A Text For My Friends Marisa and Alex
Written by Shai-Lee Horodi

My friends both use the word ‘relationship’ while talking about their works. That’s not to say that relationship is some theme or a sort of ‘aboutness’ that makes for a connection between their works to account for putting them side by side in the same exhibition. It is their relationship itself, them being a loving couple, that brought this exhibition to be. Hopefully this kind of connection could give account of no lesser strength then the symbolic/thematic commonality that is usually used to excuse the putting side by side of art works. Marissa and Alex put their bodies of work side by side and similarly put their bodies themselves side by side, sharing their apartment. 
Without submitting to the conventional abuse of theory for the explanation of art practice; that is a reversal that refers to theory as if it precedes practice; we might find thought emerging from the works in a way other then the awkward positioning of an artist as the translator of ideas to things. Both Alex and Marissa suggest a triangle of mutual dependence between thought, body and the other. Alex would possibly oppose this articulation and say I should replace the word ‘other’ with ‘another,’ so to imply the multiplicity of centers that he holds dear.
Thought and body are dependent on one another because a body without thought is no more then an object in the narrowest use of the term, and thought with no body remains an ideal that is forever outside experience. ‘Another’ separates the body from the whole, gives it its measures as a particular. It creates the inner, the self that could be alone and therefore could be together. The negotiated space of internal and external that allows for thought.
If one were to ask Alex’s drawings ‘how does thought flow?’, one might answer “in the form of a speech-bubble-eye-tit-cum-tear.” If another asks Marissa’s sculptures ‘where is the conversation about the body located?’, they might answer ‘there is a conversation about the body outside it and there is a conversation about the body inside it. But there is also a conversation OF the body, and of the language it does speak, we know very little. If we were fluent in that language we might ask something other than ‘what would you like to eat?’, ‘where would you like shit?’, where can you lay your head to rest?’.

Alex Bradley Cohen (b. 1989) lives and works in Chicago, IL. His work has been included in solo and two-person exhibitions at The Luggage Store, San Francisco, CA; Mana Contemporary, Chicago, IL; and Carrie Secrist Gallery, Chicago, IL, among others. Cohen has shown in group exhibitions at The Studio Museum of Harlem, New York, NY; The Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, IL; Elmhurst Art Museum, Elmhurst, IL; Socrates Sculpture Park, Long Island City, NY; and The Craft and Folk Art Museum, Los Angeles, CA. He is a 2014 alumni of the Skowhegan School of Painting & Sculpture.

Chris Zain is an interdisciplinary artist with an insatiable curiosity in the boundary of the body in all of its physical and spiritual permutations. Her work circulates through the inability of the body to escape its edges, destined to be a self-contained sack of flesh holding mind, body and soul. Her work tethers memory to the body (as place). Containers for all sentience, our physical bodies are home to a history of touches. Her architectural references slump with gravity on shape and texture, harkening anti-form artworks. Through installation she play with the poetic and gestalt relationship of objects crafted in ceramics, fiber, paper, tar and more. These organic materials reveal the physical qualities of the body in all its mental and emotional states. Her work posits that re-activating sensorial awareness (to the body) simultaneously triggers a sense of empathy towards the fragility of being contained.

Zain received her BA in Art History and Journalism from Loyola University Chicago after completing her thesis on feminist co-operatives in the late 20th century. She received her BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago where she embraced a post-medium studio practice. She has shown her work most recently at Chicago Artists Coalition, Roman Susan, For the Thundercloud Generation, Links Hall, the Luggage Store Gallery, and Brown University’s David Winton Bell Gallery. Zain is an art educator and has ardently pursued alternative educational spaces through participating in residencies at MassMoCa, Chicago Artists Coalition, Ox-bow School of Art and Anderson Ranch Art Center to name a few.

Join artists Shir Ende and Matt Brett and curator Elizabeth Lalley for a walk-through of Shir and Matt’s two-person show “not to scale.” The artists will discuss their practices and also lead an impromptu exercise and experiment in choreography, inviting participants to engage in a walking session through and around Brett’s sculptural arrangement in the gallery.

Coffee provided by Starbucks

“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.