Anyone Can Learn to Paint

ACRE Residency 2012

noreply@blogger.com (Steven Frost) — Tue, 11 Sep 2012 05:25:00 +0000

Images from my 2012 residency in Steuben, WI.

Openings: Joint Disassembly

noreply@blogger.com (Steven Frost) — Mon, 02 Jan 2012 07:00:00 +0000

Steven Frost & David Hartwell: Joint Disassembly
Robert Bills Contemporary
2608 Georgia Ave NW, Washington, DC
December 12 - January 21
Photos courtesy of David F. Hartwell

Openings: Human Mansprings @ Pleasant Plains Workshop, DC

noreply@blogger.com (Steven Frost) — Tue, 01 Nov 2011 05:12:00 +0000

Steven Frost: Human Mansprings
Pleasant Plains Workshop
2608 Georgia Ave NW, Washington, DC
October 12 - November 12
Photos courtesy of Pleasant Plains Workshop & Matthew Smith

Video: Touching You, Touching Me @ Roxaboxen

noreply@blogger.com (Steven Frost) — Wed, 26 Oct 2011 16:09:00 +0000

Touching You, Touching Me, 2011

A performance created for the exhibition Splay
at Roxaboxen Exhibitions in Chicago, IL (August 26, 2011).
Performers: Steven Frost & Michael Earl
Choreographed by Steven Frost
Script adapted from "Sweet Caroline" by Neil Diamond
Exhibition Curated by Marissa L. Perel
Video by Ivan Lozano

Openings: every man a winner, Coop Gallery, Nashville, TN

noreply@blogger.com (Steven Frost) — Fri, 05 Aug 2011 19:30:00 +0000

Steven Frost: every man a winner
Coop Gallery
75 Arcade, Nashville, TN 37219
July 3 - July 30, 2011
Photos courtesy of Coop Gallery

Openings: Please Touch the Artwork

noreply@blogger.com (Steven Frost) — Fri, 22 Jul 2011 21:34:00 +0000

Please Touch the Artwork
2130 W Chicago Ave, Chicago, IL
July 16 - July 21, 2011

Adam Rose, Asha Tamirisa, Eric Stefanski, Fereshteh Tooshi, Hyeon Kim, Jennifer Grossman, Kate Hampel, Marci Rubin, Micele Bock, Steven Frost, and Youn Joon Kwak

Curated by Emma Stein

A multi-sensory, contemporary art exhibition that makes art accessible to the visually impaired.

The exhibition will feature non-visual curatorial methods and artwork that is accessible by its multi-sensory nature. In addition to advancing the field of art accessibility, the exhibition will also provide a meaningful experience for the sighted, giving participants an opportunity to branch out of strictly visual modes of engagement with artworks.

[Photos courtesy of James Martin Pepper Kelly (top 6) & Emma Stein (bottom 3)]

Video: BOOK OF THE TUMBLR ON FIRE (A COLLABORATION WITH JOHN NEFF)

noreply@blogger.com (Steven Frost) — Fri, 03 Jun 2011 23:17:00 +0000

"Invited to participate in an evening of artists' lectures on the subject of "magic" organized for the Chicago Museum of Contemporary Art by the blog Bad at Sports, but unable to attend the event in person, John Neff and Ivan Lozano instead produced the collaborative "video lecture" BOOK OF THE TUMBLR ON FIRE. Improvised within a tripartate structure over three short editing sessions, BOOK... was assembled from a collection texts and video clips gathered from the web. Its montage technique and "look" were inspired by the wildly heterogeneous visual style of image-and-text based Tumblr microblogs. Using this approach, BOOK... presents a materialist interpretation of "magic," concentrating less on concepts of magical cause and effect and more on the fantastic pleasures that can erupt in the embrace of impurity, polysemy and randomness." -I.L.

Video: Lazarus Taxon

noreply@blogger.com (Steven Frost) — Fri, 03 Jun 2011 23:15:00 +0000

Lazarus Taxon, 2010

Using archival footage and ritualistic costumes, the video Lazarus Taxon tells the story of the lost love between a man and a marsupial. The video’s narrative draws from the work of Ernest Hemmingway and the field of Eclipsazoology (the study of extinct animals).

