Past Exhibitions
|
|
BRADFORD HANSEN-SMITH, a show of geometric art by a master of shape manipulation and perception. For Bradford Hansen-Smith, "The symbol of the circle is used as metaphor for nothing and for everything, and endless parts between. The circle folded is not a symbol."
|
January 2008
Stereoscopics
Ludwig Wilding: 1965-Now
Wilding is widely known for his moiré drawings and stereoscopic images, hard-edge geometric abstractions which exploit various phenomena of human sight. Says Nicholas J. Wade of the University of Dundee, "Wilding's art is not confined to stereo interference patterns, nor to two-dimensional moiré patterns: he examines the perception of space utilizing a wide variety of phenomena, including spatial illusions, anamorphous, perspective paradoxes, fractals, moving moirés and apparent motion."
|
|
NAB Gallery is pleased to announce our November group exhibition, NABLAB Volume 1: Video. The Exhibition surveys some of the many interesting trends in contemporary video art - from 3D animation to performance based practices to diaristic narrative and more - through the work of seven video artists from Chicago and New York. Featuring artists Andrea Ackerman, Lee Arnold, Diane Derr, Zachary Fabri, Lacie Garnes, Jillian McDonald and Kathleen Vojta.
|
October 2007
Bullseye Pre-performance and installation by JB Daniel
A "pre-performance" and installation by Chicago conceptual artist J.B. Daniel. In this new work Daniel continues his interrogation of language and notions of truth through characteristically simple means, evincing the acute understanding of symbolic representation and formal economy his work is known for. The installation will be accompanied by video and a documentary DVD.
|
September 2007
Sentient an installation by Renee Prisble Una
Inspired by an exhibition of Buddha sculptures from various regions at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston in 2005, Una has produced new variations on these devotional images by casting sixteen volunteers and decorating the resulting visages in intricate detail. In addition to the disembodied heads, the artist has made a full-body cast of a figure, sans head, in traditional buddhist robes. While mimicking the aesthetic of their inspiration, the sculptures are neither devotional or iconoclastic. Rather, they seem to reiterate the (not necessarily religious) buddhist challenge of enlightenment in contemporary terms and ask us to see ourselves in another light. In the artist's words "The use of iconography in this installation asks who is the Buddha?"
|
April/May 2007
SYNTHESIZER an multi-media installation by MM Robinson
SYNTHESIZER, a multi-media installation by Chicago artist MM Robinson, is an exploration of cognition and memory in contemporary culture. The piece is comprised of a seventy foot band of densely layered imagery spanning the entire perimeter of the gallery. This is complimented by a video of a randomized pattern of stripes and shapes and a soundtrack created by slowing popular music to become unintelligible ambient noise. Taken as a whole, the piece speaks to the degenerative influence of time over memory and the indexical quality of the personal associations through which one forms a worldview.
|
Oct/Nov 2006
Drawn From Life Featuring Marion Kryczka, Tom Robinson, and Bob Horn
The focus of this exhibition is drawings from life. These three artists have been drawing from life for over 30 years. They use drawing both as a preparation for other works as well as a medium that's an end in itself. Drawing allows an artist to get to the point as efficiently as possible and reveals his most immediate response to a live model. The psychological and philosophical messages inherent in the human form have been used extensively from the Venus of Willendorf to DeKooning's Woman # 5. The figure is an unending source for beauty, order, design, and ideas.
|
Sept/Oct 2006
Alterage Featuring Rakel Bernie and Susan Lee-Chun
Alterage is an installation and performance by two artists from Miami, Rakel Bernie and Susan Lee-Chun that work in fiber and graphics. For Bernie, a web of fibers that coalesce in a corner cast a mixture of shadow and curvilinear constructs that suggest both floral and arachnidan structures. Lee-Chun uses camouflage tactics to create a visual disruption or illusion by mirroring images of a figure caught in concealment. Both artists will use corners of the gallery to focus on their exaggerated, abstract notions on abnormal existence found in
our society.
|
April/May/June 2006
Plane Vision Featuring Craig Anderson and Sally Havlis
Plane Vision is an exhibition of two artists, Craig A. Anderson and Sally Havlis, who are interested in the pictorial possibilities of space. In Anderson's view, the consciousness of being aware of who we are, where we come from, and why we are here is found in one's ability to think about the act of thinking. By simply making visible the illusion of space on a flat surface through a series of overlapping marks and planes he offers his viewers a place of contemplation. For Havlis the notion of overlapping planes of texture implies a certain kind of space absorbing quality- one that allows introspection.
|
March 2006
The Impossibility of Saying Anything Featuring MM Robinson and Kelly Maron
Kelly Maron and MM Robinson are skeptical of the communicative abilities of images in the current cultural environment. In Robinson's hyperactive ink jet compositions, images loaded with associations are placed with unrelated or contradictory elements, forming dense constellations of images competing for an elusive cognitive foothold. By contrast, Kelly Maron's self portraiture is reserved and sparse. Maron has eschewed the practice of expressing one's self as a person or even as a projected identity. She prefers instead to present her own image as a pure object, expressionless and serialized into anonymity.
|
|
Two artists who have never met before this show have come together on the notion that one takes
risks when making and showing art. Perhaps one of the most anxious of situations is the meeting of
someone for the first time. This is multiplied when it comes to showing someone his or her art.
NAB has challenged Susan Sensemann, a 30-year veteran of making art, and Kathleen Vojta, a 25-year-old painter to take some risks with their ideas, feelings and art...
|
|
NAB Gallery and The Lobby Gallery are pleased to present a special collaborative exhibition to open the fall gallery season.
Artists JB Daniel and Ben Dallas will bridge the geographic distance between the exhibition spaces through conceptual and technological interventions at both the Lobby and NAB Gallery, in an exhibition appropriately titled, T Here.
|
April 2005
Views from Ricky's Nova... Again! Featuring Bob Horn, Bob Meyer, and Ruth Thorne-Thomsen
Three of the founding members of NAB Gallery, Bob Horn, Bob Meyer, and Ruth Thorne-Thomsen, have agreed to reprise their concept show of 1975, Views From RickyÕs Nova. This early show at the Clark Street Gallery was an example of how the gallery worked as a motivator, rather than a repository for art objects. The idea was for the three artists to travel around Chicago for a week in a borrowed Chevy Nova and witness all the same things, and then develop artwork from the experience. The artwork remains a document of that time.
|
