Exhibitions

For our second show of 2016, Western Exhibitions unearths a grouping of never-seen-before drawings by Robyn O’Neil. The impetus for this show came from a tweet by O’Neil in January 2015 that read “Just realized my favorite show I’ve ever had is everything we kept in the flatfile during I WANT BLOOD”. The “Lost Show” is sandwiched in between two drawings. One is straight from her studio, representing her current direction. The other is a drawings she made in 2000 while in grad school, and it clearly presages everything she’s made since.
This “lost show” will consist of a group of transitional drawings made after the completion of her magnum opus Hell, a large triptych featuring the last appearance of her mysterious sweatsuit-clad men who have populated her epic and emotional drawings from the prior 12 years, and before she embarked on the series of moody, colorful (for her), almost abstract, landscape pastel drawings debuted at Western Exhibitions in 2013. The drawings in this second show at Western Exhibitions portray expressionistic scenes populated by ominous clouds and land masses, disembodied floating heads, monks, ears, mysterious female figures, faceless busts and other enigmatic characters.
Robyn O’Neil has had solo museum exhibitions at the Des Moines Art Center; the Kohler Art Center in Wisconsin; the Contemporary Art Museum in Houston; the Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art, Cornell University; and the Frey Art Museum in Seattle. She has been included in numerous group exhibitions throughout the US and internationally including the Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art; the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago; American University Museum in Washington, DC; and the Museum of Contemporary Art in Tampa, Florida. Her work was included in the 2004 Whitney Biennial. O’Neil has participated in gallery shows in Amsterdam, Berlin, London, Paris, Copenhagen, Shanghai, NYC, Los Angles, Miami, Chicago, and Seattle. She is the recipient of numerous grants and awards, including an Irish Film Board Award for a film written and art directed by her entitled “WE, THE MASSES” which was conceived at Werner Herzog’s Rogue Film School. O’Neil lives and works in Los Angeles.

Western Exhibitions is curdled with quivering anticipation to present a survey of prints, zines, illustrations, sacs and ephemera by ONSMITH + NUDD, a collaboration initiated by the cartoonist Onsmith and artist Paul Nudd in 2008.

The collaborative work of Onsmith & Nudd tightens the cleavage between the seemingly disparate worlds of underground comics and contemporary painting. Onsmith & Nudd reject the notion that these approaches to making things differ in any meaningful way, instead opting for a strategy that focuses on an end product that resembles, above all other things, an artificially-thickened quasi-cultural pureé. Everything they plumb from the depths of the diseased and impacted Western cultural colon-womb, from films of questionable artistic merit to “metaphysical German meatloaf”(1), becomes fodder for their cartoon-heavy narrative and figurative conglomerations. Onsmith the cartoonist, a documentarian of modern isolation and purveyor of grim humor, and Nudd the painter of gunk, pox and plasmic filth, have sculpted out of beef-clay a body of work that autonomously bottles and sells its own pungent nectars. The proof, as well as all of the hairs, toenails, and used band-aids, resides in the vats of pudding that comprise this retrospective style exhibition.

The visual cornucopia that the artists refer to as Onsmith Dog Stew & Monkey Nudd Wine consists of more than a few of their favorite things: banana splits, fishing lures, misshapen faces, horse flies, totem poles, spots, battered heads, and beehives, and comes in a variety of different forms: silkscreened prints, lithographs, collage, drawings and sketchbook pages, relief prints, postcards, studio detritus, commissioned illustrations, koozies, and zines. This exhibit contains pretty much everything they have ever made.

ONSMITH + NUDD’s collaborative work has been shown at Spudnik Press, Anchor Graphics and Columbia College, all in Chicago. Their illustrations have been published in “Black Eye” by Rotland Press, they’ve presented work at various books fairs including CAKE in Chicago, Comic Arts Brooklyn and the New York Art Book Fair. Their 2013 lithographic triptych “Beyond the Valley of the Spoils” was written about in Art in Print. Onsmith, an accomplished comic book artist whose work has been disseminated by dozens of publications, lives and works in Chicago. Paul Nudd, a painter, drawer and printmaker who is represented by Western Exhibitions, lives and works in Berwyn, Il.

Western Exhibitions presents its second solo show with Marshall Brown, featuring new architectural photomontages.

The Chimera series is named after the mythological beast believed to have been part lion, part goat and part dragon. Brown describes these cross-bred works as acts of “creative miscegenation”. In a technique Brown dubs “stealth collage,” he samples published photos of buildings and remixes them, painstakingly cutting and pasting found fragments. He creates new alignments between diverse, seemingly incompatible aesthetics. Different from modernist collages which were designed to shock, Brown’s Chimera are intended to deceive viewers into new awareness.