In the Gallery: MFA Thesis Exhibition, School of the Art Institute of Chciago

noreply@blogger.com (Steven Frost) — Sun, 17 Apr 2011 16:31:00 +0000

MFA Thesis Exhibition
"The world is not a calm place."
Sullivan Galleries, School of the Art Institute of Chicago
April 29–May 20

Jesse Butcher
Steven Frost
David R Harper
Ivan Lozano
Soo Shin

Hours: Tuesday–Saturday 11am–6pm
Reception: Friday, April 29, 8:00–10:00 p.m.
The exhibition will also be open on Monday, May 2, 11 a.m.–6 p.m

Openings: Exploding Faces, [Confining Spaces] at Robert Bills Contemporary

noreply@blogger.com (Steven Frost) — Fri, 18 Feb 2011 05:24:00 +0000

Exploding Faces, Confining Spaces
Robert Bills Contemporary
Nathan Vernau, Steven Frost, Tiphanie Spencer
12 February 2011 — 15 March 2011

Openings: Soo Shin: Emotional D.I.Y.

noreply@blogger.com (Steven Frost) — Tue, 11 Jan 2011 20:13:00 +0000

Emotional D.I.Y
Soo Shin
Dittmar Memorial Gallery at Northwestern University
January 3 – February 6, 2011

Openings: Wet Affairs, Swimming Pool Project Space

noreply@blogger.com (Steven Frost) — Mon, 13 Dec 2010 22:20:00 +0000

WET AFFAIRS: New Work by Jesse Butcher

Butcher uses text-based iconography as an analysis of complex American ideas about good and evil. He presents the land's love for antagonists within his own personal mythology. He references the psychological hinterland at the core of an ultimately fear-based culture and reflects about a mean spirited society where America becomes either/or, a potential Promised Land on Earth. These Big Symbols exemplify a mentality of every man for himself in blockbuster rhetoric where grey does not exist. This results in an anarchy of Libertarianism proving that one is either black or white/damned or saved.

Exhibition continues through January 9th.

Gallery Hours: Tuesdays and Sundays from 1-5pm

-text from swimmingpoolprojectspace.com

Openings SAIC Sullivan Galleries

noreply@blogger.com (Steven Frost) — Sat, 11 Dec 2010 22:59:00 +0000

All the best, 

December 11, 2010-January 22, 2011

This exhibition features new work by the artists and writers in Text Off the Page, including collaborative projects, performances, installations, and language-based projects. Artist featured: Shanita Bigelow, Troy Briggs, Annette Elliot, Sarah Jones, Nazafarin Lotfi, Joaquin Lowe, Joel Parsons, David Scheier, Corkey Taylor Sinks, Jillian Soto, Hurmat Ulain, and Colin Winnette.

Stories of Relativity  December 11, 2010-January 22, 2011

How do we relate to one another? The nine artists in this exhibition explore the complex nature of human connectivity, considering how time, identity, and interpersonal tensions shape our relationships and affect our interactions. Featuring recent work by: Hope Esser, Jang soon Im, Je Je Je Jiyeon Lim, Zihan Loo, Cheryl Pope, Casilda Sanchez, Chryssa Tsampazi, Andrew Norman Wilson, and Wei-Hsuan Vicky Yen. Curated by Amelia Love (MA 2013), Curatorial Assistant, Department of Exhibitions.

Channel, Channel, Channel, Channel, Channel, Channel, Channel, Channel December 11, 2010-January 22, 2011

The eight artists participating in the Video Installation course attempt to investigate, analyze and confront various aspects of this practice by focusing on issues of separation and contact. Their work tackles formal questions emerging from constructing multichannel installation, as well as from the intersection of a single-channel, time-based medium with a given space and performed actions. Featuring: Emilie Crowe, Lindsay Denniberg, Marco Godoy, Mikey McPariane, Brianne Milder, MZL, Wang Ye-Feng, and Courtney Bird Ziegler.

-text from saic.edu

In the Studio: Prep for Critique Week

noreply@blogger.com (Steven Frost) — Fri, 10 Dec 2010 03:02:00 +0000

Steven Frost

Jesse Butcher

In the Studio: Collaboration #3 by Ei Jane Janet Lin & Miao Jiaxin

noreply@blogger.com (Steven Frost) — Wed, 17 Nov 2010 20:07:00 +0000

Collaboration #3 from Ei Jane Janet Lin & Miao Jiaxin on Vimeo.

