Three Pieces From The December Show

Grace Levine - Invisible Garment - 11 x 14 inches - Ink, Gouache, on Paper

Michael McGuire - Untitled Panel - 12 x 12 inches - Acrylic Paint on Panel

Ji Soo Hong - Pile - 17 x 21 inches - Paper Cutout

New Michelle Peterson Albandoz Wood Piece

Painted Wood - 82 x 80 inches

Las Manos Opening Saturday, December 14, 2013

A Holiday Extravaganza

Good tidings to all. Las Manos Gallery is proud to announce a collection of present and past works by new as well as familiar artists. This show is a chance to see works from earlier in the year at Las Manos, as well as some new surprises by your favorite artists. In the holiday spirit, we’ve requested some of our artists to make “gift sized” pieces, something smaller and easy to take home. Big and small, colorful and stark, sculptural and two dimensional, this show is sure to please the eye, heart, and mind. Join us for a jovial visit, and perhaps bring something home with you this holiday season, for a family member, friend, loved one, or a treat for yourself.

Featured Artists:

Michelle Peterson-Albandoz

Jean Alexander Frater

Michael McGuire

Juan Fernandez

Mark Pease

Ji Soo Hong

Grace Levine

and more!

A Holiday Extravaganza opens Saturday, December 14th, 7-10pm.

 Please join us for a visit with the artists. Light refreshments will be served.

Show runs through January.

Review of the Mark Pease Show - The Chicago Reader

Few art movements in the modern age are as primarily identified with a single decade as op art is with the 1960s. More than abstract expressionism before it, op art was easily digested by an increasingly consumerist society, and buoyed by countercultural currents ranging from public political protest to personal mind-altering experimentation. Although it didn't preclude images of people or things—as a slew of psychedelic LP jackets attests—op art was notable for taking abstraction to a new plateau, merging color theory and the science of optics with the heightened precision that emerging technologies afforded. A big part of its appeal was that it was fun.

But the movement peaked by 1965, and by the mid-1970s was passe, as the world lumbered toward postmodernist reassessment. In recent years, however, when we're temperamentally poles apart from the go-go 60s, optical art is making a comeback—not as retro, but as a lively extension of past traditions. And in Mark Pease's new show, op is still fun.

A painter, printmaker, photographer, and animator who teaches at the University of Southern Illinois, Pease cites among his influences op art pioneer Bridget Riley, James Turrell and Robert Irwin of the Light and Space movement, and sculptor Olafur Eliasson, whose monumental 2003 installation The Weather Project at London's Tate Modern Pease recalls as "a great environmental op art piece."

In his new work Pease eschews the retinal vibration effects associated with early op art's hothouse colors and undulations in favor of a cool, creamy palette, and lines and forms meticulously generated through computer stencils of his hand-sketched patterns. The circular shapes of his silk-screen-on-paper print series Disk Variations II echo early op art's recurring motif of the eye as the door to perception. But rather than disorient the viewer by throwing into question what one beholds, these prints—with their concentric circles and pie-wedge shapes, evoking early TV test signals—are, if not soothing, pleasing in their symmetry and harmony. They work because they operate on a visceral level, resisting narrative interpretation.

The same can be said of Pease's series of paintings Climb Into Space, where he addresses his preoccupations on a larger scale. These works, spray-painted acrylic on nylon, employ rectilinear shapes of banded lines that here and there taper off into slight folds. The results are like watching ribbons unfurling, or waterfalls. Grouped snugly along the wood-paneled walls of Las Manos's latest home, a smaller but better space than its old Clark Street location, the paintings provide an immersive experience that rewards repeat viewing.

Rounding out the show is one representational work, Galleria, a 25-minute CGI animation from 2012. A single-take bird's-eye view of a shopping mall, devoid of people but dotted with recognizable retailer names, it fits with the other works only as regards Pease's fascination with color gradations.

Mark Pease Artists Statement and Process Photos

My work is focused on perception, vision and how we process visual material as we travel through our surrounding urban and suburban environments. I start with a fascination for the architecture of shopping malls, commercial offices, modernist buildings and public transportation. I’m interested in the observation of these places and non-places and other visual experiences as they relate to human daydreaming, artificiality and the recognition of our visual sensitivities. I also draw from a variety of sources for inspiration including Op art, children’s toys and 3D animation. The integration of digital imaging, vector graphics, modeling and animation allow me to reconstruct scenarios regarding these observed spaces. Investigating through several media in projects that are both abstract and representational, I explore the line between dazzling and lackluster, flat and dimensional, object versus image, print versus painting, and mass produced object versus high art object. I’m attempting to create physical experiences in much of what I do; either through optical energies that force the eye to manage contradictory illusions or through the re-focusing of light, shadow and space in a way that the viewer is able to empathise and attach themselves to inanimate objects, architectural elements, and man-made surfaces. 

