Friday
April 29
Community of the Future Art Walk
Various locations in Bridgeport (See map)
6pm –11pm
The Community of the Future is a not so tongue-in-cheek reference to the
burgeoning art scene in Bridgeport. Over the past few years a number of galleries,
cultural
spaces and the Zhou B. Center have quietly opened and are establishing a
compelling alternative option to the gallery zones and art fairs on the north
side. For
one night over one dozen Bridgeport spaces - organizations that are transforming
the neighborhood into a new area of innovative art action – will open
their doors to the public. Several exhibitions by artists from The Netherlands
and Belgium (St Joost Academy), as well as group shows by local artists and
cultural workers will be open to the public at various Bridgeport locations.
The Zhou B. Center hosts an open house of its studio an exhibition spaces,
a program of videos by the nomadic Lost Film Festival and an exhibition,
Version Kunsthalle, featuring installations curated by the Version team.
A performance
program and party celebrating this first ever Bridgeport-based art festival
follows at the Texas Ballroom and Diamonds on Archer.
Particapting spaces:
MN
Gallery 3524 S.
Halsted
Founded in 2000 by Jim Molnar and Kuna Na, mn gallery + studio is an eclectic
exhibition and project space showing regional artists, located in the historic
A. Schwarz building right next to the old RAMOVA Theater on Halsted Street
south of 35th in Bridgeport. "Semi-gloss" features new works by Laura
Kina and Larry Lee. Inspired from regular brainwashing sessions of cable TV
home decorating shows (e.g. Merge, Trading Spaces, Clean Sweep and Designing
for the Sexes), Lee and Kina wield paint and plywood along with a dose of nostalgia,
fantasy, family history and martial arts to coerce a new look, a new life,
a new order. "Semi-gloss" refers to this urge to combine and merge,
to create from the pre-existing, to preserve so as to reinvent.
Birdhouse exhibition at Salhus Studio
3215 S. Morgan
An artists’ workspace in Bridgeport for collaborations in the realm of
cardboard. Inspired by mail art, the Birdhouse exhibits 288 pieces by 22 artists
from around Chicago and the world, each working with 6"x8" pieces
of salvaged cardboard.
Urbanlab
3207 S
Morgan Street.
Live + Work + Land (Recycled Mound)
The site was occupied by a run-down grocery store that city inspectors and
lawyers were itching to demolish. Instead of wrecking the building and removing
the debris to a suburban landfill, we choose to recycle the demo on-site and
mold it into a mound. The front office loft of
the new building mimics the dimensions of the old grocery store in order
to re-use existing foundations and maintain current lot lines along Morgan
Street. The rear residential loft is raised and rotated to access the crest
of the prairie grass-planted recycled-materials mound, giving the second floor
a direct connection to the ground.
Archehut by Archeworks team 3 near 3215 S. Morgan
Archehut is a post-corporate configuration. Reaping the harvest of decades
of industrial overproduction, Archeworks Team 3 has created solutions for
the reuse of discarded office furniture. When is a cubicle a house? When
is a rejected
work surface a street barricade? Kathleen McCarthy, Eric
Newman, Suzanna Santostefano, Caroline Shillito, Lars Soderkvist, Sarah
Vogel and facilitators,
Randy Kober and Lisa Kulisek answer these questions.
American Dreams by Mark Cooley at 3143 S. Morgan
American Dreams is a storefront installation making use of common department
store packaging and display aesthetics. Participants may play the role
of consumers while uncovering unsettling relationships between free market
globalization,
military domination, and cultural indoctrination via a simple thrift store
packaging aesthetic.
Post St. Joost Autonomous Platform
Diamonds on Archer
3012 South Archer, 1st Floor
Diamonds on Archer, part of Young Archer, is an emerging exhibition space
for visual artists and performers. The residents of this space are curators,
presenters
and booking agents, as well as artists and performers in their own right.
During Version>05 they host and present the Dutch Academy St. Joost.
