(images by Helmut Heiss and Emily Severance)

Be the party (please don’t go)

April 6-27, 2013
Opening Reception, April 6, 6-9pm

There are things we dread and rightfully so. Injury, war, disability. Emily Severance and Helmut Heiss expect neither a brave face nor positive thinking. But they each hold out for making something good in situations that seem only dreary. We can tolerate pain, isolation, disappointment and loss more easily if we can also find laughter and pleasure. Neither presumes that finding levity is the same as making the best of things. Laughing doesn’t resolve a root problem, doesn’t make pain go away, doesn’t return something lost. But it fosters humanity.

Emily covers mobility aids with exuberant landscapes. The utility of a walker is left intact, but it within a dreamy vacation vista. Beach and reef prevail, and there is a grand temperate climate to keep our view of beautiful nature well rounded. Her gesture generously offers access to places someone on crutches would struggle to go. But they find themselves inside a fantasy of being there. Continue through literary references and Emily reveals herself as a siren and a tormentor: she’s sung her song in yarn and lured her elderly sailor down to the watery depths.

Emily writes poetry. The poems are about places where we like to go on vacation too. But the poems are about people who went to those places before it was vacation.

Helmut studies the history of a place or a thing before redressing that history. He glosses over unflattering bits like a good pair of jeans, but in a way that gets you to see those bits more clearly. Maybe it has to be all niced up since he sends his art out into the city. People see his art who haven’t planned on seeing it. They may not know it is art, but it isn’t the same boring thing we dull our senses in order to stop seeing every day. 

Helmut’s drone teases; it dares people. Or convinces. He is poking at a hornets’ nest, but he’ll jump at an opportunity to poke at something totally innocuous too. His aim is to get us to re-think things we think we already know.

Both Helmut and Emily really want everybody to think, be aware of the world around us, but they seek in a way that hopes we have a great time in the learning.

Helmut Hess lives and works in Vienna, Austria. He has exhibited throughout Europe and in the US including recent exhibitions in Los Angeles at Elephant Art Space, and Sea and Space, and upcoming shows including the 2013: Liste18, The Young Art Fair Basel on June 16 and 2013: Les Salaisons, Paris. 

Emily Severance has a BA from The Residential College of The University of Michigan and an MFA from SAIC. Orlan has proclaimed her “perfect,” porn star Jack Hammer has treated her to dinner, and Sir Angus Wilson put money in her UNICEF donation box. Her poetry has appeared in several magazines including Boston Literary Magazine, Defenestration, qarrtsiluni, and Sisyphus. She survives the wilds and wiles of Albuquerque by teaching elementary special education.

This exhibition is part of our ongoing partnership with ACRE. Helmut was a resident for their 2012 summer residency. It has also been generously supported by Austrian Federal Ministry for Education, the Arts and Culture.

(images by George Blaha and Susan Kimball)

Assistant Saws Magician in Half

March 2-30, 2013
Opening Reception, March 2, 6-9pm

George Blaha and Susan Kimball are object makers. They focus on material choices contextualized in architecture and they have learned to really edit, flirting with words like minimal. But their simple shapes and direct processes have stories to tell. George moves through historical references and metaphysical implications fluidly and fluently. Susan evokes emotional connection—housing us in familiar moments so we are left to navigate whether her work is her story or our own.

George sculpts in the digital realm and shows us immaculate prints. It would be simpler for George to make some of his objects in the physical world rather than render convincing surfaces. He has a tendency to ”use” materials that are widely available and inexpensive. His construction is sometimes the antithesis of precise craft. He wryly elevates humble objects by contextualizing them in the vocabulary of oh-so-blue-chip galleries complete with perfect light, perfectly polished concrete floors, and white cube assumptions. Gallery-ness asserts itself with the subtlety that generated its faux neutrality in the first place. George transforms the appearance of his starting point so completely that sometimes it is difficult to recognize his sources. His advanced decorative basket weaving started out patterning Leonardo da Vinci’s signature. Is George claiming to be the better Renaissance man? Evoking a challenge to dilettante aspirations?

