“Tangential subjects come into view. The thoughts, however, can, I believe, be traced back to the event of a thread.” -Anni Albers, On Weaving

This exhibition brings together three artists whose nuanced and abiding interests in weaving, fiber, and textile arts evoke the multilinear progression of both thought and material that Albers describes. Melding traditional processes with experimental techniques, Jeffrey Grauel, Melissa Leandro, and Noël Morical create works that are not defined by clear beginnings or ends, but are instead filled with layered compositions that activate color, form, and surface—built thread by thread, knot by knot. “How can [one] know how this thing is done that has never been done before?” Albers asks in a gentle nudge to be adventurous, surprised, and sometimes mystified. These artists push their materials, gestures, and processes into conceptually rich realms and experimental pathways, trusting that one thread of a thought or process may lead in a new direction altogether. Grauel’s shagged rugs, their imagery sourced from decades-old latch hook kits, reveal multiple layers of fibers—rugs buried in rugs—like scents embedded in an old carpet over time. Here, craft kits from the past are adapted into works that are both richly tactile and sculptural, the original imagery obscured and altered into a strangely unfamiliar form. Layered processes likewise comprise Leandro’s vivid textiles which blend weaving, embroidery, adornments,domestic references, and synthetic elements. Each piece pulses with color and shifting shapes and lines, displaying a degree of chaos, as tensions between family history, tradition, and the formation of identity are combined through varied processes and materials. Weaving together the past and present, Morical utilizes the centuries-old technique of macramé to craft colorful hanging sculptures and wall-pieces that exist somewhere between domestic objects, like plant holders or garments, and alien life-forms. Held together through the tension of each tightly worked knot, the pieces seem to generate their own energy—as though filled with the potential to swell and burst apart at any moment.

Jeffrey Grauel is a Chicago-based sculptor influenced by 1970’s hobby crafts. Antiquated images persist. Ideas rendered useless by time remain as flawed foundations. In my work they become advertisements burned in plywood, beer can venetian blinds, rugs buried in rugs. Well-crafted things that are useful outside of an art context, but exceptionally more complex within. His work has been presented in parking lots, former mortuaries, museums, corporate lobbies, malls, abandoned lots, faculty offices, and the windows of Tiffany’s. As co-director at Slow (an artist run gallery and curatorial project) he directs an independent gallery in the bathroom (Loo), brew curated beers, give tours of artwork under hotel beds, and once carried an exhibition in a purse (Clutch Gallery) to the White House in Washington D.C. Grauel received his MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, IL; and BA from California State University, San Bernardino, CA.

Melissa Leandro (Miami, FL) is an artist who works between the media of drawing, painting, and textiles. She received her BFA and MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC). Leandro's woven and embroidered surfaces explore her composite cultural identity through means of intuitive mark-making. Reflecting on her past and present travels, she considers the impact of these environments on the fragmentation of identity and place. Leandro was awarded the Toby Devan Lewis Fellowship and EAGER Grant (Shapiro Center), both for her studio work at SAIC. Leandro has attended ACRE Residency (Wisconsin), Roger
Brown House Residency (Michigan), TextielLab (The Netherlands), and is a BOLT resident at Chicago Artists Coalition. She has exhibited throughout the US at the Chicago Cultural Center;
Efrain Lopez Gallery; Andrew Rafacz Gallery; Arts Incubator; University of Chicago; The Franklin; Gallery 400; Union League Club Chicago; Wright Museum of Art, Beloit, WI; N A W A, New York, NY; ArtSeen Gallery; Flagler Art Space, Miami FL; and internationally at the Central Museum of Textiles, Łódź, Poland. 

Noël Morical (American, b. 1989) lives and works in Chicago, IL. She received her B.F.A. from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2011. Recent solo exhibitions include Skiptracing at Ace Hotel Chicago, High Swoon at Andrew Rafacz Gallery in Chicago and at the Fiberspace Gallery in Stockholm. Group and two-person exhibitions include SLOW Gallery, Chicago; Weinberg-Newton Gallery, Chicago; 99¢ Plus Gallery, Brooklyn; Athen B. Gallery, Oakland; Chicago Artist Coalition, Chicago; LVL3, Chicago.

