GARDENfresh

Moving Pictures

nobody@vox.com(GARDENfresh) — Sat, 07 Jul 2007 16:10:17 -0700

TROY HAGENBART and MIKE NORDSTROM

Opening Reception: Friday July 13, 2007, 6 – 10pm

Exhibition continues through August 18, 2007

Hagenbart

GARDENfresh brings the East Coast to Chicago with Moving Pictures, an exciting summer exhibit featuring artists Troy Hagenbart and Mike Nordstrom.

Troy Hagenbart’s intimate paintings pursue a strange balance between fact and fiction. Rooted in historical context and inspired by the material world around us, Hagenbart obscures and alters the familiar. Buildings break down into abstract geometry, figures are rendered faceless, and everyday actions become haunting partial narratives. With a heavy hand, Hagenbart lays down misty strokes and chapped textures. Warm mid-tone color sharply contrasts with selective highlights to shift perceptions of foreground and background. His richly layered works blur the recognizable, challenging first impressions of the imagery. Hagenbart’s deceptively simple works raise questions about the illusions of painting versus the reality of our surroundings.

Troy Hagenbart earned an MFA from Massachusetts College of Art in 2007. While in Boston, he participated in several group exhibitions, acted as an assistant to MassArt’s Expression of Hope project, and created art to raise awareness about Gaucher’s disease. Hagenbart currently lives and works in Brooklyn, NY.

Mutating mice, headless guitarists, and shrinking beauties delight the eye in Mike Nordstrom’s multi-media works. Whether illustrated or animated, his characters constantly shift through time, redefining space and creating a competitive dynamic between predator and prey. With surreal storytelling and intricate imagery, Nordstrom forges a link between fine and commercial art; his works are intended for the masses but meticulously rendered. His penchant for detail borders on the obsessive-compulsive – spots and swirls, zig zags and curly cues, fireworks and hundreds of tiny stars carve shape and define shadow. These complex patterns are juxtaposed with spare backgrounds and bold blocks of color to create labor-intensive artwork with the universal appeal of Saturday morning cartoons.

Mike Nordstrom graduated with a 2005 BFA from Rhode Island School of Design. During his Illustration studies, he spent one year refining his style at Edinburgh College of Art, Scotland. Having shown in Edinburgh, Philadelphia, and the Chicago area, Nordstrom has also created animations for Acme Filmworks, Optic Sugar, and Soup 2 Nuts. His recent work includes projects for United Airlines, Discovery Channel, and PBS. A young professional animator for Soup 2 Nuts in Boston, Nordstrom is currently proposing his original programs to Cartoon Network.

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Aaron Nather featured on Juxtapoz

nobody@vox.com(GARDENfresh) — Sat, 02 Jun 2007 12:39:16 -0700

Crickskipper on Juxtapoz

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Dave Lowman talks....

nobody@vox.com(GARDENfresh) — Thu, 31 May 2007 10:50:23 -0700

Listen to artist David Lowman talk about his work in the forthcoming show Soot Covered Reverie at GARDENfresh...
http://www.thefeedlot.org/feeds/vikingyouth/VikingYouth72.mp3

David Lowman on Viking Youth Power Hour

THIS WEEK ON THE VIKING YOUTH POWER HOUR...
Living Art

In celebration and anticipation of Dave Lowman's show opening this Friday June 1st at the Garden Fresh gallery at 119 N. Peoria #3D we sit down with Dave and GARDEN Fresh co-director Tom Burtonwood to discuss the roll of art, the idiosyncratic ritual that is the creative process and the value that the unholy culture collision of Burning Man brings to an otherwise stagnant art world.

We also spend a good amount of time waxing nostalgic for the good old days of Carbondale and a legendary party that acted as the seminal seed for distributing the viking family around the world.

Time: 40min min, Size: 20mb MB
Date Uploaded: May 30, 2007

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Soot Covered Reverie

nobody@vox.com(GARDENfresh) — Fri, 18 May 2007 10:22:38 -0700

Soot Covered Reverie

SOOT COVERED REVERIE
David Lowman, Aaron Nather, Michael Pajon.
Project Space: PST “Osculum Infame.”
Opening reception Friday June 1st, 2007, 6 – 10pm.
Exhibition continues through 7th July, 2007.

GARDENfresh is pleased to present David Lowman, Aaron Nather and Michael Pajon three artists whose otherworldly spirit images tread a winding path through torment and joy, despair and love, the cherished and the abject.