Susan grows her work out of a space. Her object pretends it has always lived where it is. But each tells a moment of transitions. Susan’s superpower is her conviction that transitions are mostly awkward. A spandex curtain trapped in concrete teases out a painful first time locker room shower notorious in middle school Phys Ed classes. Why do schools demand that we share our bodies publicly at the height of transitional gawkiness and self-conscious desperation? Susie decorates fat. She taunts boys and conjures Medusa all with frozen vegetables. Well, unfrozen. Unfreezing.

George and Susan are paired together because they tell good stories—which we’re not supposed to do these days. When we push deeper than a cliff note understanding of a story, of a principle, we often scuff the surface and remove a sheen of respectability that comes with unchallenged aphorisms. Susan and George scuff and scuffle with ideas. Not because either sets out to confront, but because they follow their impulses to delve deeper into ideas, follow them through wherever through ends up. Take us all places that otherwise we tend to gloss over.

This exhibition is part of our ongoing partnership with ACRE. Susan Kimball was a resident for their 2012 summer residency.

(images by Dave Richards and Carron Little)

Extended dissent is no long goodbye

February 2-23, 2013
Opening Reception February 2, 6-9pm

Otherwise minded. Standing alone. We each have political leanings, but there is a different sort of problem when our politics lean on us so much they tell us what we have to say. We stand for causes at the expense of another part of ourselves, and it is difficult beyond language to get to that thing the standing stands for.

Carron Little and Dave Richards stand apart. From each other, from status quo. Their respective stances sometimes poke at sore spots, but the art is not overtly political. Perhaps there is respect for the posture, but make no mistake—these are not like-minded artists working toward a common good. This is not feel-good collaboration despite the fact they are showing work they worked out together. Neither is it a game of besting nor any sort of war. It is profoundly different for each Dave and Carron.

Both Dave and Carron work with modular forms, layering, and compositions that meander. There is tension near the boundaries, in the overlaps. And that is why they are together, or the art is together. The tension tells itself. By leaning into that tense dance, we may get closest to the stand, to the apart. Close to anger, close to rebellion, close to fights worth fighting and the values they are fought for. Not causes, not morals. But for the only way each sees what is known.

Dave is an artist working in collage and relief sculpture. He’s shown in Chicago venues ranging from Phyllis Kind gallery, the MCA, the Chicago Cultural Center, N.A.M.E., The Evanston Art Center and many others, and internationally in Milan and Tel Aviv. He taught at SAIC for much of his career. Dave has been moving away from rectangles as the grounding structure. He’s been known to lift colors schemes from tools used to produce the work. His work is built on a foundation of precision, but never at the expense of his own hand.

Carron is a board member on the Wicker Park and Bucktown Arts Committee where she tirelessly works to direct public funding directly to artists for their good work. She writes, she teaches, and she directs a gallery, Eyeporium. She is perhaps best known for her performance work embodying characters like the Queen of Luxuria. She has shown at 6018 North, and performed at the MCA, Hyde Park Arts Center and with Food and Performance. She is the founder of Out of Site, a series of unexpected public encounters with performance. One direction in her painting and drawing practice began with shapes left over after cutting fabric for costumes.

Who says negative thinking is all cynical and dark? 

It’s already 2013? How did that happen?

Since we gave you a gift last year (Chocolate Caramelized Flamin’ Hot Cheetos) we decided to have some fun and make you something even better this year. The Moroni, our very own complex concoction of homemade infused booze that is easy to mix and reflects our Mormon heritage (Well Paul’s at least). In fact it is so complex we had to divide it into 5 separate videos but we’re sure you’ll enjoy it!

Slow’s Cocktail, The Moroni

We have an impressive lineup of artists that we are excited to be working with this year. Here is a preview:

February 2, Carron Little & Dave Richards
March 2, George Blaha & Susie Kimball
April 6, Helmut Heiss & Emily Severance
May 4, Carol Jackson & Julie Portratz
June 8, Judith Brotman & Michael Hunter
July 13, A small group show including Meg Duguid, Andreas Fischer, Jason Jozwiak

We’re also chatting with Laura Davis about a new project space in our basement. How awesome is that? Of course that means we have to clean it out first which is less than awesome.

Additionally, each of our upcoming exhibitions will feature a different SmAB brew.  You haven’t heard about our beer brewing?  Probably because we haven’t officially said anything.  But it’s already been leaked to the press: Gallerybrewing Is Now a Thing in the Chicago Art Scene

We look forward to seeing you soon and wish you all the best in the New Year!

