These works were shown in a group show at 17Cox called “Point of Sale: Methods of Vending Identity.” Featuring Zayde Buti, Marc Bradley Johnson, Lane Brandon Phelps, Caroline Picard and Mike Vance. The exhibition runs from May 2 – July 4, 2013. You can read more about my approach to this series here. See details about the show below.

The group exhibition Point of Sale upsets the conventions of a commercial gallery into a retail mart of personal identities.  The artists in the exhibition all vend some form of identity, whether their own personal identity or someone else’s, in commercial packaging or vending machines.  In question is whether the accelerated pace of entrepreneurialism in the art world will undermine artistic hallmarks; such as personal responsibility for producing artwork, the relevance of refined presentation methods and the assumed one-of-a-kind uniqueness of fine art objects.

Intersecting promotion, performance and celebrity, Zayde Buti is a Boston based musician and performance/video artist. Buti promotes mock-brands like King Burger and burlesques catch phrases like ‘Hot N Juicy’ and ‘i’m lovin it’. In 2011, Buti’s alter ego “Bud Wiser” launched an energy drink company GOYSA (Get Off Your Sorry Ass). Buti is an alumnus of Mass College of Art’s Studio for Interrelated Media program. Buti will be performing during the Point of Sale reception.

Pulling from toy theater and the operatic tradition of regietheater, combined with the effect of streaming media in the present day, Caroline Picard and Devin King’s “Grand Opera for One Person” inserts these threads into a DIY exhibition site and performance art context. Though eventually intended for a one-person audience, King and Picard will install a public rehearsal based on a series of their lectures that led to the collaboration. The result is a multi-media installation that reinterprets these texts. The night of their opening on Monday, the 19th of November, will also feature a performance by the duo with the installation.

This exhibit was part of New Capital’s “24HRS/25DAYS,” their final exhibition of their 2 year program at 3114 W. Carroll. 24HRS/25DAYS celebrates transformations, the work that all of us have yet to produce, and everything that is not yet known.

“Between You & Me” is the first collaboration between Caroline Picard and Thea Liberty Nichols, begun via email correspondence almost a year in advance of them ever having met in person.

Writing proactively as opposed to re-actively, Nichols crafted all the exhibition labels on view in advance of Picard’s production of the artwork on display. Picard then used each text as a guide in the production of her work, following them like directions, rejecting them completely, or striking a balance somewhere in-between.

By turning the traditional art exhibition paradigm on its head, the typically critical, Apollonian exhibition didactics mutated into a work of art. Likewise, the artwork itself responded to both the content of the labels as well as the context surrounding them, approaching them in ways that went through and beyond them. Nichols and Picard located their installation in a second story enclosed porch, a back-end, in-between space that connects SHoP (a former priests’ dormitory) to its neighboring Church. This flexibile, limbo-like space, simultaneously public and private, indoors and outdoors, and fixed and falling apart— foregrounds the disconnect between the visual work on display and its affiliate texts, underscoring the tension their works are fraught with, but also the curiosity, mystery and trust their collaboration was forged with.

Caroline Picard is the Editor of The Green Lantern Press. Her writing has been published in a handful of publications including Artiface, Pinch, Ampersand Review, and MAKE Magazine. She continues to exhibit visual work around the country and lives in Chicago.

Thea Liberty Nichols is a Chicago-based arts administrator, independent curator, and freelance writer. Formerly, she served as Director of 65GRAND gallery and she currently works with The School of the Art Institute of Chicago’s Visiting Artists Program.

Visitors were encouraged to wander in and out of our loosely organized piece comprising improvised music, video screening, and intermittent reading and singing.

SCORE:

1. Excessive string and chords on the floor, relaxed and disorganized.

2. Punctuate floor with bare light bulbs.

3. Connect light bulbs to musicians’ arms with fair amount of slack.

4. Reader alternates between 2 chairs — one for reading (during which a sleep mask is worn) and one for tying knots in ground string.

5. Two videos screen simultaneously — one about tennis. The other about haircuts.

Our performance coincided with the closing of “(No) Vacancy,” a survey exhibition at Carrie Secrist Gallery that contemplates the nature of holes, voids and loss. Likewise the experiential, site-specific performance will utilize sound and image as complementary tools to address themes of dissonance, decadence and decay. Photos courtesy of Trevor Perri and Laura Goldstein.

HAPPINESS MACHINES, is a solo show (June 10th – June 24th) with an opening exhibition on June 10th from 6-10pm. An energy drink of the same name and a collection of short stories, PSYCHO DREAM FACTORY, will be released concurrent to this event. You can read an interview about this show by going here.

HAPPINESS MACHINES—the NEW energy drink—is a beast of joy. So good you’ll be hooked! Be gone dull day, now you can get your zip and smile about it. HAPPINESS MACHINES will make its debut appearance this June at Roxaboxen and will be available for free during the run of the self-titled exhibition.