After having worked in collage for over a decade, Brown created the suite of one hundred pieces on view between January 1 and December 31, 2014. Each 14 x 17 inch composition begins with an intuitive selection of samples, and proceeds with a disciplined assemblage of new architectural visions. Unlike most works of architecture, these photomontages have neither site nor function. They may be sketches for potential future projects, showcasing Brown’s unique ability to make new spaces and forms using diverse sources. Brown insists with the Chimera that he’s more than an architect of buildings— he’s a creator of intricate worlds.

Marshall Brown is an architect based in Chicago. He is designing a new project for Detroit to be presented at the 2016 Venice Architecture Biennale and will also unveil a garden folly for the Arts Club of Chicago in April 2016. He has been a MacDowell Fellow, and also the first Saarinen Architecture Fellow at the Cranbrook Academy of Art. His projects and essays have appeared in several books and journals, including Metropolis, The Architect’s Newspaper, Architectural Record, Crain’s, The New York Daily News, Art Papers, The Believer, and New Directions in Sustainable Design. Brown’s work has been exhibited at the Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit and Western Exhibitions. He received his Masters degrees in Architecture from Harvard University where he won the Druker Fellowship.

Ben Stone’s sculptures elevate ubiquitous icons and ever-present visual ephemera through a compulsive attention to detail and fastidious production quality. He has built his career off of a sensitive study of this omnipresent imagery found in advertising and signage, public speech, and encounters in his daily life. By enlarging the scale of his source material and remaking it into a three-dimensional form, he transforms a derivative of a derivative into a de-coded, un-conditioned original. In his show at Western Exhibitions, his fourth with the Chicago-based gallery, Stone continues his exploration of the contemporary psyche as he reckons with violence and corruption in his midst and in society at large; his frustration with politics, both local and national; bad or just plain weird public iconography; and his continued exploration of his own self-worth as an artist. Stone’s sincere pursuit of profundity within sloppy, over simplified imagery and lazy ideas transcends irony, groping towards the tragicomic. In a culture supersaturated with abject visuals and hollow messaging, Stone’s sculptures are unflinchingly honest, and take nothing for granted.

A larger-than-life-sized figurative sculpture, carved and painted polystyrene, of a cartoonish angel leading an armed policeman into heaven, will anchor the show. The piece, All Popos Go to Heaven, was inspired by an etched granite First Responders Memorial seen by Stone in Berwyn, Illinois, where the artist currently resides. Stone’s initial fascination with this image was in the ham-fisted manner the original artist chose to depict as well as the city planners who thought such a poorly rendered image would suffice for this memorial. Amidst tense current scrutiny of systemic police brutality, this complicated sculpture offers uncomfortable associations with current events in the public sphere, existing somewhere between good and evil. Both an indictment of the poor quality of the monument’s rendering, as well as a questioning of the dubious sentiment behind it, it offers no specific answers because, In Stone’s mind, there are none. It is an earnest attempt to come to grips with the trying issues of our time as it grapples with how public speech and imagery becomes politically coded.

Another elaborate sculpture captures evidence of a random shooting near Stone’s studio: a casting of the windowpane, hole in the wall and the bullet from the incident. On the morning of December 4, 2014 studio mate and fellow gallery artist Geoffrey Todd Smith arrived to find some broken CDs on the floor and a hole in his studio wall. Confused, considering that maintenance was ongoing in the space, Smith called to see if Stone knew what happened to the wall, to no avail. Smith cleaned up the space, moved a CD rack and heard a piece of rattling metal: there, buried in Belle and Sebastian’s, “If You’re Feeling Sinister” CD was a very large bullet. Tracing the trajectory, it entered through a window, passed through Stone’s studio and the spot where he normally works, ripped through a free-hanging poster, exited Stone’s wall and blew out through Smith’s wall just beneath a painting. The Chicago Police Department was alerted but chose not to investigate.

Stone also coaches his daughter’s athletic teams and a series of whimsical wooden sculptures reflect time spent in gymnasiums. He’s been captivated by felt wall-hangings seen in a school gymnasium, pictographs of figures at play, not unlike the graphic imagery used to signify individual Olympic sports. States Stone: “ They were probably hung there in the ‘80’s, intending to inspire champions via soft felt, in a realm where so many failed, were picked last and felt bad about unimportant athletic prowess. The clumsiness of the visuals are both funny and sad, just visual metaphors for inevitable failure.”