Slow
Paul Melvin Hopkin, Jeffrey Grauel, and Yesterday

(images by Slow, left, and Steve Reber, right)

miniature/GIGANTIC

November 10 & 11, 2012 @ MDW Fair

Is there a tiny thing, hardly anything, that just gets you? You just can’t get around it even though it is scarcely there? That hangnail, a tiny curl in the lip that makes you distrusts that good-natured SOB. Objects in this mirror are closer than they appear.

Too big to fail. We see atrocities from so far away that we conceive of sentences containing both genocide and lipstick more easily than we imagine actual soldiers killing actual citizens of an actual sovereign nation. It’s as if we can’t fathom the  enormity of global warming so we fixate on a plastic bag form the corner grocer.

Look for slow’s booth at the MDW Fair to see the gigantic end of the spectrum. We will feature large scaled works by John Henley, Andrew Holmquist, Carol Jackson, and Steve Reber.

On the miniature side, Slow’s exhibition in Clutch Gallery will also be touring the Fair. Artists include Benjamin Bellas, Judith Brotman, CC Ann Chen, Andreas Fischer, Brent Garbowski, Joe Mault, and Mican Morgan.

(image by Brent Garbowski and Joe Mault)

It ain’t over…

April 28-May 26, 2012
Opening Reception Saturday, April 28, 6-9 p.m.

Civil disobedience. Maybe it doesn’t always stay so civil. Maybe we’re not so civic minded.

There is no way for me to play Switzerland in this one—this is me taking one for the team. This is illuminating the comings and goings in my bed. This is a power f**k. These gestures are direct and directed at me. This is the wrong people speaking out, having their say. This is singing like a canary at the top of your lungs. This is sidestepping the dirty laundry; this is just dirty. Laughing in your face. Going for blood. Putting your cards out on the table.

The works of Barbara DeGenevieve, Brent Garbowski, and Joe Mault challenge the rules; up end structures. But not every challenge is militant. You may change the way you think about that other person’s body, the things that come in or go out of your mouth, or your relationship to power. But you might just sit a while and laugh.

(images by Joan Goldin, left, and Susannah Papish, right)

Escape Into the Briar Patch

March 31-April 21, 2012

Joan Goldin makes images that take some queues from medical TV—the feel of gut and liver. The sound of a dramatic prop organ plops into the medical tray. Wet and somehow failing, there is an aura that we need to act quickly or give ourselves over to dire consequences. But Joan’s photos aren’t imitating. There isn’t a story line. More ordinary than surgery or dissection.

Note taking. These images are observed, maybe repeated. Each version has a scrawl that directs us to pay attention to another part. Joan seems to have a system, but we’re not let in on that information. So many artists look at science as unknowable, as a kind of beauty. Joan works like someone who knows her science. She is thinking faster than the experiment. Revelation. And though there is darkness and danger, the rupture generated by her dashed reminders are as much about play and humor as they are about the stuff they are running from.

Susannah Papish generates her images rather than dashing off notes, so they come at a slower pace. Methodical. Most of the time, things arrived at slowly are deadly serious. But Susannah’s images could be inspired by a 50’s mermaid dance party. Even when you realize the decorations are all internal organs and cancerous growths they are glimmery and lickable and add the perfect pop to your flouncy dress.

There is a tendency in nature related to bright markings: they tend to communicate things. One example is the don’t-fuck-with-me message worn by a venomous species. Susannah’s lovely flowers both bear witness to their own poisonous inflections and are an exterior reflection of an embattled interior. Wet and dark recesses are illuminated in synthetic color arrays. It is an alien world, and not at all peaceful. Tumors and parasitic cells and the last throws of life. Drowning.

[images by Maggie Haas(top) and TJ Proechel(bottom)]

Slow has again partnered with ACRE to host Auntie Em’s Mobile Home as a part of ACRE’s year-long series of exhibitions by 2011 ACRE summer residents. This exhibition features new work from ACRE residents Maggie Haas and TJ Proechel.

Auntie Em’s Mobile Home

February 25-March 17, 2012

There is the bleak and the before.
 
