Thomas Robertello Gallery

Thomas Robertello Gallery http://thomasrobertello.com/ contemporary art gallery Chicago West Loop en Copyright 2008, Thomas Robertello Gallery Fri, 4 Jul 2008 16:31:03 -0400 Exhibition: Unpainted - Recent Abstract Painting <div class="exhibition-subtitle">Patrick Berran, Laura Fayer, Callum Innes, Bob Jones, Jim Lee, Stephanie Serpick, Don Voisine</div> <div class="exhibition-dates">June 13 - August 2, 2008</div> <div class="exhibition-opening">Opens Friday, June 13, 6:00 PM - 9:00 PM</div> <br/> <a href="/exhibition/view/915"><img border="0" src="http://thomasrobertello.com/static/dyn-images/15/15542.jpeg" alt="" height="506" width="500" /></a> <p>Patrick Berran, <em>Shifty, Shifty</em>, 2007</p> <p> oil and acrylic on panel, 24 x 24 </p> <br /> <div class="exhibition-description"><p><span class="caps">UNPAINTED </span>- <span class="caps">RECENT ABSTRACT PAINTING</span><br /> June 13 - August 2, 2008<br /> Opening reception Friday June 13, 6-9pm</p> <p>Patrick Berran<br /> Laura Fayer<br /> Callum Innes<br /> Bob Jones<br /> Jim Lee<br /> Stephanie Serpick<br /> Don Voisine</p> <p>Thomas Robertello Gallery is pleased to present Unpainted - Recent Abstract Painting - June 13 through August 2, 2008. There will be an opening reception Friday June 13, 6-9pm. Participating artists include Patrick Berran, Laura Fayer, Callum Innes, Bob Jones, Jim Lee, Stephanie Serpick, and Don Voisine.</p> <p>Each artist in this group exhibition proves that abstract painting can continue to provide a vital and necessary voice, visually, conceptually, and aesthetically. Expanding boundaries and defining what a painting can be, the artists reveal that beauty, purity of concept, design, intelligence, and visually compelling treatment of the medium have much to offer in the present. </p> <p>Patrick Berran is based in New York. A recent graduate of Hunter College's <span class="caps">MFA </span>program, Berran's paintings are a chivalrous blend of Turner-esque light, romance, and an alchemical hand that deftly guides the viewer away from his illogical material process. Under Berran's control, properties of paint disobey their natural laws and are seduced into slowly revealing new possibilities of surface, color, and form. Berran will have a solo exhibition in the gallery in September.</p> <p>New York based Laura Fayer incorporates a process of hand-made stamps, stencils, and rice paper to create canvases that meditate on forms found in the natural and built environment, aerial view landscape, and an imperfect Asian aesthetic. Fayer's layering process reveals the history of individual works and completeness through an additive accumulation, rather than one of excavation, decay, and erosion. </p> <p>Scottish painter Callum Innes has achieved significant recognition worldwide for his conceptually driven unpainted canvases. Seemingly monochromatic colors are applied and subsequently unpainted with washes of turpentine. The unpainting process, when arrested, reveals a frozen moment where past, present and future coexist on the picture plane, leaving the hidden properties of paint exposed. </p> <p>Milwaukee artist Bob Jones creates wholly nonfunctional objects from the detritus of a studio in disarray. The accumulation of discarded materials and energy, and what can be called the kidnapping or removal of the objects from that environment, yields magnetically charged and confounding works once contextualized within an art viewing setting. </p> <p>The painting/sculptural hybrids of New York based Jim Lee are a quirky and intelligent blend of folk-minimalism. Carefully constructed, witty, charming, with references to Tuttle, Kelly, Ryman, and the Arte Povera movement, Lee's work achieves an unusual blend of awkward poise. </p> <p>Chicago based Stephanie Serpick subtly combines the faintest hints of Victorian patterns, quasi-Gothic lettering, and tattoo design to create atmospheric paintings. They explore memory and its gravity, as it separates from and fragments the present.</p> <p>The hard-edged reductive paintings of New York based Don Voisine are elegantly unpretentious and rigorous in their paint handling. Voisine's colors and surfaces vary from glossy to matte, and transparent to opaque. With a humble disposition, they whisper assured wisdom.</p></div> http://thomasrobertello.com/exhibition/view/915 Exhibition: Emily Noelle Lambert <div class="exhibition-subtitle">Pink Trees</div> <div class="exhibition-dates">April 25 - June 7, 2008</div> <div class="exhibition-opening">Opens Friday, April 25, 6:00 PM - 9:00 PM</div> <br/> <a href="/exhibition/view/914"><img border="0" src="http://thomasrobertello.com/static/dyn-images/14/14729.jpeg" alt="" height="644" width="500" /></a> <p>Emily Noelle Lambert, <em>In the violet sky</em>, 2008</p> <p> acrylic on canvas, 52 x 40 </p> <br /> <div class="exhibition-description"><p><span class="caps">EMILY NOELLE LAMBERT </span>- Pink Trees<br /> April 25 - June 7, 2008<br /> Opening Reception Friday April 25, 6:00 - 9:00</p> <p>Thomas Robertello Gallery is pleased to present Pink Trees; a solo exhibition of paintings by New York based artist Emily Noelle Lambert April 25 - June 7. A reception will be held Friday April 25, 6:00 - 9:00. </p> <p>The landscape paintings and landscape/figurative hybrids created by Lambert run the risk of complete boundary dissolution through gesture and hallucinatory colors that depict an alternate world in which dissociation equals solace. Lambert's non-linear narratives allow many points of entry but few escape hatches. While her web of cryptic imagery is drawn from a pool of everyday iconography, the complexities of the resulting landscapes verge on complete abstraction - a process rich with metaphor mirroring the contemporary American landscape as a genetic blend of the typical and exotic. </p> <p>Visual melting pots cross referencing the real and imagined give way to artificially constructed terrain, both interior in the psychological sense, and exterior. Choosing to view the work through the lens of racial evolution in America, specifically in her home base - New York, Lambert's work may be seen as visionary in its achievement to blend discordant color elements harmoniously, while defining completely that color is color, in every degree or intensity of hue. The work seeks a complete acknowledgement of the urban populous through the infinity of an imagined utopia. Thus the artificiality of construct and incorporation of acrid colors, independently directed linear webs, and an absolute whole connectedness between disparate elements reveal a keenly delineated but complete perspective. The irony of color and its assumed roles are charged with social commentary and aesthetically reveals a disturbingly beautiful vision that longs for a happy ending, with or without the presence of man. </p> <p>Emily Noelle Lambert was born in 1975 in Pittsburgh, <span class="caps">PA.