David Lowman's recent work highlights perceived natures of god and self. “God’s First Blowjob” served as the gateway to the series, as did prevailing themes of grappling with ultimate power, personal dualities, the life force of sexuality, and humanized imagery of god. Aaron Nather’s current work shows an awkward beauty lurking beneath the surface of beings who struggle with elemental forces in their dreams and nightmares. Their faces express the bittersweet wonder of being alive and wide-awake in a savage, alien, and sadly beautiful universe. Michael deploys a range of images from The Standard American collages that merely hint at the dark side of glossy Americana to the series of Narrative Works. Rural mythic landscapes that display a humanity deprived of inhibition, lawless and chaotic. In these scenes, mobs of frightened angry people mete out violence on solitary victims alone in the woods.

Project Space: PST “Osculum Infame.”
“Osculum Infame” invites questions as to the darker mechanics of the creative imagination, its role in the achievement of “justified true belief,” and the necessity of duplicity for self-knowledge. It’s in these subjects that we find the answer to the age-old question: “On what do our lives depend?” - PST is an acronym for post/send/tell, the most common forms of communication in massively multiplayer online gaming environments. PST makes art of and about role-playing and video games.

Soot Covered Reverie

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VOID: The Presence of Absence

nobody@vox.com(GARDENfresh) — Sun, 13 May 2007 22:12:55 -0700

VOID: The Presence of Absence, Friday May 18th - May 26th
Alejandra Abad, Mark Beasley, Frederick Elms, Joshua Felix, Natasha Fountain,
Aaron Henderson, Tiffany Holmes, Aaron Koelsch, Jared Madere, Matthew Nelson Eliza Ryus, Joshua Stanholz, Emily Siefken, Bruno Torquato
In communications, a code is a rule for converting a piece of information into another form or representation, not necessarily of the same type. In communications and information processing, encoding is the process by which a source performs this conversion of information into data, which is then sent to a receiver, such as a data processing system.
Wikipedia

“Code is the only language that is executable.”
Lev Manovich

VOID: The Presence of Absence
Opening May 18, 2007

In January of 2007, fourteen artists at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago began a fourteen-week investigation of the practice of programming for drawing. According to Whitney curator Christiane Paul, code is the “paint and canvas” of the digital artist. Yet code transcends traditional mediums because it enables artists to literally create their own tools.

VOID: The Presence of Absence exhibition presents a glimpse of the process of learning how to sketch in code. The display of algorithmic drawings includes a series of emulators, or software that generates art using the compositional rules of Giorgio Morandi, Piet Mondrian. Sol Lewitt, and Ellsworth Kelly. Other works include a group of information visualizations and creative responses to depicting time.

Please join us for a reception on May 18th from 6-9pm.

VOID: The Presence of Absence, Friday May 18th - May 26th

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Bridge Art Fair Chicago 07

nobody@vox.com(GARDENfresh) — Sun, 22 Apr 2007 19:58:27 -0700

Bridge Art Fair Chicago 07
Originally uploaded by GARDENfresh.

Please join us at the GARDENfresh booth for the Bridge Art Fair Chicago. The GF booth is #04 near the front of the hall. GARDENfresh will be exhibiting work by the following artists Aaron Nather, Lisa Kuppinger, David Lowman, Trish Grantham, Chika Ito, Brian Sorg, Brandon Sorg, Jeremiah Ketner, Cammi Climaco, Michael John Hofer, Andrew Rigsby, Alain Douglas Park, Elisa Harkins and Burtonwood & Holmes.

Bridge Art Fair Chicago is part of the Artropolis event a "city-wide celebration of arts and culture" organized by Art Chicago / Merchandise Mart Properties, Inc. Entrance is $15 and admits you into all 5 shows (Bridge Art Fair, Art Chicago, The Artist Project, Intuit and the Antiques show.)

The Bridge opening reception is on Thursday 04/26 from 7 - 11pm and admission is FREE, there will be a cash bar and DJ music.

General Admission $15
27 + 28th April 11am - 7pm
29 + 30th April 11am - 6pm

Please come and support GARDENfresh and check out the wonderful, intense and provocative art by our artists.

www.gardenfresh.org

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New work by gallery artists Burtonwood and Holmes at Around the Coyote

nobody@vox.com(GARDENfresh) — Sun, 22 Apr 2007 12:31:39 -0700

Subtle Combat (friendly fire)
Originally uploaded by burtonwood + holmes.