A place in between. Until it gets better. We know the assumptions that go along with the trailer park. Perhaps they just moved into the smaller apartment, or have a home whose toilet functions only by pouring a bucket down the hatch to imitate a flush. They may still host a really awesome dinner party. Even trashy homes embellish; there is decor. There may be pejorative terms like lipstick on a pig, but there is something about improving upon the meager, the ugly and the compromised. Finding beauty where it is. Or making beauty with what you have.
 
Stories have a way of beginning with few resources, uncertain characters, and unremarkable ethics. There are certain kinds of stories that begin with a character’s hard work. Perhaps the hero will find something from within that will drive her toward a cause, a choice. The act of deciding will better the circumstance. Perhaps the outcome is less clear than better. Good guys enter the adventure out of desperation as often as by choice. Surviving the eye of a storm. And the after.
 
TJ Proechel and Maggie Haas both tell stories that leave out trivial things like the plot, or even distinguished characters. There are whispers of getting things done—accomplishing. There are raw spots and signs of struggle, and limitation. Subjects are vaguely old school, but could just as easily be the hipster re-make. Theirs are stories of our times. Ultimately relatable, but not triumphant or redeeming.
 
TJ and Maggie enter the fray at different points—Maggie is perhaps more interested in compromised normalcy, coping with uncertainty and failure. TJ flirts with becoming a criminal or superhero, maybe both at the same time.

Slow has partnered with ACRE to host Not Cool or Stoic as a part of ACRE’s year-long series of exhibitions by 2011 ACRE summer residents. The exhibition features new work from Chuck Jones and from ACRE resident Matthew Schlagbaum.

Not Cool or Stoic
January 27 - February 18, 2012

Colored theory. Not color for color’s sake, but named colors for linguistic associations.

Matthew Schlagbaum begins with greyscale, a faux grisaille, and slips in a technicolor magic schism. Unlike the filmic precedent, Matthew is invested neither in generating delight, nor affirming faith in humanity or individuality. More like Matthew is illuminating the shameless manipulations that drive familiar stories.
 
Glittering gold. Black and white and read all over.
 
Chuck Jones, a gorillalike hulking man always decked out in Carhartts and work shoes, spins a yarn with earnest ennui. Deeply sentimental moments become meditational gems. But his laser focus meanders—the moment was truly heart-felt, but Chuck is open enough to respond just as deeply to the next. Follow his lead and you may end up with your emotional guard puddled around your ankles, not knowing the differences between true grit, heart-strings, or even what is funny.
 
Chuck and Matthew both reside somewhere shaken, somewhat glum. Not cool or stoic. Each embraces his own direct emotional responses, and calls upon a viewer to dive into a moment. But each is driven toward a view of reality that pulls back the curtain to reveal something as it is complete with contradictions, flaws and untidy conclusions.

Being a curatorial project and an alternative art space, we don’t have any money but we wanted to give all of our fans a special holiday treat. So here is a remarkable recipe that we invented just for you, Chocolate covered caramelized Flamin’ Hot Cheetos. It’s kind of like spicy Cracker Jacks dipped in dark chocolate. Divine! We hope you enjoy!

Chocolate Caramelized Flaming’ Hot Cheetos, A Holiday Treat from Slow

Ingredients:

• 2 1/2 cups of sugar
• 1 stick of butter (NOT MARGARIN)
• 1/4 teaspoon cream of tartar
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• one bag of Hershey’s dark chocolate chips
• one bag of Flamin’ Hot Cheetos

Time: about 1 hour

Preheat your oven to 350 degrees. Add the sugar, butter, and cream of tartar to a sauce pan and cook over low heat. Stir continually for about 20 min. Add the baking soda once the mixture has become liquid and a nice caramel color. Poor over the Cheetos and mix. Separate the individual pieces and then bake for 10 min. Separate the pieces and then return to the oven, repeat until the caramel becomes crispy. Melt the chocolate in a double boiler. Place the caramelized Cheetos on a pice of wax paper and poor the melted chocolate over them. Let cool and enjoy with your favorite adult beverage or your favorite adult or just your favorite beverage!

If you’re too lazy to make your own, stop by the gallery (2153 West 21st Street, Chicago IL). We still have some left from the video shoot. Then you can also check out our current exhibition, HEAD, and pick up some John Henley and Theodore Horner drawings that make wonderful holiday gifts for everyone you love.

Happy holidays from Slow!

