JONATHAN DANKENBRING
Charlatan
January 27 through March 10, 2012
Opening reception Friday January 27, 6:00 - 8:00PM

Thomas Robertello Gallery is pleased to present Charlatan: a solo exhibition by Austin, Texas based artist Jonathan Dankenbring. Charlatan opens Friday January 27 at 6:00PM and continues through March 10, 2012. This is Dankenbring's first exhibition with the gallery.

Using disparate forms, imagery, and media, Dankenbring explores iconography through the lens of personal history and highly speculative reformations, focusing on how our current culture may be perceived by future peoples. Through drawing, sculpture, and photography, resulting works range in development from artifact to hybrid structures, relying heavily on a minimalist design aesthetic. Tied directly to hyper-consumerism, evangelical ideals, humor, and fear, the artist hovers -- literally with a self-portrait -- in alien-like observation. By imitating, recording, and abstracting objects that reflect ideological information about their maker and audience, Dankenbring exposes the vulnerabilities inherent in our most cherished modern artifacts.

The Viewing Station drawings consider the repurposed use of stadium structures as apocalyptic seating venues for the paranoid and faithful, sitting quietly awaiting input from above. In the work Or.ganic, the austere surfaces of a television are channeled, allowing for contemplation of the vast levels of propaganda broadcast through the iconic form. The artist's Resurrection Machine operates as a sidelined prototype from a bygone era, sleekly linking an ancient past's sacrificial table with an autopsy table and ridiculing the recent technology /mortality conundrum. Multiple smaller sculptures fetishize contemporary media and communication technology subverting recognizable forms: iPods, Sony walkman, iPhones.

Jonathan Dankenbring (b.1981) lives in Austin, TX. He is a graduate of Indiana University's MFA program in Sculpture (2009) and Kansas City Art Institute in Painting (2004). This is his first exhibition in Chicago.