Johalla Projects

Join us for a CLOSING RECEPTION for Todd Diederich: Luminous...

Wed, 01 May 2013 18:42:00 -0500

Join us for a CLOSING RECEPTION for Todd Diederich: Luminous Flux this Sunday from 3-5PM.

Above: Todd Diederich, Silver Gate, 2013, 19 3/4 x 27 1/2 in., Archival Inkjet Print

JESSICA TAYLOR CAPONIGRO: BLACK DAMP MAY 11 – JUNE 2,...

Tue, 30 Apr 2013 20:53:20 -0500

JESSICA TAYLOR CAPONIGRO: BLACK DAMP

MAY 11 – JUNE 2, 2013

Opening Reception: Saturday, May 11 from 7-10PM

Gallery Hours: By Appointment Only

Johalla Projects is pleased to announce Jessica Taylor Caponigro: Black Damp, its first solo exhibition with Chicago artist Jessica Taylor Caponigro. The exhibition is curated by Aimee Quinkert. It will run from MAY 11 to JUNE 2. Please join us for an opening reception on Saturday, May 11 from 7-10pm.

Jessica Taylor Caponigro’s creative process explores a fascination with the vague familiarity of repetition in prosaic materials. While many of the patterns found within her work seem recognizable on a level, the themes are quite intimate and coexist with both the work’s accessibility and the artist’s personal experiences.

Black Damp examines the patterns and narrative situations translated by the film adaptation of a particular piece of literature. For example, DH Lawrence’s classic Sons and Lovers is partially responsible for some of these pieces, as they eclipse specific scenes and become more about the integral life experiences of the characters, as well as those of both the audience and the artist. The literal definition of the term “black damp” is “a non-explosive mine gas that cannot support life or flame.” Had one read Lawrence’s text or had an in-depth conversation with Caponigro about her upbringing and the historical context of the town in which she was raised, the underlying themes would be obviously parallel. Her deliberate choices affect the viewer’s perception, providing that each individual who encounters it has a somewhat communal, but uniquely distinct experience.

JESSICA TAYLOR CAPONIGRO – Before receiving her MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Jessica Taylor Caponigro attended Bryn Mawr College where she earned her BA in the History of Art. She has taught at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Olive Harvey College, and Spudnik Press. She is currently an adjunct instructor at Harold Washington College. Jessica was the Spudnik Press Summer Artist in Residence and has been a resident artist at ACRE on two separate occasions. In addition to solo and group shows in Chicago, her work has been exhibited in Long Beach, Philadelphia, and Rome. Her work is in the permanent collections at California State University-Long Beach and the Joan Flasch Artists’ Books Collection. She was also featured in Johalla Projects’Wow-House group show. This is her first solo exhibition with the gallery.

In addition to the pieces on exhibit, there will also be limited edition prints available for sale during the opening reception.

For more information, please contact Anna Cerniglia at johallaprojects@gmail.com.

tylerblackwell: Todd Diederich If you’re in Chicago, you should...

Thu, 28 Mar 2013 17:00:52 -0500

tylerblackwell:

Todd Diederich

If you’re in Chicago, you should check out Todd’s new exhibition at Johalla Projects on April 5th.

TODD DIEDERICH: LUMINOUS FLUX APRIL 5 - APRIL 28, 2013 Opening...

Mon, 25 Mar 2013 09:00:00 -0500

TODD DIEDERICH: LUMINOUS FLUX

APRIL 5 - APRIL 28, 2013
Opening Reception: Friday, April 5 from 7-10pm

Johalla Projects is pleased to announce TODD DIEDERICH: LUMINOUS FLUX, its first solo exhibition with Chicago photographer Todd Diederich. The exhibition will run from APRIL 5 to APRIL 28. Please join us for an opening reception on Friday, April 5 from 7-10pm.