Alejandro Jiménez-Flores: flowers always…
Accompanied by florencio and Matt Morris

Images of flowers began to appear in Alejandro’s work 3 years ago. At first, Alejandro candidly took these reference images while walking to their studio, but they soon felt uneasy about this act, for it seemed like intruding upon the flowers; framing them and imposing a language onto the flowers that was not their own. Thinking there could be a better language to relate to their subjects (and, in a way, to Alejandro’s own subjectivities), they decided not to take these photos anymore. Around the same time, they started to receive and use photos of flowers sent to them by friends, usually with text (“So happy to have you in my leaf! ”). These images contained a softer language and offered an encounter (interweaving) of Alejandro’s personal narrative with those of the flowers.

In a new series of works, Alejandro traces lines from these floral compositions on film and makes stencils by cutting through the lines. Drawing and tracing from these images, they aim to unravel what lies in between the lines: a kind of writing, a correspondence, a longing (“thinking of you”), a conjuring of a language that is yet to be. The outline of a leaf overlaps over a petal, and they begin to communicate, just like in nature when the sun shines on the petals and casts its outline onto the leaves, and the leaves in the shadow (the obscured presence of the sun) feels the transferred presence of the petals.

Furthermore in this show, Alejandro mines images from memory to explore relationships to self and family (both chosen and determined by birth). Alejandro draws from memory the geraniums from their aunt's garden, where they recall playing with their cousin and collecting dried petals and leaves from the geraniums and placing them into a bucket with water and dirt. Stirring this concoction with a stick, playing witchcraft (“haciendo brujeria”) to conjure up a spell, but what spell? It was probably all gibberish, but perhaps they were already learning to speak a language of flowers, learning from the way the flowers communicate, of pigments and shapes, of color and effect of light, their pure materiality and its exhaustion. Alejandro also recalls when they noticed a small voice in their head, florencio! A conceptual personae, And how in their dialogues they both have been making attempts to break out of subjectification systems by learning how to coexist with others and each other. Asking themselves what it is to write (speak) in place of the other, to conjure a language that is not here yet (that perhaps exists outside of straight time), full of sensibilities and kindness. So florencio asked Alejandro to ask their mother to teach them again, just like when they were a child, how to draw a flower again. florencio also asked Alejandro to ask Matt if he could make a perfume of florencio’s essence and Matt kindly agreed.

So come see and smell (and read) gestural propositions for a new language in flowers always...

Alejandro Jiménez-Flores (b.1989) is a Conceptual Artist & Poet. They attained a BFA in Studio Arts from the University of Illinois at Chicago In 2012 & a very minor in Poetry from School of Poetics in Marseille France in 2013 ;). Through a process based conceptual practice, they think, write, & craft about, multiplicities, becomings, de-subjectifications, funny things, & likes using language to assess the limits of semiotics.

I can hardly remember a time prior to the ubiquity of cat-related memes and the oft- celebrated/oft-derided sharing of adorable pics, gifs, and vids in which these felines present an array of subjectivities we daren’t publicize about ourselves; instead, finding fuzzy avatars to display our joy, our worry, and our vulnerability. In the gathering (mis)assumption that we distract ourselves with overloads of cuteness, we in fact find ways to cope with recognized and unrecognized difficulties, dealing with trauma through meowing pratfalls, unabashed grumpiness, elegance, (c)attitude, playful destructions of language, wide-eyed obliviousness, neediness, and defiance.

However, the mobilization of the feline as widely circulated and highly regarded imagery is of course nothing new, especially within the realm of artistic depiction. As far back as the Egyptian tombs, cats have been visually ever-present in representation; offering companionship to the living, escorting the dead to the afterlife. The artists compiled in I SEE CAT PEOPLE acknowledge and pay homage to this grand history of imagery. They also, and perhaps more importantly, render not just images and objects, but something personal and affecting as well.

The truth is, my first cat, St. Kitten, died over two years ago and I’m not completely done mourning that loss. I SEE CAT PEOPLE brings together a group of artists whom I think understand/understood loss better than I do. They also make, and have made, completely arresting artwork about the potency of companionship; how complicated, beautiful, and tragic it can be when we’re in the thralls of it, and also what remains when we lose it.

I am beyond pleased to be having this conversation at Heaven.

Artists:
Antonio Adams
Cory Arcangel & Frankie Martin
Sarah Bastress
Judy Chicago
April Childers
Colin Dickson
Edie Harper
Erin Hayden
Elaine Rubenoff
Christina Zion
Curated by Eric Ruschman

Artist talk by Santina Amato

Free event