Glass Curtain Gallery / Terms of Use: Reproducing the Photographic Image
February 25, 2016 - April 16, 2016
Reception: February 25, 5 - 8pm
When artists working primarily with the photographic image exhaust the route of traditional print techniques, they turn to digital, unorthodox and commercial print applications as tools to make gestures in the studio. Printing works directly onto fabrics, matte board, metal and transparencies was once seen as standard practice for commercial street advertisements and store displays, but now functions as a commonplace technique among contemporary artists. Some artists in Terms of Use adopt these approaches, stripping them of their once singular use and repurpose them to critique today’s visual culture, while others employ such strategies to mirror or confuse the viewer, blur the line between a commercial good and an artwork itself. They mix together digital weaving machines, homemade exposure units, document scanners and even the projection of a negative image directly on the gallery wall to respond to the heavily saturated visual world we interact with everyday.
The artists in this exhibition find themselves spending less time in the studio and more time communicating with the outside world; collaborating with commercial printers, testing application processes and seeking out the ideal material to execute their concept. The manual production of works now happens at the hands of professionals and the studio has become a place to build ideas, reflect on these choices and share successes and failures with others. The studio, once a place of solitude and creation, now functions as a collaborative vehicle similar to one of a factory production line used in making everyday goods.
Curated by: Aron Gent, BA ’07
Participating artists: Chris Bradley, Sterling Lawrence, Jason Lazarus, Laura Letinsky, John Paul Morabito, Erin Jane Nelson, B. Ingrid Olson, John Opera, Sara Greenberger Rafferty, Paul Mpagi Sepuya, Rusty Shackleford, John Sparagana
Related programming:
DIY Printmaking- Reimage Ink
March 21st, 3-6p, Anchor Graphics
Join Terms of Use curator Aron Gent and David Jones, Director of Center for Book, Paper & Print for a DIY printmaking workshop. Reimage Ink will offer demonstrations on a few traditional forms of printing, and Do-It-Yourself printing techniques. Attendees will be able to walk away learning about DIY printing techniques, how to work with different ink types, and demo pieces. RSVP is LIMITED, please contact Haydee Souffrant (hsouffrant@colum.edu) for registration or questions.
DIY Catalogue Assembly Workshop
April 2, 12-2pm, Glass Curtain Gallery
This assembly workshop with demonstrate and deconstruct what a traditional exhibition catalogue looks like. Catalogues assembled will be considered artwork and attendees can take away a free exhibition catalogue of the current exhibit.
Gallery Talk with Aron Gent
April 5th, 3-5p, Glass Curtain Gallery
Join Aron Gent, curator of Terms of Use: Reproducing the Photographic Image for an intimate discussion on repurposing commercial print techniques for visual art, challenging the photographic image, and curating a gallery exhibition.
Catalogue Release + Demo Party
April 14th, 3-5p, Glass Curtain Gallery
As we unveil our Print catalogues for the exhibition, curator Aron Gent will lead mini demos on how to create your own artwork from the DIY catalogues! EAch catalogue will look different, and visitors can take home a one of a kind catalogue.
Exhibition Contact: Mark Porter / mporter@colum.edu / 312-369-6643
ARTNEWS HABITAT STUDIO VISIT
Split Difference @ Jewelers Center at the Mallers Building Oct. 2- 31 2015
Organized by Samantha Topol for Original Features, Split Difference presents the work of Chicago-based artists Dan Gunn, Sterling Lawrence, Arianna Petrich, and Min Song, whose work navigates a continuum between image, sculpture, and functional object. Situated in the landmark Mallers Building on Jewelry Row, the exhibition draws on the history of its context by exploring works that push and pull at the conventional boundaries of design and sculpture. While these artists depart from different training and concerns, their objects share a resistance to easy categorization. Their material handling challenges, expands, and frustrates the expectations of painting, sculpture and utility. All of the artists have produced new work, which will be exhibited here for the first time.
The Jewelers Center at the Mallers Building
5 S. Wabash, 7th Floor, Suite 704B
Opening reception Friday October 2, 6-8 PM
Artist Panel Discussion Saturday, October 24, 2 PM
Open hours 11 AM-3 PM Saturdays and by appointment: info@originalfeatures.org
RE|PRODUCTION @ Document Gallery Chicago
Reception: Friday July 24th > 5-8 Pm
RE|PRODUCTION is part of a series of exhibitions (organized by Michael Hall and Aron Gent) inviting both local and international artists to work on an exhibition and collaborate with the (in-house) production of a new work at Document.