Todd Diederich’s photographs are cultural artifacts. The consummate anthropologist, Diederich spends time laboriously patrolling the city streets, using the camera as a method of transcription and interpretation. In its barest sense, LUMINOUS FLUX functions as an excuse to deliberate the perplexing, often bizarre personality that is Chicagoland. However, while each of Diederich’s photographs can serve as a literal document, as viewers we are transported to a different place – one bursting with character, color, and peculiarity. Claiming inspiration from the “energy sources throughout the cosmos”, Diederich has a knack for finding the pulse of the moment. It is with this very same capacity that he truly captures the flux, often discovering the very essence of human interaction and emotion. In this sense, Diederich’s LUMINOUS FLUX seizes the transformative moments of impulse and provides an opportunity to contemplate the fleeting.

TODD DIEDERICH: Creator, inventor, and channeler working through photographic imagery, digital video, and anything else that can leave a mark. Diederich is a former VICE magazine contributor and a 2010 Propeller Fund awardee. In addition to a 2011 solo exhibition at ACRE Projects, Diederich’s work has been featured in Oyster magazine, Paper Magazine, Complex, Design Bureau and the Chicago Reader. A monograph entitled Luminous Flux is soon to be released. Currently runs www.BeOddDieRich.com.

For more information, please contact Anna Cerniglia at johallaprojects@gmail.com.

YOU ARE BEAUTIFUL installed for the 35 DENTON Festival in...

Sat, 16 Mar 2013 14:48:21 -0500

YOU ARE BEAUTIFUL installed for the 35 DENTON Festival in DENTON, TX.

Find more information about Matthew Hoffman and the “You Are Beautiful” project here.

Archetype Drift, Curated by Jason Lazarus, Johalla, March 6th.

Tue, 26 Feb 2013 22:05:00 -0600

Archetype Drift, Curated by Jason Lazarus, Johalla, March 6th.:

latitudechicago:

We’re excited to host!

Todd Diederich

Sun, 10 Feb 2013 20:28:00 -0600

Todd Diederich

Johalla Projects Presents: DON’T FRET: Love in the Time of...

Tue, 05 Feb 2013 16:28:00 -0600

Johalla Projects Presents:

DON’T FRET: Love in the Time of Online Dating

FEBRUARY 8 – FEBRUARY 27, 2013

Opening Reception: Friday, February 8 from 7-10PM

Gallery Hours: By Appointment Only

While many street artists seem to promote a blatantly rebellious or anti-authoritarian sentiment, Don’t Fret’s work is charming and blithe with hopeful undertones. A satirist and comedian, Don’t Fret can, through his work, make almost anything lighthearted and humorous by simply dictating the context. His almost poetic text overstates the obvious while his bright imagery and oddball characters set the scene.

His latest show, Love in the Time of Online Dating, will utilize his visual rhetoric and colorful characters to help create new landscapes that pointedly communicate the sometimes obnoxiously stereotypical goings on of everyday city life. The show will also include some conceptual and interactive pieces, as well as select pieces that were on view during the 2012 Scope Fair in Miami.

Don’t Fret is a human from Chicago. Known for his quirky and colorful characters, his work has graced walls in Chicago, San Francisco, New York, Miami, Sao Paulo, Berlin, Prague, and Munich in the form of wheat pastes and murals. Don’t Fret was part of the Chicago Readers “Best of Chicago 2011″ winning “Best Use Of New Style In Old Art” and runner-up for “Best New Visual Artist”. Don’t Fret exhibited during this year’s Art Basel showing at SCOPE Art Fair.

In Collaboration with ACRE Projects AS ABOVE SO BELOW JANUARY...

Wed, 23 Jan 2013 18:28:00 -0600

In Collaboration with ACRE Projects

AS ABOVE SO BELOW

JANUARY 25 – JANUARY 31, 2013

Opening Reception: January 25 from 8-10PM

Gallery Hours: By Appointment Only

Connecting with nature and spirituality through process and invented ritual is the driving force within both Lauren Payne and Erin Washington’s work. Their processes intersect with a mutual desire to question the unknown. Presenting new works based upon the collaborators’ return to ACRE, As Above So Below will focus on where these disparate methodologies converge.

