Hello Chicago friends. There are so many openings and events this weekend that it was hard for me to select just a few. Anyway, here is my recommendations. The list is a bit longer than usual because it includes gallery openings, studio openings and open houses. There is something to see for everyone this weekend. The event descriptions are taken from Facebook’s event pages. See you around town!

FRIDAY, MAY 29

Reference Rot

Chicago Artists Coalition
217 N Carpenter St, Chicago, Illinois 60607

Friday, May 29, 2015 to Wednesday, June 17, 2015
Opening Reception: Friday, May 29, 6-9PM

The artists featured in HATCH Projects exhibition, Reference Rot all share a penchant toward the informational, the didactic, and the moralizing – traits normally spurned in the mainstream contemporary art world.

Like Hansel and Gretel attempting to re-trace their steps only to find their bread crumbs gobbled up, artists Rachel E. Foster, Maya Mackrandilal, and Ryan Thompson have done exhaustive research in the process of their projects, but their sources may not be evident in the final product. While audiences often times implore artists to reveal more information about their sources, the artists in Reference Rot embrace the fractured, disconnected relationship between the originating information and the mutated product.

Cornelia Arts Building May 29 Open Studios

Cornelia Arts Building
1800 W Cornelia Ave, Chicago, Illinois 60657

The Cornelia Arts Building – Where Art Works
May 2015 Open Studio Event
Friday May 29, 6 – 10 pm

See what everyone is talking about and join the festivities! The May Open Studio Event ends their shows until the Fall! Come see what’s blooming in every artist’s mind!

Join over 40 of Chicago’s best artists and artisans – all opening up their private working art studios to you – the viewing public! Also enjoy special hallway guest artist exhibitions from Robert Pockmire and Karen Lowry, and delicious food from the Donerman food truck outside!

Established in 1986, the Cornelia Arts Building is one of the largest All-Artist studio buildings on Chicago’s Northside. The building rests at the border of three distinct Chicago Neighborhoods; Lakeview, Roscoe Village, and Ravenswood/North Center.

Over fifty local artists and artisans work in this former ice-house, including sculptors, painters, photographers, ceramic artists, print-makers, jewelry designers, textile artisans, and much much more. See what they have been creating on two full floors of working artist studios!

“Biophilia”, Abstract Paintings by Jaime Foster

Elephant Room, Inc.
704 S Wabash Ave, Chicago, Illinois 60605

Jaime Foster will be exhibiting her new abstract series entitled, “Biophilia” at Elephant Room Gallery May 29th through July 3rd, 2015. The exhibition will open with a reception on Friday, May 29th from 6:30 to 9:30pm.

“Jaime’s work taps into our collective subconscious of the deep emotional connection with environment and nature. From a distance, her paintings will simultaneously resemble vast glacial landscapes and intricate microscopic patterns, acting as complimentary and contradictory to each other in an encircling game. The natural elements which flow from an emotional outpouring create fractal natural patterns that draw the viewer into a world utterly familiar yet completely alien. Unlike most post-modern artists in her generation, Jaime’s work is meant to stir, not shaken. They tap into a place beyond language, where sensation is absorbed by visual stimulation without the need for words, as if reaching past the common narrative of storytelling that we use to define our lives on a daily basis. Jaime’s work is at once a mountainside, cell structure, flowing rapids and perplexing botany patterns all combined and swirled together, as if a old soul was given a paint brush for the first time, to create timeless works of art that could be appreciated at any time in human history.” – Michael Foster

Neha Vedpathak – ”Certainty of Uncertainty”

Firecat Projects
2124 N Damen Ave, Chicago, Illinois 60647

On May 29, 2015, Firecat Projects will begin its summer season with Neha Vedpathak’s solo exhibit and installation ”Certainty of Uncertainty”.

Neha Vedpathak’s most recent installation was developed in response to the desert landscape of the American Southwest and to the Arizonan desert in particular. Vedpathak’s practice is immersed in materials and processes, yet her concerns are about the non material.
“The desert seems to be a place where time has stood still, yet change is apparent everywhere,” Vedpathak notes. “When one ponders over the certainty of millennia of geological changes that lead to these unique formations, uncertainty is everywhere. This was a pivotal realization.” Through this installation, Vedpathak wants to bring the wonder and significance of the Southwest to the viewer.

Coakes Open Studio Exhibit

Coakes Studio
2140 W Fulton, Suite C, Chicago, Illinois 60612

The Art of Michael Coakes with Special Guest Artist Michelle Coakes

Marcos Raya’s Fundraising Book Party

Harbee Liquors & Tavern Est.1878
1345 W 18th St, Chicago, Illinois 60608

We are in the process of putting together a new book about Marcos Raya’s last 10 years of art work. The Book will be hard cover, full color, 100 pages. It will include essays by Lynne Warren and Franky Piña

Lynne Warren is a Curator at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago. She is the author of Chicago Imagists (2010), Alexander Calder: Form, Balance, Joy (2010), Jim Nutt: Coming Into Character (2011), Re: Chicago (2012), Miroslaw Rogala: The Breath of an Image (2014), Support Networks (2014).

