• Shannon Finley
    Googol, 2015
    Acrylic on linen
    95 x 189 inches

Shall we go, you and I while we can

May 4—June 22, 2019


Carrie Secrist Gallery is pleased to announce Shall we go, you and I while we can, a group exhibition featuring one large art work by each of the gallery’s represented artists.

Shall we go, you and I while we can is as an invitation to view large to monumental artworks presented in a dedicated and enhanced environment. The nine artworks on view use scale as a means to encourage a way of seeing with an underlying context of the visceral to accompany the visual. Upon close inspection the viewer can get lost in a single work’s materiality (Anne Lindberg’s graphite on mat board), geometry (Shannon Finley’s intersecting shapes and paint scrapes) and precision (Stephen Eichhorn’s hand cut flora on cats). From a respectable distance, the viewer may discover entire tropes: Whitney Bedford’s desert landscape sublime, Dannielle Tegeder’s abstract utopian maps and Andrew Holmquist’s populated psychological architecture. An aura of mysticism is also present with Liliana Porter’s tiny figurine performing a monumental task, Diana Guerrero-Maciá’s mesmerizing contemporary mandala and Michael Robinson’s video homage – of a homage – to an otherworldly obsession.

The title of the exhibition is a verse from the proto-experimental improvisational song “Dark Star”, written by Robert Hunter and originally performed by The Grateful Dead. The meager amount of lyrics (82 words) that accompany this song that can last from the under 3-minute studio version to over 40 minutes in a live performance, are musically encapsulated in a way that is as strange as it is cosmic. As such, ‘Dark Star’ shines as a preeminent example of a song drenched in visualizations, inducing what could be described as synesthesia, or the simultaneous perception of an experience with the aural (sound) and the ocular (vision). Of the 240 times played in concert, each performance was remarkably different as presented in a particular time, space, mood and energy.

Visual rhetoric, a term based in the science of semiotics, refers to how we interpret and make meaning out of anything we see and how we are persuaded by those things we see. Shall we go, you and I while we can plays to this power of looking as a commanding force in everyday life. As “Dark Star” was contextualized each time it was heard in performance by the music that surrounded it, here, the context encourages exploration – becoming an experience of seeing. Let the art be your guide.

___________________

CARRIE SECRIST GALLERY x 900 W. WASHINGTON

In conjunction with Shall we go, you and I while we can, the gallery is happy to announce it’s partnership with Taris Real Estate and their new building 900 West Washington (Chicago). This phenomenal state of the art building on the corner of Washington and Peoria in the West Loop contains artwork by each represented artist in 9 units, including a group exhibition in the penthouse. The building’s owner asked the gallery to create specific micro-curated exhibitions throughout that is now being described as “that secret museum in the West Loop”.

The gallery will have guided tours each Saturday at 1 and 3PM during the exhibition: May 11, 18, 25 + June 1, 8 15. Individual tours are also available by appointment. If you’d like to sign up for a Saturday tour, or an individual tour, please contact Kelly Long at the gallery: 312.491.0917 or kelly@secristgallery.com.

Images

  • Andrew Holmquist
    The Boys are in the Bathroom, 2014
    Oil and flasche on canvas
    77 x 132 inches

  • Anne Lindberg
    the walking eye, 2018
    Graphite and colored pencil on mat board
    60 x 204 inches

  • Dannielle Tegeder
    Junillever: Nocturnal Underground Segments Mechanism and Construction of Lust Structure Patterns and Machine Love Language with Accidental Modernist Shape System and Macrosilver Borders with Abandoned Headquarter Segments (RB), 2015
    Acrylic, ink, graphite, mixed collage
    72 x 108 inches

  • Diana Guerrero-Maciá
    The Other Window, 2019
    Wool, canvas, cotton and India ink on used American quilt
    79 x 65 inches

  • Liliana Porter
    Forced Labor: Black Sand II, 2018
    Black sand and figurine on pedestal
    96 x 48 x 30 inches

  • Michael Robinson
    Madd Ladders, 2015
    High definition stereo sound
    16 x 9 aspect ratio, 10 minutes
    Installation photo by Clare Britt

  • Stephen Eichhorn
    368 C (Lime), 2019
    Archival ink on contour cut Sintra
    84 x 59 x .5 inches

  • Whitney Bedford
    An Unmade Garden, 2018
    Ink and oil on canvas on panel
    60 x 84 inches
    Photo by Evan Bedford

  • Shall we go, you and I while we can, installation view. Carrie Secrist Gallery, May 4 – June 15, Chicago. (Photo by Nathan Keay)

  • Shall we go, you and I while we can, installation view. Carrie Secrist Gallery, May 4 – June 15, Chicago. (Photo by Nathan Keay)

  • Shall we go, you and I while we can, installation view. Carrie Secrist Gallery, May 4 – June 15, Chicago. (Photo by Nathan Keay)

  • Shall we go, you and I while we can, installation view. Carrie Secrist Gallery, May 4 – June 15, Chicago. (Photo by Nathan Keay)

  • Shall we go, you and I while we can, installation view. Carrie Secrist Gallery, May 4 – June 15, Chicago. (Photo by Nathan Keay)