Also see: Introductions: Janet Lin

Openings: PEELING PLACES @ Gallery X

noreply@blogger.com (Steven Frost) — Wed, 17 Nov 2010 00:06:00 +0000

Gallery X, 280 S. Columbus Drive, Room 113
November 16 - December 4

Liene Bosque (MFA 2010) and Nicole Seisler (MFA 2010) work independently and collaboratively to highlight unseen elements of the sites and cities that we inhabit. Through the use of materials such as snow, clay, latex, and burlap, these artists create ephemeral outdoor interventions that surprise the passerby and encourage one to search for the unexpected within the everyday. PEELING PLACES consists of new works that use the context of the gallery space to evoke similar encounters with these temporary events. -SAIC Press Release

Also see: Introductions: Liene Bosque (2.24.2010)

Lecture: Virtual Assistance Meeting with Andrew Norman Wilson

noreply@blogger.com (Steven Frost) — Thu, 11 Nov 2010 21:35:00 +0000

Tuesday night at Threewalls Norman Wilson presented his project Virtual Assistance.

More Than Meets the Eye (Virtual Assistance project video excerpt) from Andrew Norman Wilson on Vimeo.

2010 SAIC MFA Open Studios Part 3 of 3

noreply@blogger.com (Steven Frost) — Sat, 06 Nov 2010 23:57:00 +0000

2010 SAIC MFA Open Studios Part 2 of 3

noreply@blogger.com (Steven Frost) — Sat, 06 Nov 2010 23:43:00 +0000

2010 SAIC MFA Open Studios Part 1 of 3

noreply@blogger.com (Steven Frost) — Sat, 06 Nov 2010 23:26:00 +0000

Don't Quit. Suffer Now.

noreply@blogger.com (Steven Frost) — Mon, 06 Sep 2010 23:28:00 +0000

Images of my collaboration with Jesse Butcher. On view through November 5th at 18 S. Wabash, Chicago, IL.

In the Wires: Art21 Guest Blogger

noreply@blogger.com (Steven Frost) — Sat, 21 Aug 2010 14:16:00 +0000

I just finished a short stint as a blogger for the Art21's Guest Blog. Check my posts on Josh Faught, Harmony Hammond, Mark Newport, and Catwoman.

Introductions: Matthew Schlagbaum

noreply@blogger.com (Steven Frost) — Wed, 12 May 2010 06:14:00 +0000

This week's MFA Fiber and Material Studies lecture will be presented by Matthew Schlagbaum. Matthew received a BA in Psychology and a BFA with a concentration in sculpture and extended media from the University of South Florida. He has shown extensively throughout his native state of Florida and is currently preparing for a solo show this fall in SAIC's SUGS Gallery.

A complex identity develops in Schlagbaum's work which forged from elements he describes as, "Interpersonal relationships, maleness/manhood, and my feelings of embarrassment, guilt, numbness and shame." In his system of upturned material hierarchies two-by-fours and dead house plants hold the same status as his finely edited photographs. In several he works draws attention to the knots in wood as a point of failure and a point of growth. He highlights the boards flaws by painting all but the knots a glimmering gold. Then in another piece heavily knotted wooden planks frame a photograph of his body covered in a temporary tattoos of knots. The gesture of placing the knots on his self-portrait speaks to an identity under attack and simultaneously anthropomorphizes the boards which frame it.

Schlagbaum's work is greatly informed by found materials which possess what some may consider a low value. When gathering materials for his studio he sees himself as a sort of organized hoarder. Matthews had transforms knick-knacks and rvinyl brick wallpaper in to objects with rich authentic values. His found object constructions balance a sense of instantaneous recognition and a laboriously constructed alienation. In the piece above he gathered gifts and tokens from his apartment whose only value was the sentimentality attached to them. He swaddled each object in saran wrap and arranged them in a grave-like formation propped against an obscured photograph from a past relationship. His grave of mementos emotes a sense of sadness and remind viewers of the frailness in their attachments to both objects and life. They become stand-ins for people in our lives who are no longer physically present. Like much of Schlagbaum's work this piece allows people to enter both the narrative of the artist and their own nervous psyche.

Matthew Schlagbaum's lecture is Wednesday, May 12th at 12:10 in Sharp 903 at 37 S. Wabash St., Chicago, IL. If you miss it be sure to check out his website to see past work and read his full resume.

This will be the final lecture in the Spring 2010 MFA Fiber and Material Studies Series. I will be taking a summer vacation from my blog and return in late August. When the semester begins next September I will feature short video interviews with each of the Fall 2010 lecturers.

