Eyeporium Gallery presents “Revisionists’ Realities” -v- “Kitschy Koo”

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Annette Sollars explains the dual exhibit at Eyeporium Gallery by saying, “We didn’t set out to present a tag-team wrestling match during our August show – we were just over-booked and ran with the idea of playing tag.” Eyeporium Gallery, located at 1431 N Milwaukee Avenue in Chicago’s Wicker Park, presents an exhibit with four diverse regional artists, runs from August 6 to September 1, 2010.

Toni Damkoelher is professor of Graphics Communication at the University of Wisconsin (Green Bay) and finds it second nature to send a signal through pictures. Yet Toni, as a fine artist, anguishes over whether the viewer “gets it”. Such is the nature of art. Kitschy Koo is an exhibition featuring a large-scale digital print installation in which Damkoehler investigates modern super-celebrity as a reflection of the mass media’s positioning of the female role in Western culture. Throughout this series, bees are presented as metaphors of class division in Western culture, with the hives referencing class structure and society.  The artist aims to create a visualization for individual members of a hive society being taught society’s rules through the media.  She specifically references Princess Diana, an icon of a feminine role model for much of Western culture. This work provokes a dialogue about what such media-driven phenomena reveal about present-day Western culture.

As a perfect counter-point to Kitschy Koo and the hive mind set, three collage artists exquisitely reconstruct realities to express their most individual views in Revisionists’ Realities. Kass Copeland relies on narratives from her childhood, stating, “Words have always evoked images for me,” and frequently uses popular fairy tales, rhymes or children’s songs as a starting point.  Similar to joining words together to form a poem, her pieces present themselves as the objects, having already has separate histories, and now assembled into new associations. Copeland studied and apprenticed with her father, a theater prop designer,and frequently works with Redmoon Theater in Chicago. Her puppets traveled to the White House with the Redmoon troupe for the Obama’s Halloween celebration.

Michael Pajon is an artistic archeologist. He sifts through boxes memorabilia – from his family or from junk stores – discovering collections of photographs and matchbooks, dance cards, and trip souvenirs. He poses the questions, “Did you really go there? Who is that with her? Can anyone tell me the story?” Without answers, he makes up his own. Snip, snip, snip – ahhh, there’s the story. Pajon is presently a printmaking technician and assistant to Tony Fitzpatrick at Big Cat Press. The mentoring cannot be denied yet Pajon’s own, clear voice comes through.

Doug Stapleton is a performance artist as well as Associate Curator of art at the Illinois State Museum – Chicago. The Seldoms, a dance company based in Chicago, has him on staff as an artistic associate, a dramaturge. Stapleton can artfully play with images the way a dancer plays with a thread of music. The result is works that are whimsical, wistful and rich with double entendre. This exhibit will feature a new series by Stapleton that he calls “Michael and Angelo” playing fast and loose with images that may – or may not – be found in the Sistine Chapel!

ABOUT EYEPORIUM GALLERY:
Annette Sollars, creator of Chicago’s fine eyewear icon, Eye Want, also launched Eyeporium, a fine art gallery in Wicker Park. Representing exceptional artists of regional and national prominence, Eyeporium Gallery features contemporary creators of paint, print, photographic and sculptural works from the realistic to the surreal to the abstract. With the location of Eyeporium inside Eye Want, Annette has created a single destination for you to procure fine eyewear and fine art “for your face and your space”.

CONTACT:

Annette Sollars
Owner, Eyeporium Gallery
Phone: 773-782-1744
Email: eyeporiumgallery@sbcglobal.net
Web: www.eyewanteyewear.com

Saren Hauser
Publicist, Eyeporium Gallery
Phone: 773-486-0076
Email: sarenhauser@msn.com

Eyeporium Gallery
1431 N. Milwaukee Ave