Galleries One & Two
Western Exhibitions is thrilled to present our third solo show with Edie Fake. In Gallery 1, Fake will present several mid-size paintings on panel that take the shape of sandcastles, paintings that consider the sense of impermanence left in particular by the tumultuous year that was 2020. Inspired by a rollercoaster of emotional states, this body of work juxtaposes the idea of many small things coming together with the constant threat of being washed away to start over. The paintings are informed by looking at diatom art, desert sand, cellular and viral behavior, rising ocean levels, and as always with Edie Fake, the audacity of queer utopian imagining. A smaller group of mostly abstract panels that Fake has been calling “erogenous zones” will be sprinkled throughout the space and in Gallery 2, Fake will show a new series of collages.
Concurrent with this solo show at Western Exhibitions, Edie Fake will have several publications, paintings and a large wall installation in Chicago Comics: 1960s to Now at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago, opening June 19, 2021. He has a large wall painting currently on view, through June 27, at the Berkeley Art Museum and Film Archive in California and a painted installation at The Drawing Center in New York, up through September 19, 2021. Fake’s multi-media work — drawings, paintings, installations, comics, books and zines — has been written about and featured in artforum, New York Times, The Paris Review, Art News, Art 21, Juxtapoz, Hyperallergic, The Comics Journal, and The Los Angeles Review of Books. Fake’s 2018 show at Western Exhibitions was reviewed in Art in America. He was on the first recipients of Printed Matter’s Awards for Artists and his Gaylord Phoenix collection of comics won the 2011 Ignatz Award for Outstanding Graphic Novel. His work has been exhibited nationally and internationally, including solo shows at the Everson Museum of Art in Syracuse, NY and Marlborough Gallery in NYC and in group shows at the Museum of Art and Design in NY, the Institute of Art at VCU in Richmond, VA. Fake’s work is held in the collections of the Des Moines Art Center in Iowa, the RISD Museum in Providence, RI, KADIST in San Francisco, and the Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art in Overland Park, KS. Edie fake was born in Chicagoland in 1980 and received a BFA from the Rhode Island School of Design in 2002. Fake is represented by Western Exhibitions in Chicago and Broadway Gallery in New York and he currently lives and works in Twentynine Palms, California.
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There will not be an opening reception; the exhibition will begin on Saturday, June 5 with regular hours, 11am to 6pm and will run through July 24. Starting with this show, Western Exhibitions will no longer require reservations/appointments to visit the gallery. Masks are still mandatory as is social distancing from those not in your party. Hand sanitizer dispensers are available in gallery and are stationed at several points in the 1709 W Chicago building, also home to the galleries David Salkin Creative, DOCUMENT, PHLK, Rhona Hoffman and Volume. Private appointments can still be made by contacting us at info@westernexhibitions.com.