Introductions: Kate Hampel

noreply@blogger.com (Steven Frost) — Tue, 27 Apr 2010 05:49:00 +0000

This week's MFA Fiber and Material Studies lecture will be presented by Kate Hampel. Kate has an undergraduate degree in Fiber from Concordia University in Montreal Canada. She has also studied at the Centre des Textiles Contemporains, in Montreal and Ryerson University in Toronto, Canada. Her résumé includes solo shows in Toronto, Canada and Daegu, Korea, as well as recent group exhibitions at the Larch, Woman Made Gallery, 1366 Space, and Beverly Art Center in Chicago.

Hampel employs fiber, photography, writing, and performance to create work which is sometimes autobiographical, sometimes abstract, and always emotionally compelling. In her piece look honey, i made you a new one, she confronts a lover (or ex-lover) with a photograph of her holding a reassembled cow heart. The heart has been put back together with medical sutures. The piece is visceral and speaks not just to loss but also to a mechanical or systematized attempt to recover from emotional destruction. Hampel's choice of medical sutures creates a sense of distance from her and the photograph's intended audience. For her this gory act appears simultaneously personal and procedural.

Her current work uses photographs and performance to focus on interpersonal relationships in a domestic context with a specific interest in domestic violence. Using make-up she creates bruises which become physical representations of the long-lasting emotional damage which is sometimes left by others. Hampel writes, "There’s a rupture there that draws me in—closeness, domesticity and family ties open up a chasm of emotion where we find the worst as well as the best." In Hampel's piece something you can believe in, she assumes constructed bruises while sitting next the the famous 1984 Nan Goldin photograph, Nan after being battered. In Goldin's piece she dresses up in her best clothes after being beaten. Hampel seems to take on Goldin in her photograph while paying homage to her as well. Hempel's confrontational gaze implies that while Goldin's physical wounds healed, the emotional damage may never go away.

Kate Hampel's lecture is Tuesday, April 27th at 12:10 in Sharp 903 at 37 S. Wabash St., Chicago, IL.

There will be no lecture next week but in two weeks this semester's noon hour lecture series will conclude with a presentation by Matthew Schlagbaum (Wednesday 5/12).

Introductions: Janet Lin

noreply@blogger.com (Steven Frost) — Thu, 15 Apr 2010 06:19:00 +0000

This week's MFA Fiber and Material Studies lecture will be presented by Janet Lin. She grew up in Texas and Taiwan then received her BFA from the Maryland Institute College of Art in Baltimore, MD in 2009.

Like the color pink, Lin's work is loaded with cultural history, stigma, and refuses to be invisible. Lin launched PrincessJaynet.com in 2009 as part of her BFA thesis exhibit at MICA. For this piece Lin took on the persona Jaynet. Her character shares some of her autobiographical traits but unlike Lin, Jaynet is a World Famous Taiwanese-American Pop Star. Jaynet's personal website includes a centerfold-esc spread, merchandise, streaming samples of her music, and connections to all major social media outlets.

Jaynet's songs address the American immigrant experience with a swagger that is both crude and charming. In her song Naturalization she sings, "Ever since I aced my immigration test/ I got America motherfucking obsessed/ And every time that bitches try to shit on my ass/ I tell them what I learned in government class/ Money! /America! /Freedom!" Lin uses sexuality to confront Orientalism and otherness in the middle-class. Her website is professional and flawless and she has convinced many visitors to her website that Jaynet is real. Jaynet's sleek presentation helps Lin turn marketing back in on itself with her own unique style of culture-jam.

In Lin's newest series she continues to use the body as a sight of protest and moves further into the realm of illusion. She views the separation of reality and fantasy as a culturally constructed binary system and her work strives to straddle the line between both. In one piece she has intercourse with a dildo-unicorn head. It includes one graphic sequence shot in a pristine manner that separates it from the trappings of amateur porn. Aside from herself and the dildo-unicorn the room is consumed with darkness. Her actions are not shocking because of the sex but because of her confidence. The piece provides a peak into her fantasies as she performs them. Lin uses the context of porn to transition the audience from viewer to voyeur and provokes them to take the on the male gaze.

You can see Janet Lin's dildo-unicorn intercourse for yourself. She will be screening it as part of her lecture on Thursday, April 15th at 12:10 in Sharp 903 at 37 S. Wabash St., Chicago, IL. If you miss it be sure to check out PrincessJaynet.com.

Next week's lecturer will be Mike Evans (Friday 4/23).

Some images blurred with the permission of the artist.