</span> She earned an <span class="caps">MFA </span>from Hunter College, New York in 2007. Her work has been exhibited in New York, Washington, <span class="caps">DC,</span> Pittsburgh, Germany, and The Netherlands. Upcoming exhibitions include Seoul, Korea. She currently resides in New York.</p></div> http://thomasrobertello.com/exhibition/view/914 Exhibition: Lilly McElroy <div class="exhibition-subtitle">I throw myself at men.</div> <div class="exhibition-dates">March 14 - April 19, 2008</div> <div class="exhibition-opening">Opens Friday, March 14, 6:00 PM - 9:00 PM</div> <br/> <a href="/exhibition/view/913"><img border="0" src="http://thomasrobertello.com/static/dyn-images/14/14908.jpeg" alt="" height="343" width="500" /></a> <p></p> <br /> <div class="exhibition-description"><p><span class="caps">LILLY MCELROY </span>- I throw myself at men.<br /> March 14 - April 19, 2008<br /> Opening reception March 14, 6 - 9 pm</p> <p>Thomas Robertello Gallery is pleased to present Lilly McElroy - I throw myself at men, a project incorporating performative photographs of Lilly going to a lot of bars where she literally throws herself at men. She uses her body as a projectile hurling herself toward strong, vulnerable hominis-cum-receptaculi waiting to catch her. Perfectly poised in a perpetual state of social awkwardness and in full possession of the ability to subvert stereotypical gender roles, McElroy poses questions concerning relationships, social connecting, sex, gender, and the desire to form relationships quickly that are both intense and long lasting. The project initially started after Lilly placed ads on Craigslist.org looking for men who would meet her blind date style in bars and allow her to throw herself at them. Simply put, Lilly's work comes from a place where the desire to make a positive connection with another person is coupled with the full acknowledgement of one's own separateness.</p> <p>Lilly McElroy graduated the School of the Art Institute's <span class="caps">MFA </span>program in photography and attended the Skowhegan School for Painting and Sculpture in 2006. Lilly is an internet phenomenon, easily one of the funniest performance artists alive, and recently moved to New York.</p></div> http://thomasrobertello.com/exhibition/view/913 Exhibition: Knut Hybinette & Troy Richards <div class="exhibition-subtitle">Nowheresville</div> <div class="exhibition-dates">January 25 - March 8, 2008</div> <div class="exhibition-opening">Opens Friday, January 25, 6:00 PM - 9:00 PM</div> <br/> <a href="/exhibition/view/912"><img border="0" src="http://thomasrobertello.com/static/dyn-images/13/13457.jpeg" alt="The Promises of the Administration Have Been Kept, 2008" height="667" width="500" /></a> <p><p>The Promises of the Administration Have Been Kept, 2008</p></p> <br /> <div class="exhibition-description"><p><span class="caps">KNUT HYBINETTE </span>& <span class="caps">TROY RICHARDS </span>- Nowheresville<br /> January 25 - March 8, 2008<br /> Opening reception Friday January 25, 6 - 9 pm</p> <p>Thomas Robertello Gallery is pleased to present Nowheresville, a multimedia installation by collaborative Cleveland based artists Knut Hybinette and Troy Richards, January 25 through March 8, 2008.</p> <p>Taken from the literal definition of the word Utopia, Nowheresville focuses on the ideas and literary work of the French writer and Utopian socialist Charles Fourier: specifically on the experimental community, Ripon, Wisconsin, which was formed to put his ideas into practice. Ripon was a short-lived experiment but would later become the birthplace of the Republican Party. Presenting a historic trajectory that leads toward the near future, Ripon is portrayed as a Midwestern dystopia, infested by chaotic suburban drug addicts, killers, and societal decay.</p> <p>The centerpiece of the exhibition is an innovative video game created by Hybinette and Richards incorporating video, drawing, sculpture, printmaking, and cutting-edge technology. The gallery installation consists of a shanty housing the game, a decaying billboard depicting a video of Fourier espousing utopian dogma, as well as drawings and prints used in the making of the video game. </p> <p>Both Knut Hybinette and Troy Richards are on the faculty of the Cleveland Institute of Art. Born in Sweden, Hybinette graduated the School of the Art Institute's <span class="caps">MFA</span> Photography/Animation program in 2004 and has exhibited his photography nationally and in Sweden. Richards received an <span class="caps">MFA </span>from Cranbrook Art Academy in 1997 and has exhibited his work in New York at <span class="caps">P.S.1,</span> Queens Museum, Sara Meltzer Gallery, and <span class="caps">LFL</span> Gallery. Hybinette & Richards have received grants from the Ohio Arts Council and the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council for the Ripon game.</p></div> http://thomasrobertello.com/exhibition/view/912 Exhibition: Adam Ekberg <div class="exhibition-subtitle">Lesser Deities</div> <div class="exhibition-dates">November 30, 2007 - January 19, 2008</div> <div class="exhibition-opening">Opens Friday, November 30, 6:00 PM - 9:00 PM</div> <br/> <a href="/exhibition/view/911"><img border="0" src="http://thomasrobertello.com/static/dyn-images/7/7817.jpeg" alt="" height="400" width="500" /></a> <p>Adam Ekberg, <em>Match</em>, 2007</p> <p> Inkjet Print, </p> <br /> <div class="exhibition-description"><p><span class="caps">ADAM EKBERG </span>- Lesser Deities<br /> November 30, 2007 through January 19, 2008<br /> Opening reception Friday Nov. 30, 6 - 9pm</p> <p>Thomas Robertello Gallery is pleased to present Lesser Deities, a solo exhibition of photography by Chicago based artist Adam Ekberg, November 30, 2007 through January 19, 2008. </p> <p>In his current body of work, Ekberg mines spectral evidence of a larger mystical presence through minute gestural interventions that are self-reflexive to the medium of photography. Ekberg's signature blend of anthropomorphized ephemera and objects creates a neo-pagan iconography that hints at rapture through the minimal or unseen. By capturing the reflection and refraction of light through the lens, permitting optical aberrations, flares, and subtly staged events, Ekberg translates what may be only peripherally visible into a quixotic logic that brings the viewer closer to their understanding of, and belief in a larger cosmic force. Simple and profound in their compositional proclamations, the unabashedly humble images are imbued with an essence that is proof positive of divine evidence. Tackling issues relating to man's understanding of God, existence, and mortality through a vocabulary of serene reflection and solitude, Ekberg throws down the gauntlet challenging belief systems pertaining to spirituality in contemporary art.