Uss Gallery presents an exhibition about growth and holographic meaning. We assembled the work presented in A Garden of Pomegranates with an eye towards having each piece play-off and sustain the others, like the sun, rain and plants in a Midwestern backyard garden. Painting, photography, video and objects extend and exploit time-based interactions of people and nature, developing a sense of overgrown domesticity. July 6 through September 27. Tuesday, Thursday and Friday 1-5 pm. Saturdays 11 am -5 pm. Or by Appointment: (312) 508-2591.
billy t ::: Antoinette Suiter & Tom Puschautz :: Christopher Staats ::: Gregory Fitzsimmons (Hobo 23) ::
Christopher Staats: In this work, I combine my openness of chance along with my own arbitrary choice. While exposing instant film to the sun for long durations, I intentionally choose to move, shake, and rotate the camera and use materials that change the substrates color, and marks, including plexi, filters, and tempered glass. This method results in an image that isn’t predetermined or recognizable. I’m interested in achieving something that is objective, just like the changeable forces of the natural world.
billy t: throughout a year, plants live similar to the way humans do, but much faster. when humans co-exist we tend to have moments when we are close to each other, and at other times, we opt to move away from others. when studying the life of plants they tend to move in similar ways, guided by the weather, the sun, and chemical changes brought on by their own biology and surroundings. as still as I had hoped I would be able to hold the camera I too was moved and thus became part of the conversation. the side by side screen acts as a way to show what I saw within the independent shot, a reflection of me in my own life, but visually the openness and conjuring that occurs in reflection is what had fascinated me the most.
Antoinette Suiter: I’m currently investigating notions of the term nostomania in my practice. An outmoded psychological term used to characterize a harmfully extreme form of nostalgia; an unremitting desire to return home or go back to a familiar place exemplifies the affliction. A hyper-fear, horror, and obsession with the objects of home also characterize nostomania. Nostalgia in these circumstances is pushed to a perilous degree, and out of the control of the individual experiencing it.
I view my work as a movie for one; an implied larger narrative abbreviated, displaced, and contextualized within the structure of yet another narrative. The objects I see as de-contextualized movie props in terms of form and subject matter, but also self-contained units complete in their own existence rather than secondary forms remaining from a larger whole. This idea of a world within a world, as well as the intersection of “high art” with the cheap sensationalism of pulp, pervades my work.
Tom Puschautz is a painter, illustrator, musician and mixed media artist. A Logan Square native heavily influenced by skateboarding, graffiti art and punk culture– his work often combines humor with the macabre. His current obsessions are scientific illustration and Hellenistic patterns. He also enjoys anachronisms and visual puns
Gregory Fitzsimmons: My practice is a strategy of map-making applied to physical, metaphysical and psychological spaces. I spent about two decades immersed in studying Buddhism, Kabbalah and other meditative traditions, which infuses my work with a contemplative tone that I hope is reflective of my daily approach to both my art-making and my living. The three paintings in A Garden of Pomegranates are maps or parts of maps. Each one uses traditional photographic materials. The fugitive spontaneity of oozing and flowing that is inherent to unfixed photosensitive emulsions is used to form landscapes that will change with exposure to time and light.One painting is about a real place with cosmic import; one is about a mythological kingdom; and the last is a fragment of a personal Utopian community that I have been building for the last ten years or so.