Erin Washington embraces materiality and labor to examine themes of vulnerability and permanence. Questioning how time structures transitions in ephemera, she creates mixed-media paintings, drawings, and sculptures which unravel time through the performance of their making, and their subsequent degradation. Erin employs fugitive and symbolic materials such as blackberries, lemon-juice, fire, ashes, moss, sugar, bone and saliva. Colors fade or pigments are burned: and the resulting objects emulate the cycles they describe. Her actions and products are in a constant state of flux, highlighting the disharmony between meaning, beauty, and a fundamentally messy universe. However, the temporality of the work’s making counters ambivalence; the immediate process and present-ness the work demands eclipses uncertainty…for the moment. Erin Washington received her MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2011. Selected exhibitions include MDW fair, Julius Caesar, Murdertown, Columbia College NY, and Zolla Lieberman. More information at www.erinwashington.com

Lauren Payne’s desire to connect is steeped in creating site-specific happenings and rituals in aims of thrusting the content beyond the personal pursuit of connection into a new mythological context by creating a space for shared experiences. Her work aims to illuminate a new understanding of the metaphysical through photography, video and daily performances. Lauren Payne received her MFA from Cranbrook Academy of Art in 2010. Selected Exhibitions include: ACRE in Miami, Design District, Miami, Florida; My Apocalypse, Hungerford Building, Rochester; Hammes/ Payne, New Capital, Chicago, Is This Thing On, Contemporary Art Center, Cincinnati; Magic > Nature False Front, Portland; White Lodge, High Concept Laboratories, Chicago; Out of the Woods, Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit, Detroit; Lauren Payne lives and works in Chicago, Illinois. www.laurenpayne.com

GRAFTS & RUPTURES: NEW WORK BY JORDAN MARTINS JANUARY 19 -...

Thu, 17 Jan 2013 18:15:50 -0600

GRAFTS & RUPTURES: NEW WORK BY JORDAN MARTINS

JANUARY 19 - FEBRUARY 12, 2013
Opening Reception: Saturday, January 19 from 7-10PM

Rational Park
2557 W North Ave.
Chicago, IL 60647
Gallery Hours: 10-4, M-F

Chicago based visual artist Jordan Martins will exhibit new collage and mixed media work at Rational Park from January 19th until February 12th. Martins’ work features intuitively crafted worlds of candy-like bold color, vintage imagery and contrasting textures. Much like the spaceships and comic book hero drawings from his youth which built up complicated surfaces and rippled muscles through brute repetition, Martins’ collages create a space where new visual languages can develop and take shape. By manipulating and layering each fragment, he builds up to a larger, more captivating form. This multidimensional mashup results in wonderful tension between the chaos of the larger composition and the orderly, contained details of collage.

The title of one recent series, Ghost Nets, references a phenomenon in which fishing net scraps co-join in the ocean to form unruly conglomerations that both create provisional ecosystems and entrap and suffocate sea life—an apt metaphor for the images within the collage that take on new meaning when bound together with other images while remaining ensnared by their previous associations. Martins’s Ghost Nets are punctuated by bold shapes and patterns with whirling, dripping masses floating atop muted painted backdrops that possess a suspended quality like the nomadic, detritus-bound sea communities for which this series is named.

Live musical performance by: Ben Babbitt

For more information regarding this exhibition or about Rational Park, please contact everyone@rational-park.com.

Johalla Projects is in collaboration with Rational Park.

Please take note of Filter Photo Festival’s open call for...

Tue, 08 Jan 2013 09:00:56 -0600

Please take note of Filter Photo Festival’s open call for submissions on the topic of “New Methods of Photographic Making”. The competition is juried by the excellent Jason Lazarus and selected entries will participate in an exhibition at Johalla Projects in March!

Find more information here: http://www.filterfestival.com/archetype-drift-juried-exhibition/

In Collaboration with ACRE Projects: Andrew...