P.S. We would like to give a big shout out to Paul’s mommy, Amy Sedaris, Maangchi, and Cooking with Dog for being such great inspirations. Thank you!

HEAD

November 18-December 17, 2011

Theodore Horner has been studying American History. He has been drawing portraits of 18th and 19th century presidents. He has also been collaborating with Jason Dunda. To ensure that his collection of portraits is cohesive, Theodore drew Jason as an 18th century man. Theodore’s decision asks something about the past and power, and the result is uncanny and funny as hell. Archer Bellas is 3 and very aware that his presence has power. Archer has fought his dad for the title artist. Benjamin Bellas works from his very personal stories, but has figured a way to tell the personal parts without that walked-in-on-him-in-the-bathroom revulsion. None of us is sure if Benjamin’s work is even in this show, but he worked with Archer, so it is nice to talk about him. Laura Davis often pretends that there is no figuration in her work, but its surfaces and presence occupy a personage’s presence even when there is no one there. She gave up her hallmark brilliance in working with surfaces to Andrew Holmquist this time around. Andrew plays with the atomization of presence; everything running through your brain goes through a wood chipper onto a canvas with thick bold fat paint. He is also rather brilliant in working with surfaces, although his versions of surface are quite distinctive from Laura’s.  Maybe I’ll convince you to ask me to show you the portrait I have been working on for the last 5 years.

Two heads are better than one; where do we land with half a dozen? Engaging portraits are always a little about what the outside looks like and a little about what the inside thinks and feels like. Or the social identity of the subject. Or is that object? The one who is looked at is both, right? Who is the one doing the looking?  Why do we get weird when the one looking somehow shifts or challenges? This collection of portraits rejects the mind body polarization so widely embraced, and repositions the portrait in the guttural and sexual body. This body of heads promises to be a little messy, propose a problem or two, and leave it all out there on the gallery floor.

As soon as it is clear that there in an investment in avoiding a classic structure, there is call to explore that classic structure. Slow is thrilled to announce its first-ever solo exhibition featuring the paintings of John Henley.

John Henley can’t stop

October 1 - November 12, 2011

There are many ways that a whole becomes fragmented. There are explosions, surgeries, and reductions. Sometimes there is challenge and dissolution that is more part and parcel of the every day. A nugget of paint has fallen off the wall. That nugget will never be news, nor will the thing revealed behind the fall. But the chip is something.

People are at their very most interesting when they are flawed, complicated, relatable, and yet very distinctive from their neighbors. One of the lessons learned from the human genome project is that genetic information is far more complicated than previously imagined. Like the languages we speak, it’s prone to a mistake or two, and equipped to respond to different contexts. DNA can even re-group in response to mistakes.

John paints like that. And he can move himself some paint.

Extraordinarily human, complicated, embodied, sexed, situated in nature, driven by social norms, cosmopolitan, wanting the latest gadget, and fully loaded with neuroses, anxieties, sadnesses, desires, joy and love. Not deconstructed, not reductive. Repeated and reproductive. John’s painting comes from relentless observation, trying it over again, looking at the next step, taking a leap of faith, skipping a beat, making the best of available resources, acknowledging the weak places, throwing out the crappy ones and sweating the small stuff.

the toy formerly known as…

August 6-September 10, 2011

The name ‘LEGO’ is an abbreviation of the two Danish words “leg godt”, meaning “play well”. It’s our name and it’s our ideal.

LEGO, the LEGO logo, the Brick configuration and the Minifigure are trademarks of the LEGO Group. © 2009 The LEGO Group. © 2009

Toys are designed to direct play, and to teach children the rules. We are directed. Play trains us. Instructions on the box; pictures of what it is supposed to look like. The rules.

But we don’t stay in those lines.

Images of play that revolve around destruction may upset the adult crowd. For adults, edgy is a value system. The best of us learn to harness the design to transcend itself. Well-designed play inspires, but the kids seem to do just fine bringing their own broken rules to the game. Perhaps the outlaw and the artist have always been linked because rules have to be broken to discover the new.

Featuring artists Tom Burtonwood, Joseph Belknap, Sarah Belknap, CC Ann Chen, Todd Chilton, Meg Duguid, Jason Dunda, Brent Garbowski, Jeffrey Grauel, Brad Johns, Susie Kimball, Larry Lee, Allon Lieberman, Mican Morgan and Shannon Schmidt.

