Six Solo Exhibitions
OK Harris Works of Art
This event has ended.
Unju Lee depicts primitive shapes and commonplace objects with an organic feel that derives from his use of cardboard as the sole medium of expression. Using this otherwise inorganic, machine-made material, he creates an immersive, arbitrary world that is entirely his own and subject only to his own impulses. The resulting objects are mysterious, compelling and defy easy definition.
Mike Baur’s sculpture begins with used or waste industrial materials that he gathers himself or purchases from local businesses. Starting with salvaged I-beams, old machine parts, rusted scraps and blocks of steel, stone and plastic collected from across greater Chicago, he shapes and molds these materials into forms that challenge the constraints of their utilitarian origins and unites them into a single, sculptural, organic whole.
Ordinary objects bearing the scars of use and time glimmer in the spotlight and take center stage in Michael Beck’s oil paintings. By using objects whose age gives them a rich intriguing history, Beck translates their past into an interactive play between the audience and the paintings. While the vibrant colors of each painting initially catch the viewer’s eyes, its intricate network of curious shapes and shadows creates a dramatic narrative and composition within the surface. Beck’s work evokes a sense of luxury in which boundaries between reality and the reality of each painting are obliterated.
Everything Lost. Everything Gathered. This collection of Steven Corsano mixed media on paper is a distillation of landscape, desire and memory. Exuberant scrawls painted with shards of the land, itself. Poetic evocations grounded in nature and emotion.
Charlee Swanson’s wall sculptures feature his Burned and Broken Series and American Landscape Series. Using glass, steel, wood and canvas, Swanson destroys the meaning of these materials by breaking, burning, scarring and rusting them. These intimate, complex reliefs create a volume of space, light and shadow, and add an unexpected, fluid dimension to otherwise static objects.
Ward Schumaker’s small paintings-on-wood derive from memory, dreams and literary sources. Often employing texts, these new works eschew the gestural brush strokes employed in previous paintings, relying instead on crude, hand-cut stencils (of shapes and/or words), cut-paper, and sanded grounds; some include photographic transfers. The goal at times is to take the viewer to a place of quietude; in others, a place of discomfort – but always the important thing is that the viewer feel something.
[Image: Unju Lee "Break Time" silicon bronze, lifesize]
Media
Schedule
from October 27, 2012 to December 01, 2012
Opening Reception on 2012-10-27 from 15:00
Artist(s)
Unju Lee, Mike Baur, Michael Beck, Steven Corsano, Charlee Swanson, Ward Schumaker