Ben Stone (American, b. 1968) has been included in group shows at Regina Rex in New York, the Mattress Factory in Pittsburgh, Diverseworks in Houston, The Green Gallery in Milwaukee, Shane Campbell Gallery in Chicago, and A Study in Midwest Appropriation curated by Michelle Grabner for the Hyde Park Art Center in Chicago. His solo shows at Western Exhibitions have been reviewed in Art In America, Artforum, Art Ltd., New City, ArtSlant and Blackbook. Stone’s seven-foot tall, 250 pound robot, Nuptron 4000, performed his wedding ceremony in 2004 and has moonlighted as the stand-up comedian, Bernie Circuits, for Club Nutz, in programming for both the Museum of Contemporary Art and the NEXT Art Fair in Chicago. Stone received his BFA from the Rhode Island School of Design and his MFA from the University of Illinois-Chicago. He lives inBerwyn and maintains a studio in Chicago.

Deb Sokolow’s tongue-in-cheek, text-driven drawings incorporate the voice of a naive, unnamed narrator who presents seemingly humorous, harmless anecdotes on a number of famous men. The drawings’ narratives also suggest a more sinister mix of machismo, narcissism, Machiavellianism and/or psychopathy at play. In these anecdotes, fact blends with fiction, and the tone shifts between sympathy and sarcasm, leaving it up to the viewer/reader to decipher how much is true and to determine when, if ever, the narrator can be trusted. Hand-drawn texts in graphite on men such as Vladimir Putin, Muammar Gaddafi, Frank Lloyd Wright and Donald Judd, among others, are paired with a mix of abstract shapes and diagrammatic visuals.

These drawings are a continuation of Sokolow’s research into the dark triad traits of famous men, geniuses, cults of personality, shadowy histories and organizational brainwashing. Recent subjects have included the 2016 U.S. presidential candidates, Frank Lloyd Wright’s architectural apprenticeship program and connection to the Institute for the Harmonious Development of Men, Jim Jones’ Peoples Temple, Kenneth Noland’s uninhibited orgasms inside a Reichian Therapy box, Sokolow’s Cousin Irving and his real-life connection to Lee Harvey Oswald, and the CIA’s failed assassination attempts on Fidel Castro. This is her third solo show at Western Exhibitions.

Deb Sokolow is a Chicago-based artist and writer. Her work has been included in the 4th Athens Biennale in Greece and in other group exhibitions at the Drawing Center in New York, Museum für Gegenwartskunst Siegen in Germany, Van Abbemuseum in the Netherlands and the Institute of Contemporary Art in Philadelphia. Solo exhibitions include the Abrons Art Center in New York, Museum of Contemporary Art and Western Exhibitions in Chicago, Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art in Kansas City, Institute of Visual Arts in Milwaukee and the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, in which Sokolow’s 2013 MATRIX exhibition, “Some Concerns About the Candidate,” was reviewed in the New York Times. Her work has been reproduced for Creative Time’s Comics project, for Swedish art magazine, Paletten, and in Vitamin D2, a survey on contemporary drawing. Her work is in the permanent collections of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago, Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art, Kinsey Institute for Research in Sex, Gender, and Reproduction and the Thomas J Watson Library at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY. Sokolow is a recipient of an Artadia award and residencies at Art Omi and Nordic Artists’ Centre in Norway. She received her MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2004.

Courttney Cooper, a Vernacular Artist from Cincinnati, Ohio, is known for drawing large-scale cityscapes of his hometown that respond to changes in the city’s architecture and environment. These drawings, punctuated with idealistic imagery and commentary, are dedicated to what Cooper calls Cincinnati/Zinzinnati Ohio USA (1). His title for the city refers to a dualistic site both real and fantastic, where the pragmatic is depicted alongside an Oktoberfest celebration that never ends. For more images and information, contact Scott Speh scott@westernexhibitions.com (312) 480-8390.

A self-proclaimed “map artist”, Cooper combines direct observation of city sites with an impressive memory of buildings and streets gleaned from his travels. Using information gathered from phonebooks and various random maps, Cooper recreates a cityscape of both Cincinnati and his beloved Oktoberfest-ed Zinzinnati, USA. Cooper’s practice is a perpetual celebration of Oktoberfest Zinzinnati, USA, a commemorative and nostalgic place that exists parallel to or as a transparent layer upon Cincinnati, Ohio. Hot air balloons, beers, pretzels and banner-carrying airplanes fill the horizons above his three-quarter view landscapes. The large maps are drawn exclusively with ball-point pen on multiple sheets of office paper, glued together to accommodate additional drawing space as needed. He works on one cityscape at a time, taking from three months to one year to complete one piece. During that process of creation, Cooper carefully folds the growing piece and carries it with him wherever he travels. Cooper first draws I-75, the major interstate running north-south in Ohio. Before adding additional highways, streets, buildings and monuments, Cooper scrawls thoughts and phrases across the surface that are ultimately hidden beneath the twisting streets and buildings and revealed within the open white space of the paper, almost diaristic notes that reflect his romance and frustration with the city.