Wed, 02 Jan 2013 17:25:53 -0600

In Collaboration with ACRE Projects:

Andrew Mausert-Mooney’s Studio Audience (WEATHER PATTERNS)

JANUARY 11 – 16, 2013

Opening Reception: January 11, 2013 from 8-10PM

Gallery Hours: By Appointment Only

Join Andrew Mausert-Mooney and collaborators* on January 11^th for an evening of cinematic vivisection.

**On one end of the gallery there is a set. An actor performs a series of gestures amidst props, camera persons, a musician, projected backdrops and a studio audience. Simultaneously, at the other end of the gallery, the resulting video piece (WEATHER PATTERNS) – restricted by frame, dismissive of scale, married by cut – is presented via live feed on a monitor.

The performance repeats, like a voice pronouncing a word until only sound can be heard, for the duration of the opening. At the end of the night a single iteration of the video is selected to run, opposite the empty set, for the remainder of the show.

This opening is produced in collaboration with ACRE Projects.

Andrew Mausert-Mooney (b. 1986) is a Chicago-based artist working with 16mm film,video, performance and installation. Andrew’s work has showed in festivals, galleries and exhibition series around the world including the American Film Institute, CineVegas, Chicago Underground, Gallery 400, the Sullivan Gallery and Other Cinema. He recently received his MFA from the University of Illinois-Chicago in the Spring of 2012.

*Kimberly Christian, Edward Dignan, Marriana Milhorat, and Tim Nickodemus

**As a preview of the work, the artist has provided the above information.

Wow, what a year it has been – In 2012,...

Fri, 28 Dec 2012 16:08:56 -0600

Wow, what a year it has been –

In 2012, we:

Mounted nine exhibitions
Created two massive public art installations at Pitchfork Music Festival
Launched a new revolving exhibition at the CTA’s Damen Blue Line station
Participated in the MDW Fair
Moved into a new space

Upcoming at Johalla Projects:

Ian J. Whitmore’s Nowhere solo exhibition continues through January 6, 2013.
In collaboration with ACRE Projects, Johalla Projects presents Andrew Mausert-Mooney’s Studio Audience (Weather Patterns), which opens on January 11, 2013 from 8-10PM and will run until January 16.
Also in collaboration with ACRE Projects, Johalla Projects will present work by Erin Washington & Lauren Payne, which opens on January 25, 2013 from 7-10PM and will run until January 31.
Johalla Project’s next installation at the CTA Damen Blue Line station is in collaboration with Heather Gabel (last seen at her solo show Night Visions), whose work will be on view in the station in late January. In conjunction with this new opening, Johalla Projects will hold an “opening” event on January 18, 2013. The work featured at the Damen Blue Line station will be available in unique, limited-edition prints.
Johalla Projects’ original exhibition programming continues into 2013 with street artist Don’t Fret. This exhibition opens on February 8, 2013.

Ian Whitmore is now installed at the CTA’s Damen Blue Line...

Wed, 31 Oct 2012 19:22:05 -0500

Ian Whitmore is now installed at the CTA’s Damen Blue Line station! Stop by and check out the public work! Don’t forget his opening at Johalla Projects this Saturday from 7-11PM.

Ian Whitmore has just recently been installed at the Damen Blue...

Mon, 29 Oct 2012 15:57:00 -0500

Ian Whitmore has just recently been installed at the Damen Blue Line station as part of our collaborative rotating exhibition schedule with the CTA!

Our upcoming solo show with Ian Whitmore was named of the...

Mon, 29 Oct 2012 15:27:29 -0500

Our upcoming solo show with Ian Whitmore was named of the “Ten Must See Art Shows” in the Fall by Chicago Magazine along with the likes of Danh Vo, Steve McQueen, Melanie Schiff, and more!

NOWHERE: Photographs & Artist Books by Ian J....