</p> <p>Adam Ekberg graduated the School of the Art Institute's <span class="caps">MFA </span>program in 2006. Since then, his work has been exhibited throughout Chicago at Hyde Park Art Center, Loyola University Museum of Art, Around the Coyote, Gallery 2 School of the Art Institute, Fifty-50 Gallery, Lloyd Dobler Gallery, as well as in St Louis and Seattle.</p></div> http://thomasrobertello.com/exhibition/view/911 Exhibition: Justin Marshall <div class="exhibition-subtitle">As Seen On TV</div> <div class="exhibition-dates">October 19 - November 24, 2007</div> <div class="exhibition-opening">Opens Friday, October 19, 6:00 PM - 9:00 PM</div> <br/> <a href="/exhibition/view/893"><img border="0" src="http://thomasrobertello.com/static/dyn-images/9/9415.jpeg" alt="" height="666" width="500" /></a> <p>Justin Marshall, <em>I know you're right</em>, 2007</p> <p> C-print, </p> <br /> <div class="exhibition-description"><p><span class="caps">JUSTIN MARSHALL </span>- As Seen On TV<br /> October 19 - November 24, 2007</p> <p>Thomas Robertello Gallery is pleased to present As Seen On <span class="caps">TV, </span>the first solo exhibition of staged performance photography and video work by Justin Marshall October 19 through November 24, 2007.</p> <p>The photo-based work in the first solo exhibition of 27-year-old artist Justin Marshall comprises a diary investigating the ways in which screen-based forms of communication have infiltrated our lives. Exposure to <span class="caps">TV, </span>computer screens, and text messaging has become a substitute for real time human contact. In this series of amateur style tableaux, Marshall reveals the trend toward hermetically sealed social environments that elevate TV and other modes of screen-based media to human status. Constructed identities emerge as the internet and various forms of second life virtual reality take the place of an ever-increasing decay of authentic collective consciousness and our world moves toward a new virtual consciousness. Imaginary perceptions of self and others replace truth through will, fear, and well-thought-out strategies. The screen acts as a protective barrier against emotional connection empowering individuals to live safe but isolated lives steeped in irony and psychological implosion. </p> <p>Marshall's video work explores the ability to retell stories through massive and thorough editing, inventing new truths, scenarios, and subliminal messages. Each video work incorporates hundreds of hours of viewing and editing in the style of maniacal rapid channel surfing. The viewing experience often results in the brain's inability to keep pace with the mixed messages and inconsistencies being communicated, perhaps a metaphor for the close and repeated scrutiny required to decode political behavior and the uncovering of truths embedded within a dense web of lies.</p> <p>Justin Marshall received a <span class="caps">BFA </span>from the Maryland Institute College of Art in 2003. His work has been screened in New York, Philadelphia, Washington <span class="caps">DC,</span> Los Angeles, Chicago, and Minneapolis.</p></div> http://thomasrobertello.com/exhibition/view/893 Exhibition: Grant Schexnider <div class="exhibition-subtitle">Paintings</div> <div class="exhibition-dates">September 7 - October 13, 2007</div> <div class="exhibition-opening">Opens Friday, September 7, 6:00 PM - 9:00 PM</div> <br/> <a href="/exhibition/view/582"><img border="0" src="http://thomasrobertello.com/static/dyn-images/9/9738.jpeg" alt="" height="491" width="500" /></a> <p></p> <br /> <div class="exhibition-description"><p><span class="caps">GRANT SCHEXNIDER</span>- Paintings<br /> September 7 - October 13, 2007</p> <p>Thomas Robertello Gallery is pleased to present Paintings, the first solo exhibition of Chicago-based artist Grant Schexnider September 7 - October 13, 2007. An opening reception for the artist will be held Friday September 7, 6 - 9pm.</p> <p>Schexnider creates large scale figurative paintings culled from violent and pornographic images found on the internet and other media-based sources. He routinely works with 96-inch square canvases depicting subjects who are victims and predators, engaged in explicit and violent behaviors. He has selected this square format in order to trap the viewer's attention and the subjects' behaviors, distilling chilling images in theatrical proportions. </p> <p>Schexnider's expressionist paintings exude a sense of urgency and sexualized rage. They address important current issues in contemporary culture including addictive behavior, violence, domination, internet pornography, as well as our culture of surveillance and moral judgment. Each behemoth painting confronts the viewer with a frozen moment, expression of pain, pleasure, guilt, determination, recklessness, or rage, but never ceases to be a painting in a grand theatrical expressionist style. The distillation of the essence of the elusive moment of climax, release of destructive energy, sexualized power, and addictive exhibitionism allow the subjects to take full possession of their ecstatic moments, and the viewer to participate in a voyeuristic opportunity without being implicated as an offender. The complex psychology of Schexnider's art transcends the subject, viewer, and object, but always returns to the object or painting itself as the solid material foundation upon which layers of experience and memory are built. The viewer is left only with the experience of their own interaction with the work, as the paintings retain their impenetrable self-absorption, confidently eclipsing or denying access to their own self-possessed egos. Each painting remains a painting first and foremost dissolving into its own material matter and tactile fortitude. All subjects allow nothing to disturb their own solipsistic state and reveal an intensely shocking degree of unstoppable force rarely present in the history of art. </p> <p>Grant Schexnider received a <span class="caps">BFA </span>from Louisiana State University, and graduated from the University of Chicago's <span class="caps">MFA </span>program in 2006.