Document presents new context-specific works from Alice Konitz, Lasse Schmidt Hansen, and Sterling Lawrence; three artists who each reproduce objects, either through de-contextualization or re-presenting forms of architectural displacement. This exhibition conceptually links to an earlier exhibition of Marcus Geiger & Margaret Welsh, which was presented at Document earlier this year. The series will come together next for the September exhibition with Sean Snyder’s “Re-Convergence (Algorithmic Archaeology),” which will be his first US solo exhibition since his Artists Space exhibition in 2011.
Alice Konitz sculptural works border on the edge of existing as architecture either as small models or sculptures. Conceived initially as small models or sketches, they sometimes reappear in her work as life size sculptural objects with names like Taco Stand, etc. Often the materials she chooses (Cardboard, mirrored foils) often force the viewer to rethink the (architectural) object; as these materials are often metaphorical stand-ins for other materials. For example “Untitled” (2015) which has been reproduced at Document, started out as a small model based on the memory of a table at a Swedish rest-stop. This sculpture, which functions as part table, part trashcan, was based on architectural drawings that were created to produce the object life-size. Through these gaps in memory and technical reproduction this object becomes a unique sculptural object through minor adjustments in size, material, and general placement within the gallery space.
Lasse Schmidt Hansen presents a grouping of black molleton fabrics entitled “Dismantled” (2014 – Present). These fabrics were originally used in theatres, photo studios, or galleries and their general purpose serves to block out light sources in galleries or black boxes. Generally these objects are part of the (gallery) inventory and are often kept for re- use. These remnants contain indexical traces of the original architectural spaces from which they were used, along with nail holes, plaster, and staples. By re-presenting these spatial fragments the original space becomes partially reassembled within Document.
Sterling Lawrence’s Rack 03 is a sculpture that references a sensibility of use, which is intentionally left unclear as to what specificity this use was intended for. Studies for the form started with investigations into the skeletal supports of magazine racks. In the process of making the work, size sifted from a traditional floor magazine rack found next to a reading chair to something different. Lawrence shortened the legs, and exaggerated the length of the piece to the length of his own body. In doing so, the form began to resemble a cot in scale, however the elastic bands kept to the interior form of that found in initial studies of magazine racks. The work itself is a model for a study of translation; it becomes something new and in turn revealing a state of confusion, which questions both platforms and circumstances.
Form Without a Room @ Document Gallery 2014
Document is pleased to present Form Without a Room, a collaborative exhibition of new works by Christalena Hughmanick and Sterling Lawrence.
Christalena Hughmanick and Sterling Lawrence’s collaborative works use rejected Burberry raincoat fabric in the form of moving blankets as a framing device. The photographic images housed within explore abstracts, a fragmented index of information from the beginning of known documented knowledge pertaining to surgical knots. Suspended knot braces become the support for sculptural clay forms, which are reminiscent of the body. Moving blankets deprived of their imagined utility have become the framing units for studies of surgical knots. These knots have three origins of intended use but the focus has been placed on how the knots hold a patient in position.
On Stranger Ways @ Scotty Enterprises in Berlin from 2014/06/27 until 2014/07/19
On Stranger Ways features Allison Wade, Volker Saul, Michael Pfisterer, Dan Devening, and Sterling Lawrence in collaboration with Christalena Hughmanick; a group of artists from the United States and Germany affiliated with the Chicago gallery devening projects + editions. The show, much like the work presented, is an aggregate of carefully selected and loosely connected ideas and materials assembled into a logical whole. Within the work of each artist, we recognize a desire to order, to make sense of the stuff each finds as they navigate the world. Order is a good word; it suggests an imposition of will, a rightness of placement and context. It happens through the dichotomies and juxtapositions that occasionally occur in the work; at other times, form is separated from context to arrive at essential new properties. The material-based work reflects strategies inherent to how research, experimentation and consideration lead to a resolute position. The artists are collecting, documenting, isolating, distilling and displaying; they’re also applying very subtle and poetic moves to their process to reveal something newly discovered. On Stranger Ways feels like a loosely woven fabric; the fibers are distinct but the composition they create has a beautiful sense of order and completeness.
New temporal shift in context found in a bent towards function
Various Designers
IN/SITU
CHICAGO- Volume gallery is pleased to announce its summer exhibition titled IN/SITU opening Friday, June 20th with a reception from 6-8PM at 845 West Washington Blvd, 3rd Fl. Chicago/ IL 60607.