Gallery artists Burtonwood and Holmes are showing new work at the Around the Coyote Gallery in Chicago's Wicker Park neighborhood. Gallery hours are 10 am - 5pm Mon - Fri, noon - 6pm Sat. www.aroundthecoyote.org The show features two brand new sculptures, "subtle Combat" (pictured), and The Law of Diminishing Returns Pt II (part one wasi n our previous show We'll Meet Again) it's a life size mockup of a pillbox replete with video monitors where the guns should be. Work will be available from GARDENfresh by B & H at Bridge Art Fair Chicago, Apr 26 - 30th, 350 W. Mart Plaza. Bridge Art Fair

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Bridge Art Fair: preview

nobody@vox.com(GARDENfresh) — Mon, 16 Apr 2007 22:16:00 -0700

Lost/Found
Originally uploaded by Crickskipper.

Here's a sneak peak of art we're bringing to Bridge Art Fair next week, this piece is by Aaron Nather, we're thrilled to have Aaron's work at the fair, you can check out more of his work at www.crickskipper.com
:)

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You Winsome, You Lose Some: opening night

nobody@vox.com(GARDENfresh) — Sun, 15 Apr 2007 20:14:22 -0700

Thanks to Lisa, Elisa and Trish for putting together a great show and to Jeremiah for coordinating it all. Also thanks to everyone who came out to the opening friday night, we posted some of the photos from the opening to flickr , images of the work will be available later in the week, so check back then to get an look at the show in more detail. Also Also big thanx to DJ Emulsion whose tunes we're awesome very atmospheric. Check him out every other tuesday at Sonoteque in Chicago!

You Winsome, You Lose Some, opening night reception

DJ Emulsion at GARDENfresh

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You Winsome You Lose Some

nobody@vox.com(GARDENfresh) — Thu, 12 Apr 2007 16:54:57 -0700

You Winsome, You Lose Some
April 13nd – May 12th.
Opening reception Friday April 13th from 6pm – 10pm

You Winsome You Lose Some

TRISH GRANTHAM, ELISA HARKINS, LISA KUPPINGER

GARDENfresh is pleased to present a group show by three upcoming artists spanning from Chicago IL to Portland OR. The unbearable tendency of being cute has become increasingly prevalent in the art-world today. Lisa Kuppinger, Elisa Harkins, and Trish Grantham offer an introspective view of their visionary worlds populated by quirky creatures painted with vivid pallettes.

Lisa Kuppinger, is a Chicago-area artist who “explores the idea of being a wordy worldling through animalism's, hair-brained cookery, hocus pocuses and other billowy riddlings”. Her paintings are filled with glowy fogs and gleamy seams, and have been creeping up in group shows across the country. This is Lisa’s second show with GARDENfresh. When she is not busy making things she can be found “sprinkling sproutlings, looking at bloodshed films, and seesawing with a bearded wheeler”. www.chickenperm.com

The Chicago artist Elisa Harkins (aka Pooper) loves cute stuff. She put in 6 years
as an Internetologist, but all the advertising that comes along with Web programming and designing made her queasy. In response she started drawing large-scale caricatures of her native culture and affixing them to vacant storefronts. She also enjoys making zines (R.I.P., Digital Disobedients), producing tiny videos of fucked-up stuff, DJing from elaborate set lists, Jagerbombs, and dancing, but her favorite past-time is still illegally posting her art on the street. Photos of her work have been published in Lumpen, Punk Planet, and UR Chicago.www.pooptronica.com

Trish Grantham, a self-taught painter and emerging Northwest artist, has truly captured our imagination with her playful works. Using a variety of media and acrylic paint on wood panels, Grantham paints a cast of doe-eyed, cartoon-like characters: Bunny, Robot-Panda, Girl, Carl the Squirrel, Think-Monster, Toast, Birds, and more populate her surfaces. The simple lines and stylized characters parallel Japanese anime, yet the fantasy world they inhabit is wholly original. Appearing alternately wistful, pensive, punch-drunk, in love, or troubled, these characters play out classic themes of good versus evil, and romantic love. They are often surrounded by cartoonish action-lines, scrawled text, or schoolgirlish hearts, and they engage in mysterious antics over complex backgrounds of cumulous clouds in washes of pale blues, greens, or pinks. Like a Japanese manga series, these works pull the viewer into their quirky world. The plotlines, however, are left open. [www.trishgrantham.com]

You Winsome You Lose Some

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