Using the Version>05 festival as a platform and tactical operation,
students from the Dutch Academy St. Joost will present work made during
their residency
at Version>05. Based on a consideration of everyday life as a non-homogeneous,
conflict-laden field of operations, this show will be the final mutation
of their weeklong project at Young Archer.
The Zhou Brothers Arts Foundation
3302 S. Morgan
Established in 1991, the Zhou Brothers Art Foundation is a private, nonprofit
organization designed to facilitate the exchange of contemporary art between
Chicago and the international art community. It operates a program of four
exhibits a year, presenting artists who have won recognition for their
social, political and conceptual impact on the field of contemporary art
and society.
The Foundation also presents special Zhou Brothers exhibitions in many
media including drawing, painting, print, video performance and sculpture.
The Zhou
Brothers Art Foundation also operates a foreign exchange program which
awards accomplished artists a six-week residency with working facilities
in the United
States. Past grant winners include photographer Ling Feng, poet Bei Dao
and ceramist Gerold Tusch. In addition, the Foundation is responsible for
the Zhou
Brothers' permanent collection, archives, publications, authentication
and public outreach and education.
Zhou B. Center 1029 W. 35th St.
The Zhou B. Center is an art center located in the heart of the Bridgeport
neighborhood where the Zhou Brothers have lived for more than a decade.
Housed in an 87,000 square foot building on the corner of Morgan and 35th,
it consists
of spacious galleries and studio spaces overlooking a beautiful sculpture
garden of wood and bronze works.
The Zhou B. Center and Zhou Brothers Arts Foundation generously host
an open house, a video series by Lost Film Festival and several projects
curated
by Version>05 in the Version Kuntshalle . See Version Kuntshalle for
more info. The NFO EXPO will be hosted here on
Saturday April 30 and May 1.
8pm Lost Film Festival
Zhou B. Center in the media lounge 1st floor
Lost Film Festival is a laugh-a-riot event with equal emphasis on both "laugh" and "riot." Focusing
on pranks vs. corporations and government institutions. You'll love the
punk rock urgency of the Lost Film Fest and its celebration of illegal
art and media archeology.
Open House in Zhou B. Center
Martin Soto 1029 W. 35th St. Open House 3rd Floor
Martin Soto presents Scapes, a series of paintings exploring variations
of land-sea- cityscapes in an enclosed environment to accentuate the
separateness of modern humans to their natural surroundings. The larger-than-human
scale
of the paintings creates a sense of awe and an awareness of one’s
proportion to nature.
CRN Fine Art Services 1029 W. 35th St. Open House 3rd Floor
CRN Fine Art Services is an arts services company that offers professional
art services to collectors, corporations and non-profits. CRN offers a
range of services including independent curating, fine art appraisals,
art sales
and brokering, and collections management.
33 Collective Gallery 1029 W. 35th St. Open House 3rd Floor
33 focuses on work by established and emerging contemporary artists working
in any media.
Oskar Friedl
Gallery 1029 W. 35th St. Open House 3rd Floor
Fred Hickler presents the multimedia installtion, Wading through the Shallows
or: What does Mean Mean? The artist struggles to reconcile his private and
public selves by allowing the viewer to wade through a shallow video pond,
while contemplating juxtipositions of imagery taken from the internal and external
worlds. Meanwhile the viewer can study the artist's "cave paintings" outlining
his struggle and process in 2D and sound.
10:30pm
Version>05 Community of the Future Opening AfterEvent
Texas Ballroom & Diamonds on Archer
3012 S. Archer Ave. 1st and 3rd floors
Suggested donation $10
Performance and Music Program at the Texas Ballroom:
ZIbelline Epee is a 10-minute puppet show with appropriated and live music.
Far Rad: NO RAVE. youloveitsodoit. Everyone Mutates (Ghost Arcade Ltd.):
Minimal body wave. The Atari Star (Johann's Face): Lush, intimate and carefully
crafted. Djs : Grady and Benn Flashbulb
