Gallery One, Chicago
Western Exhibitions is pleased to present Jessica Campbell’s solo show, Dogman Lives on the Ground. Campbell’s third show with the gallery brings together textiles, drawings, and works made in posthumous collaboration that grapple with the death of a close friend of the artist. This exhibition reflects on the pain, absurdity and humour of friendship and love, and, life and death. Please join us for an opening reception on Friday, April 18, from 5 to 8pm. The show runs through June 7 and gallery hours are Tues-Sat, 11am to 6pm.
“Dogman Lives on the Ground” is a simultaneously silly yet serious turn of phrase that was typical of the artist’s friend Lee McClure. To paraphrase his brother Renny’s definition, presented at Lee’s funeral in 2023, a dog is a stupid, sweet animal who is at its core both good and very bad at once. A man, on the other hand, is an abomination, an extremely creepy, extremely manipulative, violent jerk of some kind, like Genghis Khan, who is simultaneously self-assured and proud of his accomplishments like making gizmos, constructing fancy buildings and going into outer space. “Living on the ground” is a way of countering these achievements. We can go into outer space, but at enormous cost and limited frequency. We can do brain surgery, but can also forget to take the scissors out of your brain. So, “living on the ground” is a reminder that most of us, most of the time, are just living on the ground.
This show is an attempt to reconcile with the impossibility of Lee’s death through a series of works made for him, reflecting on his life and prolific work as an artist, writer and comedian and his relationship with the artist, his close friend and former partner. Bringing together textiles, drawings, and works made in posthumous collaboration, this exhibition reflects on the pain, absurdity and humour of being a dogman who lives on the ground.
Jessica Campbell is a Canadian artist and humourist based in Toronto, working in comics, fibres, painting, drawing and performance. Her Chicago Works show at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago in 2018-2019 was reviewed in Art in America, Hyperallergic and Juxtapoz. She is the author of three graphic novels, Rave (Drawn and Quarterly, 2022), Hot or Not: 20th Century Male Artists (Koyama Press, 2016) and XTC69 (Koyama Press, 2018). Her comics have appeared in the New Yorker, Hyperallergic, Drawn to MoMA, and the Nib, among other publications. Her solo and two-person exhibitions include the Fabric Workshop and Museum in Philadelphia, Patel Brown in Toronto, SPACES in Cleveland, Field Projects in NYC, Roots & Culture in Chicago and La Galerie Laroche/Joncas in Montreal. Her work has been included in group shows at the John Michael Kohler Art Center in Wisconsin, the Art Gallery of Hamilton in Ontario, The Art Gallery of Alberta in Edmonton, the ICA in Baltimore, Richard Heller Gallery in LA, moniquemeloche in Chicago, and Chicago Comics: 1960s to Now at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago. Campbell received her MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2014.