Johalla Projects Presents ISLANDS IN THE STREAM

Islands in the Stream

Works by Benjamin Funke & Gabrielle Gopinath

with a performance by Bitchin Bajas

June 1st, 2012 — June 29th, 2012

Opening Reception: Friday, June 1^st from 7-10PM

ISLANDS IN THE STREAM features DVD projections and photographic stills by multimedia artists Benjamin Funke and Gabrielle Gopinath.

At the exhibition opening, Cooper Crain and Dan Quinlivan of Bitchin Bajas will perform live in a multimedia performance with real time video editing by the artists.

The videos in the show, titled Water Wrackets and Intervals, began as reinterpretations of Greenaway shorts from the late ‘60s.  In both works the auteurs bring precision timing and an acid-etched color palette to the stylishly deadpan depiction of ebbs and flows.

Crowds of art gawkers captured at the Venice Biennale in Intervals, like the Indiana floodwaters that saturate the screen in Water Wrackets, seek the lowest point in the landscape. Crowds and liquids propagate across the screen in trickles and flows to the spacey drones of Crain’s soundtrack.

The soundtrack for Water Wrackets, which came out in 2011 as an LP / DVD set on Kallistei Editions, features episodic arrangements of acid-drenched garage psychedelia drawing inspiration from Ravi Shankar, Sun Ra and 1970s Krautrock.

Crain and Quinlivan will be performing the Water Wrackets soundtrack at the opening, in addition to debuting material from their brand new release on Kallistei Editions, Vibraquatic.

The artists express their thanks to the Institute for Scholarship in the Liberal Arts, the Nanovic Institute for European Studies, the Center for Creative Computing, the University of Notre Dame Graduate School of Arts and Letters and Richard Gray for their support of these projects.

Benjamin Funke: I investigate the spectacle of contemporary culture, focusing specifically on forms of masculine performance and collective experience using sculpture, audio/video and photography to inject politicized commentary into my work.  First harvesting images from the digital reservoirs that surround us, I then alter these images using both digital and manual methods.  By de-familiarizing viewers’ expectations, they can be moved to reevaluate the content and the context of what they see. My earlier works about our collective fascination with professional sports (steroid usage in Major League Baseball®, fatalities in Nascar®) have primed this current interest in making art about popular music and fan cultures.

My work often hinges on specific, historically documented moments in which there is an identifiable change of state.  These pivotal moments become the starting points for my investigations of singular and collective experience. These investigations often proceed by contorting and/or expanding the original moments through video and time-lapse photography. Since the work deals with contemporary forms of idol worship, I intend viewers to experience the intense emotional relations that fans develop with their icons.  It induces viewers to inhabit what might be called fanspace: a highly charged ambivalent state that oscillates between sympathy and criticism, love and disgust.  The work is driven by my sincere love for and identification with the subcultures it represents.  Simultaneously, elements of punk aesthetic and attitude seed the work with dystopic implications – suggesting our civilization is in deep decline.

Gabrielle Gopinath studies modern and contemporary art in the postwar period. Her research interests include contemporary art, video and new media. Her book manuscript in progress addresses subject/object relations in early video art. She is currently working on an essay about 1960s performance artists’ engagement with laboratory techniques and operant conditioning. She has recently completed two articles titled “Not I: Oral Fixations in 1970s Video” and “Reversing Time’s Arrow in Nam June Paik’s Guadalcanal Requiem.” She will be presenting the latter at the Universities Art Association of Canada’s annual conference in Ottawa this fall.

Johalla Projects Presents James Jankowiak’s “The Profane Illumination”

“Caffeinated Consciousness”  11″ x 14″  Acrylic on masonite  2012

Profane Illumination

A Solo Show By James Jankowiak

April 6 – April 28 

Opening Reception: Friday, April 6, 7-10PM

Johalla Projects

1821 West Hubbard Street, Suite 110

Chicago, IL 60622

Gallery Hours By Appointment Only

A brief history of collaboration has reached its climax in The Profane Illumination, Johalla Projects Presents…James Jankowiak. This will be James’ first solo show with the collective, but it is definitely not the perfect pair’s first time at the prom, so to speak. Over the last couple of years, Johalla Projects and James have fostered quite the artistic relationship through creative discussions, group shows at NEXT Art Fair, and media shout-outs (James’ work was most recently featured on the cover of The Reader in collaboration with Johalla Projects).

Having recognized James’ strength and fortitude as an artistic force in the vibrant Chicago arts community as far back as his graffiti days in the late 1980s, Johalla Projects acknowledged this seemingly ready-made relationship and has provided Mr. Jankowiak with the ideal platform on which to exhibit a portion of his amazing body of work and installation, including paintings that thoroughly explore the scintillating relationship between the artist’s hand, retinal reaction and the intricacy of the line with which it is connected.

While the atmosphere will be one of white walls and bright lights, Johalla Projects has never been strident on keeping their artists contained. With such community projects like commissioned murals, our display of art through our CTA innovative projects, the upcoming Pop-Up Loop adoption, and a plethora of neighborhood specific directives, the collective has always maintained its integrity and dedication to the urban artist. What better marriage than that of Johalla Projects and James Jankowiak?