Franky Piña is a writer and graphic designer. He has co-founded several past and present cultural and literary magazines in Chicago. He is the co-author of the book Rudy Lozano: His Life, His People (1991). Piña was also featured in Se habla español: Voces latinas en USA (2000) and Voces en el viento: Nuevas ficciones desde Chicago (1999). He functioned both as editor and publisher of Marcos Raya: Fetishizing the Imaginary (2004), The Art of Gabriel Villa (2007), René Arceo: Between the Instinctive and the Rational (2010), Alfonso Piloto Nieves Ruiz: Sculpture (2014). Currently, he is director of El BeiSMan.

Opening Reception // The Intentional Scattered. The Accidental Fallen-in.

Block Thirty Seven- Shops on State
108 N State St, Chicago, Illinois 60602

There is an instinct to shore up, to push against entropy. But what happens when we surrender to a kind of spilling out? What is lost in the distance between two atoms, in the unravelling of molecules?

Humanity is gripped with a fear of coming apart. We are all levees and dams and belts and suspension. We are caught at the apogee in a skyward trajectory: a point at which the object propelled stalls. The push of gravity subtracts acceleration to zero and reverses it; A fall begins.

We are woven into in an ellipse–a circuitous path from birth. As the ocean swells at the closeness of the moon, then shrinks as it recedes, we are alternately drawn to or repelled by our family, lovers, cities, obsessions. We lose sight of, then rediscover and rework our history, memory, and experiences. 

Gravity has these two mirrored tendencies: To collapse into a black hole, or shatter into a supernova. Within this exhibition, our view is drawn to the two sides of this moment of tension, to the materially and psychologically entropic. Featuring work by artists Jennifer Kaplan, Lauren LaRose, Shaina Lund, David Murray, and Daniel Zentmeyer.

This event will take place on the 2nd floor of Block37. 

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SATURDAY, MAY 30

Good Dog, Better Art

Sidetracked Studio
707 Chicago Ave, Evanston, Illinois 60202

Opening night Saturday, May 30th
6 – 9 pm
Show continues through July 4, 2015

Join us as we celebrate our beloved fuzz faced companion, the dog. We are humbled by the art for this exhibit and we are proud to host this benefit exhibition for TRIO Animal Foundation.

About Trio Animal Foundation:
The TAF is a 501(c)(3) charitable organization that assists shelters, rescues and individuals by paying the medical bills of homeless pets. TAF also promotes adoption and responsible pet ownership, including spay and neuter.
http://www.trioanimalfoundation.org/

Bibimbop with Mi-yeon’s 1000 Bowl Project

Lynn Tsan’s Artist Loft Studio,1749 S. Halsted #2F, Chicago, IL

Bibimbop Party For 1000 Bowl Project
We have good news! We hereby announce to the public another edition of our 1000 bowl project at Lynn Tsan’s artist loft studio. Bring your creative ideas and your artistic passion to this event. Bibimbop will be served and the drink is on me in Korean style.

Come and enjoy a meal with my ceramic bowls and take your bowl home.

Ticket:Tickets Starts At $35. Ticket prices reflect the high quality of our bowls. Click here for your ticket. Please also leave a note for your preference for a Vegitarian dish or Brown rice otherwise the dish will be served with beef and white rice. http://myeonpraksis.wix.com/mksart#!contact/c16fm

Dress codle: free style

Participants in this project can help create a story built form ceramic bowls about contemporary visual vocabulary. The ceramic medium was born to serve food and libations and it’s earthy medium. I believe and have experienced therapeutic benefits in the process of making my bowls. I aim to share the therapeutic benefits through my bowls with audiences. The following three bowls are from our last event: Udon Noodles with 1000 Bowls project.

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SUNDAY, MAY 31

Alberto Aguilar: .de.ma.rc.at.ed. – Closing performance

4th Ward Project Space
5338 S Kimbark Ave, Chicago, Illinois 60615

Alberto Aguilar: .de.ma.rc.at.ed.

Closing performance and reception will be held for the artist on Sunday, May 31, 4:00 P.M. – 6:00 P.M.

Artists are keen to understand their environment, audience, and the host of institutions whose interests intersect with the Arts; and the informed artist reflects upon and responds to such specific and broad contexts. Alberto Aguilar understands the importance of this responsiveness, but his artistic work shifts this effort from artist to audience. Rather than respond to a specific site or context, Aguilar’s practice is rooted in re-purposing such sites and contexts. His Domestic Monuments body of work, for example, re-contextualizes the furnishings and possessions of an individual’s home such that these objects lose functionality but gain monumental status.

Presented with unfinished walls and a gallery’s preparation materials, e.g. screws, paint, brushes, rollers, tape, etc., Aguilar redefines the designed and physical space of 4WPS. Lines will be erased, and lines will be drawn. A closing performance emphasizes Aguilar’s demarcations.

.de.ma.rc.at.ed. is presented in conjunction with Aguilar’s Crossing Boundaries Residency supported by Arts and Public Life and the Center for the Study of Race, Politics, and Culture at the University of Chicago.

Mana Contemporary Spring Open House

Mana Contemporary Chicago
2233 S Throop St, Chicago, Illinois 60608

We cordially invite you to our upcoming Mana Contemporary ChicagoSpring/Summer Open House, featuring a new exhibition by renowned photographer David Levinthal, plus open artists studios, kids’ activities, and space activations. Don’t miss out on this exciting afternoon filled with art, performances, and more. Free and open to the public. Details for all the day’s happenings listed below with more to be announced.

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