</p></div> http://thomasrobertello.com/exhibition/view/582 Exhibition: Adam Ekberg <div class="exhibition-subtitle">Disco ball in the woods - Window Video Installation</div> <div class="exhibition-dates">August 4 - September 4, 2007</div> <div class="exhibition-opening">Opens Saturday, August 4, 9:00 PM - 11:00 PM</div> <br/> <a href="/exhibition/view/902"><img border="0" src="http://thomasrobertello.com/static/dyn-images/6/6646.jpeg" alt="" height="398" width="500" /></a> <p>Adam Ekberg, <em>A disco ball on the mountaintop</em>, 2005</p> <p> Inkjet Print, 30 x 40 </p> <br /> <div class="exhibition-description"><p>Thomas Robertello Gallery is pleased to present Disco Ball in the Woods, a video by Chicago based artist Adam Ekberg August 4 - September 4, 2007.</p> <p>Adam Ekberg's photographs and video work record the existential spiritual presence of the self through the thoughtful staging of ephemeral events. The work navigates secret wormholes of the universe, gathering mystical evidence that is reflected back to the viewer through the refraction of light, extraordinarily tenuous and illogical circumstances, and singularly concentrated imagery. This distillation produces a body of work comprised of formal compositions that are at once visionary and accessible. Ekberg's simplicity of means allows each image to communicate the profound in the everyday. His imparted artistic ideals imbue each image with a gentle understanding that allows the viewer to experience the extraordinary in the ordinary, elevating perception and wisdom with the selflessness of an evolved yogi or spiritual being.</p> <p>Disco Ball in the Woods is a video created in 2006. It is a 4 ½ minute loop picturing an impishly magical scenario comprised of an out-of-place disco ball on a snowy mountaintop in Maine reflecting an artificial light source at dusk. Its illogical presence is hardly questionable given the sheer beauty of the sparkling light dancing on the snow. Ekberg's video is mesmerizing and meditative, ultra-hip and timeless. </p> <p>Adam Ekberg received an <span class="caps">MFA </span>in photography from the School of the Art Institute in 2006. His work has been exhibited in Chicago at the Contemporary Art Workshop, Bridge Art Fair, Fifty/50 Gallery, and Gallery 2 among other venues.</p></div> http://thomasrobertello.com/exhibition/view/902 Exhibition: Peter Allen Hoffmann <div class="exhibition-subtitle">Given</div> <div class="exhibition-dates">June 8 - August 3, 2007</div> <div class="exhibition-opening">Opens Friday, June 8, 6:00 PM - 9:00 PM</div> <br/> <a href="/exhibition/view/581"><img border="0" src="http://thomasrobertello.com/static/dyn-images/8/8052.jpeg" alt="Untitled 2006, oil on canvas 12 x 10" height="606" width="500" /></a> <p><p>Untitled 2006, oil on canvas 12 × 10</p></p> <br /> <div class="exhibition-description"><p>June 8 - August 4, 2007<br /> Reception: Friday June 8, 6-9pm</p> <p>Thomas Robertello Gallery is pleased to present Given; new landscapes by Peter Allen Hoffmann. Steadfastly poised far outside today's aesthetic epicenter of the New York art scene where cutting edge painting is synonymous with grotesque, market and ego-driven smears of expressionist signatures, and muddled abstraction; a visionary painter is bravely emerging as American landscape painting's leader. Hoffmann, who is based in New York, is a painter's painter who eschews shallows trends and achieves new heights in very old terrain. Acknowledging a certain debt to American and French luminaries, his work follows a long line of artists including Courbet, Hartley, Burchfield, Avery, and Dove. </p> <p>Hoffmann's agility and masterful technique allow him to carve each portion of canvas into a multifaceted gemstone, incorporating multiple perspectives that open and close, leading to unexpected visual resolutions. In fearless pursuit of beauty through subtlety, a shimmering sensuality surfaces through organic shapes that simultaneously protrude and recede. Through illogical visual systems of spatial organization, a ravishing and unabashedly beautiful painting style executed with complete freedom and skill, Hoffmann's work gives way to the mystical treasures and spiritual essence of the contemporary physical world. </p> <p>Peter Allen Hoffmann completed Hunter College's <span class="caps">MFA </span>program in 2005. His work has been featured in various group exhibitions in New York, Berlin, Chicago, and Philadelphia. His first New York solo show was presented by Freight + Volume Gallery in 2006.</p></div> http://thomasrobertello.com/exhibition/view/581 Exhibition: Molly Springfield <div class="exhibition-subtitle">The Real Object</div> <div class="exhibition-dates">April 27 - June 2, 2007</div> <div class="exhibition-opening">Opens Friday, April 27, 6:00 PM - 9:00 PM</div> <br/> <a href="/exhibition/view/580"><img border="0" src="http://thomasrobertello.com/static/dyn-images/7/7536.jpeg" alt="" height="290" width="500" /></a> <p></p> <br /> <div class="exhibition-description"><p><span class="caps">MOLLY SPRINGFIELD </span>- <span class="caps">THE REAL OBJECT</span><br /> April 27 - June 2, 2007<br /> Opening reception for the artist Friday April 27, 6 - 9pm</p> <p>Thomas Robertello Gallery is pleased to present, The Real Object, an exhibition of new drawings by Molly Springfield. For the past two years, Springfield has embarked on a singularly focused project: making painstaking graphite drawings of photocopies of books--copies of copies, in other words, that meditate on questions of originality, reproduction, and meaning. The obvious labor involved in each drawing evokes, as San Francisco critic Glen Helfand has put it, "an existential sense of futility. All that time and effort, and for what?" </p> <p>In this latest series of works, Springfield ups the ante. The drawings are larger in scale and more ambitious, but they also conform to a set of self-imposed restrictions. The pages that appear in the drawings are carefully chosen-- from books on the history of art or books with personal significance to the artist--and the content of the pages, in turn, dictates the form of the drawings. In some of the pieces, this relationship is made explicit; in others, less so. At the same time, the works address themes that have always preoccupied Springfield--reading versus seeing, technology versus labor, memory versus nostalgia, digital versus analog, pencil versus print.</p> <p>Molly Springfield was an artist-in-residence at the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in 2006 and received her <span class="caps">MFA </span>from the University of California, Berkeley in 2004. Later this year, her work will be included in Leaded: The Materiality and Metamorphosis of Graphite, an exhibition organized by the University of Richmond Museums that will travel nationally. Her next solo show is scheduled for this fall at Moti Hasson Gallery in New York.