe, mirror and spider plant 49"H x 48" W x 14" D

Sabina Ott deploys a fundamental strategy of jettisoning logic by messing with scale, perspective and hierarchies of knowledge. She creates a fantastical landscape made from debased craft materials. The resulting pieces move between two, three and four dimensions, becoming plateaus and tables, cliffs and chairs, light, lamps and video projections. Exhibiting since 1985, Ott has participated in over 100 solo and group exhibitions. Her paintings and prints are in museum collections nation- wide while her installation work has been included in international exhibitions such as the first Auckland Triennial in Auckland New Zealand, the Australian Contemporary Arts Center in Melbourne, Australia as well as the Contemporary Arts Center in Cincinnati, Ohio, the Contemporary Art Museum in St. Louis, Missouri and the Cleveland Center for Contemporary Art, Cleveland Ohio. She has received a National Endowment for the Arts Individual Artists Grant and a Howard Foundation Grant from Brown University, Her work is in the collection of the Corcoran Museum of American Art, Washington DC; the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, California; the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, New York; The Saint Louis Art Museum, St. Louis, Missouri; the University Art Museum, University of California, Berkeley, California, and the Orange County Museum of Art, Newport, California among others. She is Professor of Art at Columbia College Chicago, Chicago, IL

Some images from our booth at Aqua, please email info@wot-it-is.com for more details and if you are in Miami come see us. If you need a VIP pass please email us and we will send you one.

Aqua Art Miami 2011, press release

What-It-Is Projects is proud to announce it’s participation in Aqua Art Miami 2011 in concurrence with Art Basel Miami Beach.

What-It-Is  is a project space and exhibition venue initiated by Tom Burtonwood and Holly Holmes, and operated out  of their home in the Chicagoan suburb of Oak Park. Artists are invited to create unique and temporary art works in the domestic setting, which is open to the public by appointment.

In addition to this, What-It-Is publishes artist’s books and produces limited editions, as well as participating in international art fairs as an expansion of the project space. So far, What-It-Is has presented projects at the inaugural MDW Fair in Chicago,  the NEXT Art Fair, also in Chicago (2010/2011), Fountain Art Fair in NY (2011) and Verge art Fair in Miami (2010).

For Aqua Art Miami,  What-It-is invited an eclectic and dynamic group of artists who have previously shown at their Oak Park location, click here for a preview of featured works on display: PREVIEW OF FEATURED WORK

Andrew Rigsby
Holly Holmes
Lise Haller Baggesen
Sabina Ott
Tom Burtonwood
Stoic Swine

From Sabina Ott’s hallucinatory west coast  sensibility,  to Andrew Rigsby’s kaleidoscopic dreamscapes, Holly Holmes playful constellations,  Tom Burtonwood’s geometric permutations, Lise Haller Baggesen’s teenage Riot and Stoic Swine’s dark secrets; the show offers a variety of media, unified by a bold yet refined palette.

Each artist will exhibit one major work / installation as well as a limited edition artwork produced specifically for the event of the Aqua Art Fair.

http://wot-it-is.com

Leslie Mutchler / David Linneweh: PLAY

MDW Fair

What It Is: Booth #234

Fair Admission: $5

PUBLIC HOURS
Vernissage: Friday October 21, 8-11pm
Saturday Noon to 6pm
Sunday Noon to 6pm

The MDW Fair takes place  October 21-23^rd, 2011 at the Geolofts 3636 S Iron Street, Chicago 60609

GEOLOFTS is located just over 4 miles from the downtown, straddling the neighborhoods of Bridgeport and McKinley Park.

Free Parking is available in the parking lot directly south of the building. Please go down to 37th street to enter the parking lot. The exit is toward the front of the building.

Nomadic Text

Curated by Jessica Cochran and Mia Ruyter

Opening reception Sun. Sept 18th 3pm – 8pm
Exhibition continues through Sat Oct. 22nd by appointment
http://wot-it-is.com

** PERFORMANCE BY CONRAD FREIBURG SUN OCT 9th, 2PM **

According to critic Joanna Drucker, “The relationship between linguistic statement and physical object influences every encounter we have with our environment.” The exhibition Nomadic Texts addresses the adaptability of text across book, sculpture and site. Located within, on or as artworks in this exhibition, words, fragments and sentences seem placeless and mutable as they inhabit expanded fields. Floating or migrating, texts are tacitly connected to their surface or context, unbound by image or narrative: easily unhinged and on the make.

In some works, dynamic composition or experimental typeface captures the spirit of movement and in others, mixed signifiers and poetic gestures suggest unlimited readings and shifts in meaning. Finally, some works capture the nomadism of text in a global sense, as words on signage, garments and the body are ephemeral in time and space.
The exhibition is designed as a site-specific intervention across the domestic space of What It Is. Sculptures, books and installation will be placed throughout the front gallery, living room and dining room.

Artists include Joseph Grigely, Mark Booth, Alex Valentine, Karen Reimer, Jason Pickleman, Stephanie Brooks, Steven Miglio, Robert Ransick, Rachel Foster and Rebecca Foster.

(Quote from “Language in the Landscape” p. 90, in Figuring the Word)

Conrad Freiberg: Home

On October 9, 2011, 2 pm
Conrad Freiburg: Home
A recital of songs about traveling.
The event is free.

Nomadic Text, Oak Leaves, 09/29/11

“Nomadic Text” tracks a migration or words

- by J. T Morand

Oak Leaves, Sept 29th, 2011

Composition 2 is a series of 100 paintings produced sequentially, each one created on an identical matrix. The geometric composition is conceptually equivalent to the source code one might use in a computer program or web site. An identical visual framework is deployed to create many variations through simple modulations of hue and saturation. From a process of repetition and experimentation the phenomena of color is revealed to the viewer through many different outcomes.
Wii_pub_14
Published by Tom Burtonwood and What It Is
ALL ARTWORK © TOM BURTONWOOD 2011
CATALOGUE © TOM BURTONWOOD AND WHAT IT IS
Catalogue design by Tom Burtonwood and What It Is
Photography credits: Tom Burtonwood
Essay by Patrick Lichty
Version 2.0

http://tomburtonwood.com

This catalogue is partially funded by an Individual Artist Support Initiative grant from the Illinois Arts Council.Thank you to Encarnacion Teruel and everyone at IAC for their assistance.

Composition 2 by Tom Burtonwood | Make Your Own Book

Part Wolf
Jacob Crose, Chris Holmes, Vaughnda Johnson
Opening reception Sat. July 9th 3pm – 8pm
Exhibition continues through Sat July 30th by appointment
http://wot-it-is.com

What It Is, is pleased to present Part Wolf an exhibition featuring paintings by three Chicago based artists, Jacon Crose, Chris Holmes and Vaughnda Johnson. Although some years apart they all attended and studied art at Southern Illinois University, Carbondale. Where they acquired a collective taste for Goldschläger. They are art misfits who stubbornly still make art that is their version of the world by exploring the beauty of the banal and creating a narrative from this perspective.

Jacob Crose

Bored and lazy
These are my drawings
The very best of Jacob Crose

Chris Holmes

Chris Holmes used to live in Berwyn but now he’s back in the city.

Vaughnda Johnson

Vaughnda Johnson lives and works in Chicago IL. The city dweller’s daily background is filled with strangers walking to work, sleeping on trains, site-seeing, etc. She explores the private drama of this public through the interplay of light and shadow, saturated colors and gestural line. To highlight the familiarity of this everyday dynamic, she reduces the environment and employ painterly abstractions. She is not as cool as Jacob. http://vaughnda.com/