Sat, 27 Oct 2012 18:56:00 -0500

NOWHERE: Photographs & Artist Books by Ian J. Whitmore

NOVEMBER 3 – DECEMBER 1, 2012

Opening Reception: Saturday, November 3, 7-11 PM

Gallery Hours: By appointment only

Nowhere is an ambiguous yet ubiquitous space. It is woven into our civic and commercial landscape as irresponsible and irrelevant decoration. In these images, we see spaces that we move through every day but rarely acknowledge for their functional purpose or aesthetic value. How we engage with these spaces speaks to how we neglectfully pass through our own culture and cities and more importantly our interactions with one another.

Through these photographs, Ian explores the ironic and garish nature of what surrounds us. By drawing the viewer into the banal and confronting the illusion that these environments are important and of interest, the mirage quickly dissolves, unveiling impotence and benign ornamentation.
Those promising paths that once led us forward, reaching into the horizon, have been cleared away and accessorized. Following the rhythm of Progress, our civic body ceaselessly expands and the horizon draws near—collapsing in on us— as it becomes clear that we have arrived nowhere in particular.

About the artist: Ian J. Whitmore was born and raised in Nebraska. He earned his BFA at University of Nebraska–Lincoln and later his MFA at Indiana University–Bloomington.
He has exhibited work nationally; most recently at the Photographic Resource Center at Boston University, the Chicago Cultural Center, University of Mary Washington, University of Michigan, University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee, the Photographic Center Northwest in Seattle, and the South Bend Regional Museum of Art.

A former Adjunct Instructor in the Photography Department at Columbia College, Ian is now an Assistant Professor of Art at Portland State University in Oregon.
Ian is currently engaged in a long-term artist book project titled Onomasticon: A Vocabulary for Nowhere derived from the body of work you see in this installation.

For more information, contact Anna Cerniglia at johallaprojects@gmail.com.

Night Visions: New Work by Heather Gabel OCTOBER 12 – OCTOBER...

Sat, 29 Sep 2012 16:42:00 -0500

Night Visions: New Work by Heather Gabel
OCTOBER 12 – OCTOBER 28, 2012

Opening Reception: Friday, October 12, 7-10 PM
Gallery Hours: By appointment only

While much of Heather’s earlier work deals with beautifully macabre imagery intertwined with stark lines and the graceful opulence of the past, Night Visions seeks to explore emptiness and loss, personal connectivity with the dead, and the preponderance of a spiritual after life—something more. Gabel’s new work also interrogates the inherently obsessive nature of grief while embracing the compulsive, and often consuming, self-created rituals custom-tailored to free the feelings we wish not to suffer, but the raw pathos that is unifying and undeniably human. While these experiences shape and change us; sometimes for the better, sometimes for the worse, a compression of time and personal, intimate histories foster an environment where a glitch in the records of memory can be highlighted, manipulated, and expressed.
The show will include new mixed media collage, photographs, prints, and shirts.

About the Artist: Born in Windsor, Canada in 1977, Heather started drawing and painting since she was a tiny child and has never stopped since. She attended the Center for Creative Studies in Detroit on a photography scholarship and finished her arts education at Columbia College in Chicago with a bachelor of Fine Arts degree. She exhibits both nationally and internationally, at present.

Her work is at once nostalgic and contemporary as she is inspired to create imagined situations culled from her best dreams and worst nightmares offering a look into what was, what is and what will never be. Experienced with many mediums, she combines, photography, painting and collage in a unique fashion to create iconic images that have a lasting impact on the viewer.

For more information, contact johallaprojects@gmail.com.

Johalla Projects Update!

Tue, 28 Aug 2012 21:25:08 -0500

Hello everyone!

Johalla Projects is currently under construction.

We are excited for our fall programming, with a new exhibition going up in early October!

Check back here or on our Facebook for the most recent updates about Johalla Projects!

We will be posting some our Pitchfork Fest installation mentions...

Wed, 18 Jul 2012 10:24:49 -0500

We will be posting some our Pitchfork Fest installation mentions and features over the next couple of days, so keep checking back!

Here is one feature on WBEZ 91.5′s website. They posted our time-lapse video!

Check it out here: http://www.wbez.org/blogs/bez/2012-07/pitchfork-day-1-time-lapse-art-installation-100873