Cooper will present for the first time a new sculptural work titled “The Carnival.” In it, Cooper renders aspects of Zinzinnati USA in three-dimensions from repurposed paper, cardboard and objects found at his jobs and studios. Smaller, more formal works on paper such as “Union Terminal” and “Cincinnati from Newport” demonstrate a quieter, reflective and direct view of the city. Made on site, these works are created on traditional materials and approached with a more conventional method: working directly from observation.

Courttney Cooper was born in 1977 in Cincinnati, Ohio where he still resides. His earliest drawing tool was an Etch-A-Sketch, a children’s toy whose up-and-down and side-to-side sketchiness has made a lasting impression that can still be viewed in the web-like marks in his current drawings. Since graduating from Western Hills High School, Cooper has been working two jobs steadily, one at a major grocery store and the other at the York Street Cafe, a locally-owned and operated restaurant located across the river in Newport, Kentucky. During this time he has maintained a rigorous art practice at both his home studio, and since 2004, at Visionaries + Voices, a non-profit arts organization that provides support for artists with disabilities, offering them professional studio space that allows them to grow professionally and personally.

Cooper’s solo show at Intuit: The Center for Intuitive and Outsider Art in Chicago in spring of 2016 was reviewed in artforum.com and New City. His 2-person show (with Cole Carothers) at The Cincinnati Art Museum in 2013 was reviewed in CityBeat and AEQAI. He has exhibited extensively in the Greater Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky area including the Contemporary Art Center in Cincinnati and The Carnegie Visual and Performing Arts Center, Covington, KY. Cooper recently won The Wynn Newhouse Foundation Award and his work is included in a number of private and public collections including The Cincinnati Art Museum and The Kentucky Museum of Art and Craft. This is Courttney Cooper’s first solo show at Western Exhibitions.

1 Oktoberfest, called Zinzinnati USA, takes place in downtown Cincinnati, Ohio every September and is the largest Oktoberfest outside of Munich, Germany.

Head wraps around form. Eyes stretch out, curl around building corner. Ears feel heat, condensation on inner hairs, hear hoarse whistle. Paws splay, hover above asphalt. Rose color fills body, slowly, starting with feet. Rises, as liquid, to brim. Eyes look dead ahead. Eyelids stretch selves down, hard. Eyelids snap up, curl rapidly into selves as windowblinds. Eyes shoot out of sockets, as penises, multiply into a set of six, hover. Sockets gape, breathe. Lines indicate stink. Gravity pulls jaw. Chin hits floor. Tongue rolls out, as carpeting. Eyes retreat into sockets. Hole is pulled across ground with finger, rest falls through. Fingers grip top edge, body descends, as tar. Eyes rise up, wrap around ground plane to rest on earth, then pull above, as periscope.

Western Exhibitions presents their third solo show with Lilli Carré with a two-part show that opens on September 9 and runs through October 28. Please join us for a free public reception on Saturday, September 9, from 5 to 8pm.

In Gallery 1, Carré will show Salves, a grouping of new ceramic sculptures, animation, and prints. Physical and virtual containers cope with ever-bloating dysphoria by stomach coating, wound licking, and crack soothing. Topical and internal ointments offer temporary relief.

Jill will be projected in Gallery 2, a looping CG animation that builds on the history of the rebellious cartoon body. Set in a plain white room reminiscent of a gallery space or testing laboratory, an acousmatic voice interacts with Jill through a series of commands. Jill shows the wear and tear of slapstick, maintaining dents on a body that seems to feel no pain. The piece speaks to power dynamics between creator and creation, recalling one of the earliest animations, Gertie the Dinosaur, and the asymmetrical interaction of Frankenstein and his monster.

Lilli Carré’s solo shows include the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, the Columbus Museum of Art in Ohio, Museo Internazionale e Biblioteca della Musica di Bologna in Italy, and Western Exhibitions. Her animated films have been shown in festivals throughout the US and abroad, including the Sundance Film Festival, the Edinburgh International Film Festival, Animator Festival in Poznań, Poland, the Ann Arbor Film Festival, and the International Film Festival in Rotterdam. She co-founded the Eyeworks Festival of Experimental Animation in 2010, which is held annually in Chicago, Los Angeles, and New York. She has several published graphic novels and her work has appeared in The New York Times, The New Yorker, Best American Comics and Best American Nonrequired Reading. She received a BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and MFA from Northwestern University. Carré lives and works in Los Angeles.

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