Gerda Meyer Bernstein, Fassbender Stevens Gallery, Chicago - Freedom March

Gerda Meyer Bernstein: Freedom March

Fassbender Stevens Gallery, Chicago

January 10 - February 8, 2003

Fassbender Stevens Gallery presents Gerda Meyer Bernstein in her third solo show with the gallery.

 

In a homage to the collective courage & bravery of young activists, Gerda Meyer Bernstein presents "Freedom March." This 14 x 29 foot installation acknowledges and remembers protests past and present against war, nuclear activity, oppressive regimes, and environmental degradation as illustrated in the 1968 Paris protest, Tianamen Square, the Black Freedom Movement, Clark University, Kent State, and continues on today in protests against the WTO and an impending U.S. war. In a troubled world these young idealists march towards freedom leaving an indelible mark on generations to come.

 

Gerda Meyer Bernstein is an internationally known Chicago-based artist who addresses thorny global issues. Her previous exhibitions include "Witness & Legacy," a traveling museum exhibition; The Alternative Museum in New York City, The Spertus Museum in Chicago; and "Passages" at the Ellis Island Immigration Museum.

 

FASSBENDER STEVENS GALLERY

835 W. Washington, Chicago, IL 60607

www.fassbendergallery.com

John Bannon, Gabi Brandt, Molly Briggs, Robert Davis at Fassbender Stevens Gallery, Chicago - Quirks & Quarks: The Idiosyncracies of Four Emerging Artists

John Bannon, Gabi Brandt, Molly Briggs, Robert Davis

Quirks & Quarks: The Idiosyncracies of Four Emerging Artists

Fassbender Stevens Gallery, Chicago

December 6, 2002 - January 4, 2003

Quirks & Quarks... is an exhibition mired in the diversity of young emerging artists whose common denominator is the persistent funkiness of their own visions.

 

Gabi Brandt's provocative photographs, "America Town Series" display matter-of-fact frontal portraits where surroundings and attire inform meaning as apposed to the deliberately impassive facial expressions of his subjects. Though these subjects feign an expressionless posture, they are not entirely successful as their quirks show through, accelerating the tension that arouses curiosity. Gabi Brandt lives and works in Las Vegas. He received his MFA in photography from Yale University.

 

John Bannon's mixed media and neon sculpture include fantastic interactive moonscapes, abstract architectural neon light boxes and video installation. Bannon's object installation "Better to Look Into Than At" includes video footage of falling snow viewed through a vintage microscope. The viewer is disoriented by looking down at falling snow that was video taped by looking straight up. Initially resembling microbes, this perspective addresses the inverse relationship of how the search for scientific meaning is undertaken. John Bannon lives and works in Chicago. He received his MFA in studio arts from the School of the Art Institute in Chicago.

 

Molly Briggs wears the mantle of the scientific investigator rendering the invisible visible, and questioning our perceptions of 'truth'. Combining collage, drawing and painting, this incessant experimenter deconstructs the world around us, looking at how things are made (and how they make us). She draws from fields as diverse as fashion, evolutionary theory and household lighting to present us with a tongue-in-cheek mishmash that is also daintily and exuberantly beautiful. Molly Briggs lives and works in Chicago. She received her MFA in printmaking from Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois.

 

Robert Davis casts pristine, wall mounted, organically shaped objects out of plastic. Half familiar and half other-worldly, the forms are seductive in their simplicity. Robert Davis lives and works in Chicago. He received his B.F.A. from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

FASSBENDER STEVENS GALLERY

835 W. Washington, Chicago, IL 60607

www.fassbendergallery.com

Michiko Itatani, Fassbender Stevens Gallery, Chicago - My Virtual Country, Painting, Calendar Pages, Installation

Michiko Itatani

My Virtual Country, Painting, Calendar Pages, Installation

Fassbender Stevens Gallery, Chicago

September 6 - October 12, 2002

Fassbender Stevens Gallery presents Michiko Itatani in her fourth solo exhibition at the gallery.

Michiko Itatani's new paintings constitute a continuation of her long-term pursuits both formal and contextual played out on a very large scale. With an avid interest in fiction, Itatani strongly believes in its ability to tell deep truths in relation to the human psyche, society and politics. Originally wanting to be a fiction writer, she eventually appropriated these influences into her visual art. Itatani pursues her imaging by gathering fragments from all manner of life experiences, mutating them, making images, and putting the fragments together to interact with each other...her fiction writing.

 

Michiko Itatani's new paintings employ the fictional creations of "views of space," examining such issues as the human body and the cosmos, flesh and technology, the individual and the state, desire and choice, taboo and obsession. Itatani sees "views of space" as a complicated layering of events both real and imagined where the idea of "view" is a psychological construct revealing who we are.

 

Michiko Itatani has been a powerful force in the Chicago Art Scene for 25 years. She is a professor at the School of the Art Institute and has shown her work world wide. A selection of major collections include: The Art Institute of Chicago; The Olympic Museum, Lausanne, Switzerland; Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago; Museum of Contemporary Art Barcelona; and the Block Museum of Art.

FASSBENDER STEVENS GALLERY

835 W. Washington, Chicago, IL 60607

www.fassbendergallery.com

Jürgen Grölle - Sven Drühl, Fassbender Stevens Gallery, Chicago - New Works - Paintings

Jürgen Grölle - Sven Drühl

New Works - Paintings

Fassbender Stevens Gallery, Chicago

June 7 - July 6, 2002

Fassbender Stevens Gallery presents German artists Jürgen Grölle, in the North Gallery, and Sven Drühl, in the Project Room. 

Jürgen Grölle, a contemporary abstractionist, is a painter who considers the complexities and contradictions of formalism. The performance of improvisational painting is always present in Jürgen Grölle's work as he seeks with ardor the kind of picturing which is an alternative to the exponentially rapid development of the virtual world.

 

Jürgen Grölle applies bulging areas of paint straight from the tube in juxtaposition to his thin strips of monochrome color fields. A neo-expressionist landscape of sorts emerges. He establishes a visual system based on color, only to "attack" it with another color. This results in a provocative concentration of painterly events. Fields of gestural spontaneity exist in a fragile equilibrium. Contemporary hues, textures and finishes are at times awkward yet always jubilant.

 

Concurrently in the project room, Fassbender Stevens Gallery presents the paintings of German artist Sven Drühl, a contemporary of Jürgen Grölle's. Sven Drühl approaches painting as a conceptual endeavor and often appropriates popular and art historical imagery. The appropriated images are always transformed in a considerable way to create a dialogue of history, painting and contemporary conceptual pursuits. Though Sven Drühl often criticizes painting and thinks that nowadays one really shouldn't paint any more, it's all he wants to do. He feels that it would be very easy to use a video camera just for the hipness of it. The spirit of the times may be somewhere else, but nevertheless he paints.

FASSBENDER STEVENS GALLERY

835 W. Washington, Chicago, IL 60607

www.fassbendergallery.com