IN/SITU Situated in the original, natural, or existing place or position.
Volume Gallery has a specific focus on American design, particularly emerging contemporary designers. In the past four years, Volume has released editions, publications and exhibits that showcase the work of American designers to regional, national and international audiences. With IN/SITU, Volume brings together their released editions alongside new artists to showcase contemporary environments and create discourse on the current state of American design and studio practice.
Forty-Six Bars with No Hook
@ SOLOWAY GALLERY
Derek Franklin & Sterling Lawrence, Forty-Six Bars with No Hook
March 2 - April 6, 2014
Opening Reception: Sunday, March 2, 2014 from 6:00 to 8:00 p.m.
where one ray should fall ideas are compiled
beyond the reconciliation of a catastrophic dream
so that it might testify to that specific ray
with out any pre-established harmony
phantasm stabilized the potential for the vase
to be caressed and filled with hollowed perspectives
illuminating an extended rehearsal of
for the betterment of
which has a double purpose
in which they might not spend their time loitering in a city
of capital
but dispersed in the countryside of memory
For what are riches in their terms
coupled with the concern for private affairs
might cause them to not have the leisure to complicate themselves
among common things
Works for SCA Benefit →
Works published with Document for SCA Benefit 2014 included 10 works each in an edition of five.
If I Plucked You From the Sea @ devening projects & editions
In his first solo show with the gallery, Sterling Lawrence assembles a group of sculptural deliberations on the failed utility of assigned function. In works inspired by photographs found in design catalogs featuring the work of Vico Magistretti and Charles and Ray Eames, he tempers the utilitarian nature of each component and drifts into territory of a more uncertain kind. Composed as a schematic, the installation works together through interrelated displacements; meaning and use are altered through contextual shifts and formal disturbances. The constituent elements in this show are temporal and modular, but come with imbedded limitations of structure. The historical ubiquity of the sourced forms ground the work in the familiar; quickly the recognizable is upended by some unexpected maneuver. Installed off-kilter or sometimes reduced to only the facade of the original, the works are left as distorted perspectives, indicators only of the temporality of their existence. If I Plucked You From the Sea suggests that our relationship to necessary use, design and utility is utopian; the reality is something infinitely more unstable.
Read MoreStructures For Reading @ Center for Book Arts Columbia College
WHAT: The Center for Book and Paper Arts at Columbia College Chicago presents “Structures for Reading” an exhibition of interdisciplinary artworks, such as installation, photography, video and sculpture, that utilizes the book as the object or visualizes the activity of reading in new ways.
The exhibition surveys works by an international roster of 12 renowned and upcoming artists such as New York-based Moyra Davey (Whitney Biennial 2011) and Gareth Long, as well as Prague-based artist Eva Kotátková (18th Sidney Biennial, 2011) and Puerto Rico-based Tony Cruz (7th Havana Biennial). Additionally, the exhibition debuts brand new works by some of Chicago’s rising talents, including Sterling Lawrence, Sebura+Gartelmann and Johana Moscoso.
Lie an Wait @ Tony Wight Gallery
Sterling Lawrence
Lie and Wait
28 October – 23 December 2011
Reception: Friday, 28 October, 6–8 pm
Tony Wight Gallery is pleased to present Lie and Wait, Sterling Lawrence’s first solo
exhibition.
Existing between hand-finished and mass-produced objects, Sterling Lawrence’s recent
body of work includes large inkjet-print gradients and sculptural forms resembling furniture.
The sculptures are reminiscent of furniture but deprived of their imagined utility: unplugged
lamps, empty tables and coat racks without coats. They alternate between formal sculpture
and furniture, between the attribution of meaning and the attribution of use, addressing the
definition of sculpture, its outward form and function.
Lawrence’s prints and sculpture create an absorptive environment. The gradients are printed
on backlit film traditionally used in transparency boxes. The translucent material shows the
color of the wall, imitates the banding of interior lighting and fills the nearby space with its
particular hue. The sculptures take the color of their environment while the prints fluctuate
between a backdrop and a potential image, projecting color out into the space, all with an
underlying tension: Where am I supposed to stand?
If the story ever had a start it might go like this:
The horizon is always receding.
Practice is like washing.
The more you practice the more you can see how much more you have to work.
Sterling Lawrence was born in Grants Pass, Oregon and lives and works in Chicago. He
received his MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.