</p> <p>Gallery hours are Wednesday through Saturday 11 - 6 and by appointment.</p></div> http://thomasrobertello.com/exhibition/view/580 Exhibition: Knut Hybinette & Troy Richards <div class="exhibition-subtitle">Ripon Prototype: A Video Game Installation</div> <div class="exhibition-dates">April 25 - April 25, 2007</div> <div class="exhibition-opening">Opens Wednesday, April 25, 6:00 PM - 9:00 PM</div> <br/> <a href="/exhibition/view/776"><img border="0" src="http://thomasrobertello.com/static/dyn-images/7/7486.jpeg" alt="Town's Edge, 2006 Unique Digital Print, 72 x 144" height="300" width="500" /></a> <p><p>Town's Edge, 2006<br /> Unique Digital Print, 72 × 144</p></p> <br /> <div class="exhibition-description"><p>Thomas Robertello Gallery is pleased to present Ripon Prototype: A Video Game Installation preview on Wed. April 25, 6-9pm. Created by Cleveland-based artists Knut Hybinette and Troy Richards, Ripon is an innovative conceptual installation integrating an original video game with large-scale digital prints that use the setting of a violent dystopia to upset the conventions of gaming culture. Named after and located in Ripon, Wisconsin; a small town founded on the writings of the French Utopian writer Charles Fourier that would later become the birthplace for the Republican party, Ripon is meant as something more akin to ephemeral happenings or events with random chaotic situations in the game occurring only once. The game is designed with multiple monitors and projections that allow up to ten people to play simultaneously. The digital prints, which rely on rigorous drawing and print making techniques, depict the world of the game while surrounding the projections with images of home made methamphetamine labs, drug addicts, as well as cocoa and marijuana plants growing wild in abundant proportions. This depiction of a rural Mid-western societal collapse as a virtual reality involving the viewers is both frightening and humorous. </p> <p>The Ripon project subverts our expectations of video games, engaging the viewer/player in strategic and psychologically complex ways. From the design perspective, this is accomplished in three ways: one becomes less adept as the game progresses, players are de-centered, and each player is mortal. Ripon questions the violence so often used as conventional entertainment in video game culture, utilizing a critical perspective that is possible in the context of art installation.</p> <p>Knut Hybinette was born in Sweden and resides in Cleveland, OH where he is on the faculty of the Cleveland Institute of Art. He graduated with an <span class="caps">MFA </span>in photography and animation from the School of the Art Institute Chicago in 2004 and has exhibited his work internationally. Troy Richards is also on the faculty on the Cleveland Institute of Art and graduated in 1997 with an <span class="caps">MFA </span>in painting from Cranbrook Academy in <span class="caps">MI.</span> He has exhibited his work in numerous venues nationally including the Queens Museum of Art, <span class="caps">P.S.</span> 1, and <span class="caps">LFL</span> Gallery.</p> <p>Ripon Prototype will be exhibited one night only - April 25, 6-9pm</p></div> http://thomasrobertello.com/exhibition/view/776 Exhibition: J Ivcevich <div class="exhibition-subtitle">Sidewalk Soliloquy</div> <div class="exhibition-dates">March 16 - April 21, 2007</div> <br/> <a href="/exhibition/view/579"><img border="0" src="http://thomasrobertello.com/static/dyn-images/7/7028.jpeg" alt="" height="500" width="500" /></a> <p></p> <br /> <div class="exhibition-description"><p>J <span class="caps">IVCEVICH </span>- <span class="caps">SIDEWALK SOLILOQUY</span></p> <p>March 16 - April 21, 2007<br /> Opening reception for the artist Friday March 16, 6 - 9pm</p> <p>Thomas Robertello Gallery is delighted to present Sidewalk Soliloquy; the first solo exhibition of paintings by New York based artist J Ivcevich in Chicago. On the surface, Ivcevich's Pollyanna distillations of urban noise, chaos, and aggression in muted colors, soft dynamics, rendered in flat comic-style appear lyrical and disconnected from the reality of daily existence. Images of construction workers, firemen, police officers, discarded food, trash, graffiti, and newspaper dispensers reveal a Stepford-like denial and numb response to current events and threats in American cities. This silent optimism provides little protection from thinly veiled, potentially destructive forces one might encounter during the simplest walk down a city sidewalk. </p> <p>An inner paranoia quelled by false hope prevails just beneath the pastel surfaces of Ivcevich's work. This inherent duplicity illustrates the cold perceptual control often futilely imposed on everyday scenes to maintain lower levels of chronic fear. With a tight smile, Ivcevich's art addresses phobic responses to ethnic and social class differences, as well as the pervasive climate of crime, surveillance, media, and indeterminate threats.<br /> <br /> J Ivcevich lives and works in New York, <span class="caps">NY.</span> He is a recent recipient of a grant from the Pollack-Krasner Foundation. His work has been exhibited in New York, Washington, <span class="caps">DC, </span>and Atlanta.</p> <p>Gallery hours are Wednesday through Saturday 11 - 6 and by appointment.</p></div> http://thomasrobertello.com/exhibition/view/579 Exhibition: Laura Fayer <div class="exhibition-subtitle">Breathing Room</div> <div class="exhibition-dates">February 2 - March 10, 2007</div> <br/> <a href="/exhibition/view/446"><img border="0" src="http://thomasrobertello.com/static/dyn-images/6/6359.jpeg" alt="" height="375" width="500" /></a> <p></p> <br /> <div class="exhibition-description"><p><span class="caps">LAURA FAYER </span>- <span class="caps">BREATHING ROOM</span><br /> February 2 - March 10, 2007<br /> Opening reception for the artist Friday Feb 2, 6-9pm</p> <p>Thomas Robertello Gallery is pleased to present an exhibition of recent paintings by New York based artist Laura Fayer. Fayer's paintings draw on various structures and systems to produce a loose geometry with organic rhythms. She relies mainly on her handcrafted tools such as stencils and oversized rubber stamps to construct her multi-layered work. As part of her process, she studies the natural and built environment; among her many references are architecture, aerial views of landscape, language, and musical structure. Her work reflects the wabi-sabi aesthetic; a Japanese concept of beauty that includes simplicity, unpretentiousness, and imperfection. </p> <p>Fayer's work