The low down

Caroline Allison, Danica Favorito, Jeffrey Grauel

April 30-May 28, 2011

Part of our American legacy is the truism that there are two sides to every story. Some illuminated soul claimed the third side: your way, my way, and the Truth. Became lyrics to a bunch of songs in the 90’s. Subjectivity remains contested, and so we have stories from endless points of view. Sometimes there’s still a melody.

Famous people have the tell-all because we know there is a truth they conveniently left hiding. We don’t trust that we have the real deal until there is something unexpected, uncanny. But how much space is there for demanding something novel inside the story of things we already know? How do we recognize revelation? After all, the truth of some things isn’t there unless it is gilt and florid because that’s how we found it. Stark is edited as much as pretty things are decorated. And the truth doesn’t just float above the world, separated from situation and nuance. 

Caroline Allison tells us stories we think we already know, and gleefully squares us off with uncanny discoveries. Danica Favorito tells us such small fragments that we only have responses left to hold on to, and then she taunts us for trusting our emotions. Jeffrey Grauel also toys with not telling us anything. Unless, that is, we believe him. If we do there are lifetimes at stake. Each artist has edited to the point that cold and hard rings consistently true. Each artist dances with lushness and layer, texture, unexpected beauty, scars, lingering leftovers, and suspension of disbelief. At the end of it, though, we are left holding our own bag. What remains inside that we are so willing to carry?

© Cheng-Yung Kuo 2010 All Rights Reserved

Lock the doors

Laura Davis, Jason Dunda

April 2-23, 2011

Look what the cat dragged in. Truth AND consequence. If we outlaw guns, only outlaws will have guns.

Laura Davis is playing domestic, but the comforts of home have turned on themselves. Embellishment generates tension and devastates traditional notions of appropriate beauty. Intension rules the day: there is no way to ignore the savvy design structure that supports her domestic agenda.

Jason Dunda intends his devastations too. Each dilapidated structure desperately slammed together is carefully, almost lovingly, rendered. What is it about the Law? Stockholm syndrome, atonement, or is he on the other side of the justice equations?

One begins to worry about neighboring either artist. Are these telltale signs of psychopathic violence? Both push hierarchy into unknown terrain. Each in her own way pushes us to encounter some pretty uncomfortable assumptions. We are left bewildered or bemused or maybe to act out ourselves.

burnt sugar

Jason Jozwiak, Clayton Merrell

October 23-November 27, 2010

Bruce Smith, a provincial Utah painter, was lecturing passionately about art and its ideas. He said art creates a space that cannot exist without its creation. More than a thought because it is grounded in material reality; different from reality in the obvious ways. Art’s product can be experienced by anyone. Anyone can be confounded by the collapse of logic in a cubist painting without understanding its history, because it’s there. Objects are visible from simultaneous vantage points; solid planes of color hang in the atmosphere and appear hefty and important right there in plain sight.

Most folks know that toffee is simply caramelized sugar, maybe a little butter thrown in to help the browning. My grandmother made a candy she called lassie jack. Same ingredients, same process. Just pushed the process a little further until the candy is the color of black coffee. I think there was a little molasses in the mix too. Draws out that hit of bitter that keeps you coming back. It isn’t just sweet.

Clayton Merrell’s paintings are built on contradictory messages. Vantage points are all mixed up and occupy conflicting and impossible layers. His view is sweetness and harmony. Harmony that boggles because it should be a mess. The obvious conflicts work like that bitter note in my grandmother’s candy. 

Jason Jozwiak embraces the moment of encounter, like all good post-minimalists. His objects may not always remain discrete. He paints outside of the canvas lines. His materials are not color and picture plane, despite direct reference to traditional painting presentation. The work may keep moving, and sometimes he “paints” with failures from the kitchen. At the end of the encounter, you’re left a little unsure that you saw art at all.

We learn that minimalism rests on the phenomenological encounter with a form. Folks speak of that moment, the ah ha. Once that lesson in synthesized into our vocabulary, all of art becomes the moment of encounter. There is only a viewer looking at art. The funny thing is, both of these painters work so that the moment is drawn out, or happens under the radar. Something shifts, something about viewing changes, but I’ll be damned if I can point out just where and when the shifts happen.