For additional info about the artists or Johalla Projects, please contact Director Anna Cerniglia at anna.cerniglia@gmail.com

JOHALLA PROJECTS and RATIONAL PARK present PHYSICAL EVIDENCE

(from L to R: Zak Sally, page from Sammy the Mouse; John Porcellino, panel from King-Cat; Dale Flattum)

PHYSICAL EVIDENCE

One Night Only

Saturday, March 24, 7pm to 11pm

Rational Park, 2557 W. North Avenue

PHYSICAL EVIDENCE, a collaboration between Johalla Projects and Rational Park, is a one-night group show celebrating the sustainability of DIY practices, featuring the work of Zak Sally, John Porcellino and Dale Flattum. The show, presented salon-style, will give viewers a chance to see the scope of the original works of art. Hand-assembled and/or printed zines, comic books, gig posters and screen-printed sculptures will be available for viewers to purchase. They are physical objects, hand-made and hand-distributed, reminders of the artistic means accessible to individuals with a desire to do it themselves.

The show will be the release event for Sally’s new comic book, SAMMY THE MOUSE, Porcellino’s latest issue of King-Cat #72, and Flattum’s TOOTH: The Graphic Art of Dale Flattum.

For more information, please contact Grace Tran at grace.pt.tran@gmail.com or 630/234-3992.

Jessica Taylor Caponigro at Wow-House (via Johalla Project Artists Blog)

Check out the newest post on the Johalla Projects Artist Blog to learn all about Jessica Taylor Caponigro’s work processess and inspiration as well as her recent spot in Wow-House, the current group show at the Johalla Projects!

Circus, Circus II, 2012

Check out this work in the group show Wow-House at the Johalla Projects by scheduling an appointment! The show is up until March 25th at 1821 West Hubbard Street
Suite 110 – Chicago, IL 60622

Johalla Projects Presents Montgomery Kim

Johalla Projects and ACRE Residency Presents

Once, We Were Giants 

A solo exhibition by Montgomery Kim

February 2 – 6, 2012

Please join us for an opening on THURSDAY, February 2nd, from 7 – 10pm

Johalla Projects

1821 W. Hubbard Street, Suite 110

Chicago, Il 60622

By Appointment Only 

Once, We Were Giants

In our era of super-technologies and hyper-infrastructures, the gap between body and mind seems to become exponentially smaller and blurred. The link between the physical world around us and ideology seamlessly blend into one another, as one is borne from the other in no discernible order. The niches we establish are formed by ever more calculated measures, which we perceive as extensions of our selves. In so doing, our person- our physical being – not only becomes one with external stimuli, but exists with infinite potential. It is possible now for us to immortalize our selves, not through God, but by becoming gods of our own.

The process for producing these works has been one of collecting and combining distinct visual elements from one overarching theme, and combining them in a collage-like manner. The elements presented in a piece, though visually cohesive, are meant to be brought together in the viewer’s mind in an intuitive manner. The shapes, colors, and objects brought together in these works exist through a kind of dream logic, whereby these elements ebb and flow between being singular parts and being a singular unit.

The primary conceptual concern was a term used by economists to describe excess consumption and over-saturation. This law of diminishing marginal utility was once described to Kim as follows:

“You purchase one whole cake for $5. It is a delicious cake and you are allowed to eat as much as you please. You are not, however, allowed to take any of it home. So you stuff your face with as much cake as possible. After the second or third slice, you will most likely not be enjoying your cake anymore. But you’ve paid for the whole cake and it would seem a waste to not get your money’s worth. What you do not realize is that the $5 dollars you paid is gone, and that there is only one peak point of satisfaction when consuming anything. Anything after this point is either dissatisfying and burdensome, or completely neutralized in its worth.”

Montgomery (Bum Joo) Kim works primarily with wood and pre-made objects. Kim explores themes of intercultural exchange and globalization and their effects on social consciousness. By looking at traditional imagery through the lens of contemporaneity, the objects and scenarios Kim creates are paradoxical attempts at nostalgia; they are memorabilia from a potential past, present or future.

Kim is a sculptor from Mexico City, Mexico. He graduated from The School of the Art Institute in 2011 with a BFA with a focus in Sculpture, for which he was awarded the Edward Ryerson Fellowship award. He is currently based in Chicago, and is the Gallery Assistant and Project Director for THE LAND: Artist Residency Program at the Chicago Urban Art Society.

Find Kim here!

Johalla Teams Up With Sixty Inches From Center

Johalla Projects is excited to once again team up with our good friends over at Sixty Inches From Center (SIFC), the renowned, Chicago-based arts archive and collective.

This time, we’re working with SIFC to help restore a public mural by artists Nick Adam and Thor that was originally begun in October of 2009 at the Logan Square Blue Line stop. The mural, entitled “Home,” uniquely serves as a visual expansion of the home that extends to the neighborhood.It raises awareness and is a reminder that our public space is where we live as well. It is a welcome-mat inviting life, love, growth, investment, respect, and care. It’s these characteristics of home that lend themselves towards thriving and prosperous communities. After all, we think that public art should translate to anyone that experiences it, so the creative vision for this project is for the artists to compose a combination of literal and abstract representations that play on the sentiment of “home”.

However, on its last day of installment a large storm hit and destroyed the mural up to its installation point. Because of this tragic event, some of the initial sponsors had to withdraw funding due to the lack of promotions.

SO, with the fabulous help of Sixty Inches From Center and Alderman Rey Colon, we are IMMENSELY enthusiastic about raising the remaining funds needed to complete the mural at a soon-to-be-announced fundraiser!

So, please stay tuned and keep your eyes and ears open for an upcoming event…We’ll be back soon to give you more information and hope you can join us!