allows for a coexistence of imperfect elements that can be described as fragments of beauty, thought patterns, intelligence, disturbances, and light. The whole that they create through the inclusiveness of natural dissonance and unfinished forms depicts a true state of perfect unity. Compared to Agnes Martin's quest for spiritual and philosophical truth through form, Fayer's work is similarly ambitious. But rather than eliminating forms that would detract from a singular vision, Fayer incorporates them creating works that are whole through `being' and embracing all parts, whereas Martin's exclusion of these elements, discrimination, and singular vision/process created an artificial state of `being' through `doing'. Fayer reinvigorates abstract painting by allowing all unfinished aspects of the self to combine with profoundly serene results. </p> <p>Laura Fayer completed Hunter College's <span class="caps">MFA </span>program in 2006 and holds a BA from Harvard University in visual and environmental studies. She has been the recipient of a recent grant from the Pollock-Krasner Foundation, attended such artist residencies as Yaddo, Saratoga Springs, Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts, MacDowell Colony, and has exhibited her work in New York, Boston, and Washington <span class="caps">DC.</span></p></div> http://thomasrobertello.com/exhibition/view/446 Exhibition: Michael Tarbi <div class="exhibition-subtitle">The Human Condition</div> <div class="exhibition-dates">December 1, 2006 - January 27, 2007</div> <br/> <a href="/exhibition/view/445"><img border="0" src="http://thomasrobertello.com/static/dyn-images/5/5753.jpeg" alt="" height="695" width="500" /></a> <p></p> <br /> <div class="exhibition-description"><p><span class="caps">MICHAEL TARBI </span>- <span class="caps">THE HUMAN CONDITION</span></p> <p>Thomas Robertello Gallery is pleased to present The Human Condition - the first solo exhibition of paintings and drawings by Philadelphia based artist Michael Tarbi. Ambitiously exploring weighty themes of life and death through anatomical imagery, Tarbi's expertly detailed work is chilling and awe-inspiring in concept and execution. Through the use of sterile images depicting animals, human organs, fetuses, limbs, and careful composition, the artist poses many unanswerable questions confronting the human race. Basic issues including the definition of life, death, war, poverty, overpopulation, disease, decomposition of the body and spirit are dealt with in the most stark, deadpan manner. His searing images of harsh unavoidable realities tap into the darkest fears and emotions imbedded in the psychology of mankind. While not mercilessly devoid of humor, the artist wickedly threatens us with grim reminders of a common destiny and inevitable cycle we are part of regardless of personal choice.</p> <p>Michael Tarbi was born in Pittsburgh, PA in 1980. He graduated from the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in 2002 and currently lives and works in Philadelphia. His work has been exhibited at the Carnegie Museum Pittsburgh, The Corcoran Gallery of Art Washington, <span class="caps">DC, </span>the Institute of Contemporary Art Philadelphia, White Box <span class="caps">NY, </span>and the Jewish Museum of Greater Pittsburgh.</p></div> http://thomasrobertello.com/exhibition/view/445 Exhibition: Jason Robert Bell <div class="exhibition-subtitle">The Kala Series</div> <div class="exhibition-dates">October 20 - November 25, 2006</div> <div class="exhibition-opening">Opens Friday, October 20, 6:00 PM - 9:00 PM</div> <br/> <a href="/exhibition/view/444"><img border="0" src="http://thomasrobertello.com/static/dyn-images/5/5131.jpeg" alt="" height="497" width="500" /></a> <p></p> <br /> <div class="exhibition-description"><p>Thomas Robertello Gallery is pleased to present The Kala Series - a solo exhibition of work by Jason Robert Bell. This exhibition of paintings, drawings, and sculpture explores Bell's alter ego; a monstrous fur covered female hominid who is impossibly beautiful, transcendent, comical, erotic, and horrific. These sublimely oedipal self-portraits reveal a fully self-actualized being who is at once psychologically complex, in full possession of her rich inner world and femininity, intimidating, and exists in a surreally beautiful fantasyland, longingly struggling to be accepted, understood, and loved. </p> <p>Bell has created a subject that could serve as a divine and transgressive embodiment of the history of Art. Kala is a contemporary Venus, emerging from a sea of culture and our deepest memories, confronting our belief systems and definitions of beauty, societal acceptance, and self-awareness. She exists as a dark mirror to all the nudes, nymphs, and muses of Art history. Kala is also a rebuttal to the clichéd pornography that has saturated contemporary Art; she is the Jungian shadow that our culture has cast in our idealization and distortion of femininity.</p> <p>Jason Robert Bell lives in Brooklyn, <span class="caps">NY.</span> He graduated from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, with a <span class="caps">BFA </span>in painting in 1995, and the Yale School of Art, with an <span class="caps">MFA </span>in painting in 2000. Bell's paintings, drawings, experimental films, sculptures, comics, and performances have been exhibited in New York, Boston, Chicago, Kansas City, Washington <span class="caps">D.C,</span> Baltimore, and Tokyo. Concurrently with this exhibition, Bell is having a mini-retrospective at the Hans Weiss New Space Gallery at Manchester Community College in Connecticut.</p></div> http://thomasrobertello.com/exhibition/view/444 Exhibition: John Delk <div class="exhibition-subtitle">Suspension of Disbelief</div> <div class="exhibition-dates">September 8 - October 14, 2006</div> <div class="exhibition-opening">Opens Friday, September 8, 6:00 PM - 9:00 PM</div> <br/> <a href="/exhibition/view/443"><img border="0" src="http://thomasrobertello.com/static/dyn-images/4/4709.jpeg" alt="From left: Target, Pleading, Kampf, There are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns--the ones we don't know we don't know." height="275" width="432" /></a> <p><p>From left: Target, Pleading, Kampf, There are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns--the ones we don't know we don't know.