HAPPINESS MACHINES—the NEW, flanking exhibition—features hundreds of cut-out collage drawings made with fugitive materials (construction paper, white-out, fluorescent pen, permanent pen etc). Awkward graphite outlines of celebrity referents like (among others) the Olsen twins, Orlan, Kurt Cobain, Angelina Joli, Damien Hirst, and Michael Jackson are juxtaposed with text gleaned from tabloid headlines, advertisements and, occasionally, philosophers. While various, each drawing is part of a single *fan-tsy* edition, hanging like comics in a drug store, sheathed in plastic sleeves. Drawings are available for $3 each.

PSYCHO DREAM FACTORY—the NEW book—inspired both exhibit and delightful green experiment beverage! Happiness Machines. Each story appropriates celebrity figures like paper dolls and enacts new drama. Imagine Dr. Dre’s first experience coming on the Burning Man festival! Imagine MJ’s death was only a publicity stunt! What if Woody Allen found a protégé? These are just some of the scenarios you’ll entertain in this delightful volume. Introduction provided by Lily Robert-Foley, with delicious design created and covers printed by Sonnenzimmer, this full-color book was made in an edition of 100 and will be available for $20.
Prior to the exhibition, 25 copies of PSYCHO DREAM FACTORY were placed, with bar codes, in supermarket checkout aisles in Chicago IL.

Some stories in this *HOT* new collection were previously published in Artifice Magazine (Bling Bling), Monsters & Dust(Kiss the Chief), Pinch (P/oar) and as a featherproof minibook (Agee by the Bedpost). PSD will be available for purchase for the duration of the exhibition and through The Paper Cave bookstore.

Roxaboxen Exhibitions is an artist run gallery and performance space in the heart of Chicago’s Pilsen neighborhood. They provide a space for creative collaboration, as well as distributing/acquiring ideas and information.

mini dutch gallery presents…
Opening Saturday, May 30th from 7-10pm
Show runs until Sunday, June 28th
Reading on Sunday, June 14th at 3pm

I was working on a new novel at the time called Happy Endings. (The book has since been retitled Woof) This work-in-progress is about a group of hipsters living in Philadelphia and the events which led them to their current position in life. Entangling shallow personalities are complicated with transparent glimmers of childhood. The past becomes present, flattening out through night-time banter and its invariable avoidance of grief. The present has to lead somewhere. The exhibit featured three Hipster Pokemon portraits based on characters in the book. A limited edition of the book was also available.

mini dutch’s PR was as follows: “To accompany Happy Endings, Picard will show a series of “portraits” based on peripheral characters in the book. She has  combined aspects of drawing, gouache, and collage into beautifully delicate compositions. These abstract works serve as intuitive meditations of the characters she has constructed. A fleshy pallet with spikes of black, hot pink, blue and gold mix together to form intricate pattern work; in each painting, specific aesthetics of each individual are recomposed into an ornate and impenetrable surface.  The gouache mingles with swatches of dollhouse wallpaper, connecting the character’s present personas to their early years.”

And an excerpt from the book:

And then, outside, on the stoop with all of his dumb bags all over again, everyone else inside because they aren’t ready to leave yet, Tobias just starts to cry. Finally. And he can’t get up even though he feels stupid crying in the midst this city, and all its people—all its pretty people with funny clothes and fancy tattoos and stylish jokes—all of his fans, he can’t help but cry and when he finally does he can’t stop until Fletcher finally finds him in the eaves of a doorway to a store that’s closed for the night. And then Fletcher finally hugs him and tells him that it’s going to be alright. I promise, buddy, we’ll get through this.

To mark the closing of the exhibition, I read an excerpt from the book in minidutch’s back yard and then we had a BBQ.

At the center of this exhibit was a poorly perfect bound draft of my novel “Bygones.” The novel is divided into three sections describes the landscape of a family, in the wake of a father’s death. While the book had a only small presence in the show, all of the visual work (paintings, 2 videos, a sound piece and a soft sculpture) were transcriptions of specific passages. I was interested in translating the intimacy of a reading experience something visual that might be shared by many viewers at once. The text provided the linear landscape for the visual art.

Most of these themes  begin in Asia. In one video series, cutouts blow around in a series of public installations in Tokyo, Manila and Hong Kong. In another video series, “Fortuna: The Greatest Super Hero in the World” posts a sign on Lama Island announcing her own greatness (part of a public performance in 2005/2006). Fortuna reappears in another piece watching home videos of Tokyo as they are projected on a pillow made in the same shape as the paper cut outs. A haunting audio track from a Hong Kong underpass was set to repeat in a corner of the gallery, and finally, to provide a visual resting point, six gouache, collage-on-paper paintings were positioned at various on the walls. The paintings referenced moods of the text, serving as intuitive landscapes of the various characters’ states of mind/being. Throughout the exhibition, fictional, personal and historical weave in and out.

The show/book sprang from an interest in global economies. Hong Kong is a particularly interesting city as a gateway for trade to the East and how it has been a pivotal site for Imperial interests.

At the opening many of these models were physically present. Those who could not make it sent various mementos of themselves (photos, autobiographical video, and self-composed music) which I then reconfigured into sculptural installations. These were called “Totems I, II, III, and IV” respectively. In one case sent General Tsao’s chicken his place. Everyone ate it.