</p></p> <br /> <div class="exhibition-description"><p>John Delk<br /> "Suspension of Disbelief"<br /> September 8 - October 14, 2006<br /> Opening Reception for the Artist: September 8th, 6-9pm. </p> <p>Thomas Robertello Gallery is pleased to present "Suspension of Disbelief," a solo exhibition of work by John Delk, including an installation of sound and mixed media sculpture, photography, and live fish. </p> <p>"Suspension of Disbelief," as defined by Wikipedia, is the willingness of a reader or viewer to suspend his critical faculties to the extent of ignoring minor inconsistencies in order to enjoy a work of fiction's inherent outrageousness. Delk believes `the United States is experiencing a deep national crisis as Americans have suspended their critical faculties so as to enjoy a cheap work of fiction being created by the government and presented by the media; both institutions controlled by the invisible hand of corporate interests.'<br /> <br /> Individual pieces respond to current events such as political prisoners or covert surveillance operations while others touch on themes of excess and alienation in American culture. One work is comprised of talking teddy bears installed on shelves, each implanted with an original recording of a personal ad placed on a phone dating service. The ads range from naïve to explicit, but all are an attempt at competitive marketing of the self as a commodity. Other bears are piled into a mound and praying for the world's salvation.</p> <p>"Guantanamo" protests the torture of political prisoners and questions the role of the individual in relation to acts of the state. Specifically it calls to mind the US government's tendency to justify even its most heinous acts as serving freedom and democracy. This installation consists of hundreds of goldfish in small cubes, i.e. cells. Viewers may dismantle and remove the piece through adoption or let it remain.</p> <p>Another work transforming the gallery into a virtual panopticon explores the world of simulation and espionage that increasingly defines our society. The word "evildoers" is spelled out on the wall in Braille with 26 security surveillance globes. The piece calls to mind a recently exposed government practice of undisclosed monitoring of individual's phone conversations, email and bank records, cited as necessary to flush out the "evildoers" hiding among the American citizenry. </p> <p>John Delk lives and works in New York. He received an <span class="caps">MFA </span>from the School of the Art Institute Chicago in 2001 and has exhibited in New York, Washington <span class="caps">DC, </span>and Chicago. This event marks his first solo exhibition and is made possible in part by a grant from the New York State Council on the Arts.</p></div> http://thomasrobertello.com/exhibition/view/443 Exhibition: Conor McGrady <div class="exhibition-subtitle">Purity</div> <div class="exhibition-dates">June 16 - August 19, 2006</div> <div class="exhibition-opening">Opens Friday, June 16, 6:00 PM - 9:00 PM</div> <br/> <a href="/exhibition/view/442"><img border="0" src="http://thomasrobertello.com/static/dyn-images/3/3429.jpeg" alt="" height="321" width="500" /></a> <p></p> <br /> <div class="exhibition-description"><p>Conor McGrady <br /> "Purity"<br /> June 16 - August 19, 2006<br /> Opening Reception: June 16th, 6-9pm. Artist will be present.</p> <p>Thomas Robertello Gallery is pleased to present a solo exhibition of works by Conor McGrady. Mr. McGrady will be exhibiting recent drawings and paintings based on military or right-winged control of public spaces and the enforcers of this control.</p> <p> "The impetus for my practice as a whole is based on situations of violence and military control, largely drawing on, but not confined to, my experience growing up in Northern Ireland. In the drawings of buildings and urban areas I work almost exclusively from memory in an attempt to strip out all extraneous details. The empty buildings and housing schemes in the drawings are often subject to physical control by the military and in some cases were designed and planned with the help of military technicians to ensure containment of an insurgent population."</p> <p>Conor McGrady was born in 1970 in Downpatrick, Northern Ireland. He received a BA Honors First Class in Fine Art from the University of Northumbria, Newcastle Upon Tyne, in the <span class="caps">UK, </span>in 1995. In 1998 he completed an <span class="caps">MFA </span>at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. In 2000 and 2002 he was awarded a Community Arts Assistance Program Grant from the City of Chicago. Other awards include the Ragdale Foundation/Union League and Civic Arts Foundation Fellowship, and the Juror's Award in the `15th Evanston + Vicinity Biennial' at the Evanston Arts Center in Illinois. Mr. McGrady has exhibited widely in the <span class="caps">US,</span> Ireland, and the <span class="caps">UK, </span>with numerous solo exhibitions in Chicago, New York and Atlanta. Of particular note, Mr. McGrady participated in the 2002 Whitney Biennial at the Whitney Museum of American Art, <span class="caps">NY.</span></p></div> http://thomasrobertello.com/exhibition/view/442 Exhibition: Thomas Robertello Gallery - Introductions <div class="exhibition-subtitle"></div> <div class="exhibition-dates">April 14 - June 10, 2006</div> <div class="exhibition-opening">Opens Friday, April 14, 6:00 PM - 9:00 PM</div> <br/> <a href="/exhibition/view/441"><img border="0" src="http://thomasrobertello.com/static/dyn-images/1/1844.jpeg" alt="" height="503" width="500" /></a> <p>Peter Allen Hoffmann, <em>The Fall</em>, 2005</p> <p> oil on canvas, 72 x 72 </p> <br /> <div class="exhibition-description"><p>Thomas Robertello Gallery's inaugural exhibition includes work by all gallery artists:</p> <p>Jason Robert Bell <br /> Jorin Bossen<br /> Ken Bucklew<br /> John Delk<br /> Laura Fayer<br /> Peter Allen Hoffmann<br /> Peregrine Honig<br /> Knut Hybinette<br /> J Ivcevich<br /> Emily Noelle Lambert<br /> Justin Marshall<br /> Conor McGrady<br /> Molly Springfield<br /> Michael Tarbi</p></div> http://thomasrobertello.com/exhibition/view/441 News: Peter Allen Hoffmann <p>Solo exhibition - Freight + Volume Gallery New York<br /> June 21 - July 18</p> http://thomasrobertello.com/news/view/551 News: Conor McGrady <p>Cultivating Instability Curated by Iain Muirhead<br /> June 23-July 25, 2008<br /> Cliff Dwellers Club <br /> 200 South Michigan Avenue 22nd Floor<br /> Chicago, IL</p> http://thomasrobertello.com/news/view/556 Press: Chicago Journal by Kristin Gehring <p>Too taupe</p> <p>Our industrious daughter has painted trial patches of new wall colors in our living and dining rooms. They look a lot like the paintings in Unpainted: Recent Abstract Painting, the current exhibit at Thomas Robertello Gallery, 939 W. Randolph St. (thomasrobertello.com). We have a very bad attitude toward both having to paint our living and dining room walls and abstract art. Fortunately, our new discipline of keeping our mouth shut will prevent unseemly scenes when we go see the exhibit, which we''re actually not planning to do. We just wanted to tell you that the show reminded us of the walls in our house.</p> http://thomasrobertello.com/press/view/1377 Press: NewCity Chicago by Rachel Funari <p>"Unpainted - Recent Abstract Painting." Abstract painting hardly needs the new show at Thomas Robertello to confirm its relevancy in contemporary art. That said, Robertello has managed to assemble a group of artists who willingly side-step the mythic, monumental aspects of the form to concentrate on more modest achievements of color, shape and design. The two standouts here are Jim Lee and Callum Innes. New Yorker Lee is all over the place with shaped canvases and unorthodox materials, but "Untitled w/ Red Stripe" exhibits an impressive and original combination of Arte-Povera-influenced sutured canvas with abundant references to minimalism and the post-painterly greats Robert Ryman and Barnett Newman. Innes' use of shellac with oil on "Untitled" yields a glossy, stained surface whose scatological intent is only visible at close range.</p> http://thomasrobertello.com/press/view/1376 Press: Artslant by Erik Wenzel <p>Abstraction at Two West Loop Galleries</p> <p>Unpainted - Recent Abstract Painting<br /> Thomas Robertello Gallery<br /> 939 W. Randolph St., Chicago, IL 60607<br /> June 13, 2008 6:00 PM - 9:00 PM</p> <p>Two group shows that have recently opened focus on abstract painting by contemporary artists. "Unpainted – Recent Abstract Painting" at Thomas Robertello Gallery in the West Loop and Bianca Beck, Josh Brand, Matt Connors, Zak Prekop, Hayley Tompkins, Sue Tompkins a number of blocks north and west of the West Loop at Shane Campbell Gallery.</p> <p> "Unpainted" is more declaratively focused on the theme of abstract painting, while the group show at Shane Campbell’s is a de facto one. The most captivating work on view at the latter is by Zak Prekop, the painting is a field of near identical off white tones that optically compete with one another, especially in the diffuse natural light that comes through the window. It is in fact a very colorful painting, however, and as your eyes try to see it, the colors changes. The two hues hover somewhere around a grayed out mauve and fluorescent blue. But then you look back and now the mauve is pink, and the dance back and forth continues. The odd play of color and value along with the structure of the composition immediately brought me to early or mid Ad Reinhardt, before the red blue and black monochromes, and before the final last paintings, when bricks of colors, like colors, near cousins of colors and so on, fought with each other. </p> <p>The other painting at Shane Campbell’s that got me thinking about abstraction in general is by Bianca Beck. It is a shabby nearly unpainted picture with some errant marks and two thick muddy rectangles that appear to be windows. Apparently they are, it’s a kind of reductive studio view. I was annoyed at that, abstracting reality, that’s soft abstraction. But how is a painting like the one next to it, also Beck’s any different? I would be opposed to the representation, and ironically appropriate that they are windows, in the way Reinhardt famously railed against the notion of a painting being “a window.” The one next to it, a mass of thick and thin gobs, has space in the same way, really. Greenberg for all his discussion of optical space was really talking about regular space. The only difference is that in representational painting it is sky and trees and in abstract painting it is a thick brush stroke that is the tree, and it is the ground that acts as the sky, our mind is reading it the same way.</p> <p>The title of the show at Thomas Robertello gets its name from the work of Callum Innes. His process is described: “Seemingly monochromatic colors are applied and subsequently unpainted with washes of turpentine.” It is an interesting idea, the whole concept of painting, and then unpainting. I can’t help but think of the way Robert Rauschenberg described his thoughts on Erased de Kooning Drawing. He first thought of erasing his own drawings, but that wouldn’t work, he decided because it would be making and then taking away, he had to start with something already done, and just take away. But the work of making then unmaking, is as at least an interesting project. Here, Innes’ is creating work that is divided into quadrants, laying out the various stages of thick uniform paint, washed out paint, and dripped down and carried away sediment. The situation is further problematized when this occurs in white on white.</p> <p>The other group of work in the show that draws attention is by Jim Lee. Definitely of the Richard Tuttle and post minimalist camp, Lee’s pieces are as much about the object of painting, as the practice. Built into these painting-objects is not only a shabby humility, but also a quirky humor, this along with a sophisticated language of abstraction. Untitled with Red Stripe seems straight-forward enough, riffing on mid century Modernism perhaps, But around its edges is a superfluous ring of linen, still stapled on in a haphazard way. And the thin dark ark isn’t drawn or painted; it is a gap between two pieces of linen that have been meticulously and secretively reattached via thin sutures on the backside. Untitled (White with Caution) references the shaped canvases of Ellsworth Kelly, and the color and material of Blinky Palermo. But it has this rustic quality that makes one wonder, was there not enough canvas and the shoddy stretchers literally bowed? Is this a failed attempt at a graceful sweeping shaped support? Peering around the sides, a fairly intricate and well-crafted lattice is visible. Instead of being a reveal, where you slap your knee and say, “ohhh clever!” You are left in a moment of tension, “this is intentional, but why?” And that is a space you want to be in while looking at art.</p> <p>-- Erik Wenzel</p> http://thomasrobertello.com/press/view/1373 Press: NewCity Chicago by Rachel Turney <p>Emily Noelle Lambert's "Pink Trees," one of her first solo exhibits, is a collection of bold, colorful acrylic on spacious canvases. Lambert has primarily lived in large cities; she currently resides in New York City. Though many of her paintings are labeled as landscapes one can deconstruct most of her work and see the influence of the city life. "Forest through the trees" looks more like a subway casting shadows in Astoria than a lush green. Lambert infuses country and cityscapes and blurs the distinction between the two.</p> http://thomasrobertello.com/press/view/1343