Mark Pease Announcement

Las Manos November Show - Mark Pease

Climb Into Space

A solo exhibition by Mark Pease

Mark Pease is a multimedia artist working with photography, painting, prints, and animation. During his 10-year career, Mark has shown work in over 40 exhibitions nation-wide. His work deals with spatial scenarios set up by warping and stretching conventions of perspective and Euclidian geometry to present events that challenge the viewers’ ability to measure distance and space. Pease obtained a BFA at Indiana University and an MFA at the University of Pennsylvania, and currently lives and works in Carbondale, IL.

                       

Using a highly parsed visual vocabulary, Mark Pease expresses and explores a depth of concept. Inspired by a consumer nostalgia, Pease silk-screens and airbrushes reduced geometric forms, evoking crisp, new materials, architectural surfaces, and “basically, stuff you see at the mall.” All this in a creamy, plastic-injection-mold color palette.

At first glance, Pease’s work says “factory made perfection,” but a closer look reveals the subtle trace of his hand.

While pleased by the results of silk-screening, a desire for a larger scale and a canvas support necessitated the innovation of a new method. Informed by his work in sign shops and house painting, Pease pioneered a process of digital drawing, hand-cut vinyl, and acrylic airbrushing. 

Inspired by the “flat relief” of air vents, Pease creates images that simultaneously appear flat and three-dimensional. In his newest work, Pease continues to limit variables in the digital drawing process. Pease admits that “on a computer, it’s easy to make something look cool fast.” Yet he practices a certain restrain, maintaining subtlety and remaining at the cusp of 2D and 3D.

In the end, a tranquil aesthetic and a conceptual tug make Pease’s work both pleasing and interesting to view.

Climb Into Space opens Friday, November 1st, 7-10pm. Join us for a visit with

the artist. Light refreshments will be served. Show runs through November.

Up Close - Michelle Peterson Albandoz

Michelle's new over-scaled wood pieces are a challenge to present via photography - they must be seen in person to take in all that they entail. Their scale, texture and presents can only be fully appreciated in person.  Below are a few photos to entice to come into the gallery and see for yourself.

Gallery Hours

Friday 11:30 - 5:30pm

Saturday and Sunday 11 - 5pm

Michelle Peterson Albandoz - Burnt Ziggurat (Seven Panels) -  48 x 84 inches

Detail

Michelle Peterson Albandoz - Burnt Iceberg Series - 48 x 77 inches

Detail

Panoramas of the New Show Currently in the Gallery

Andersonville Arts Weekend went very well, so well that we forgot to take photos of the opening reception. In lieu of that here are two panoramas of the gallery showing the current show. Michelle Peterson Albansoz's new wood pieces are interspersed with work form Grace Levine, Tricia Rumbolz, Jean Alexander Frater, Ji Soo Hong and Rodger Stevens.  Thanks to all that came out Friday night to make the opening reception a success and a rocking good time.

This Friday, October 11, 2013

Andersonville Arts Weekend / Chicago Artists Month

Preview of 'Chicago Artists Month' at Las Manos Gallery

October is Chicago Artists Month and Las Manos will be presenting a group show that will include some of our favorite artists. The show will open on the Friday of Columbus Day Weekend, October 11, 2013. Andersonville, our neighborhood on the north side of Chicago is also initiating its annual Arts weekend that evening with artists receptions and parties up and down the street.  It is an amazing evening! Here at Las Manos the participating artist include; Michelle Peterson Albandoz, Michael McGuire, Tricia Rumbolz, Grace Levine, Juan Fernandez and Roger Stevens. It will be a wonderful show highlighting a variety of styles and media. Hope you can stop by.

Grace Levine - Untitled - Ink and Watercolor on Paper

Roger Stevens - Tanks Triptych - Digital Photograph

Up Close - Jean Alexander Frater

Jean Alexander Frater - Plans - Acrylic, Graphite on Canvas -  50 x 52 inches

Another example of art work that does not convey its essential qualities particularly well via the internet and photography is Jean Alexander Fraters work, currently in the gallery until the end of the month. For example, her 'painting' entitled Plans looks and feels very differently in person than it does here on our blog. Jean's paintings have a beautiful surface and delicate color scheme to them. Although they involve paint on canvas, they strike me as involving drawing as much painting. She works on un-streched canvas, and only when they are finished does she staple the canvas to stretcher bars. The overall effect is of a large drawing with painstaking hand-work, subtle effects and the coloring of a painting.

Up Close - Tricia Rubolz

Tricia Rumbolz - 947 Colors on Black (left), 947 Colors on White (right) - Collaged Paper on Panel - 48 x 48 inches each 

Among the work Tricia Rumbolz has on the walls of Las Manos Gallery this month are these two piece made out of multicolored paper mounted on panel, each 48 x 48 inches. This work is about many things, but many viewers first react to the vibrancy of the color, and then to the meticulousness of the craftsmanship.  In person the experience of viewing these two pieces is mesmerizing; the colors jump and undulate, and your eye move back and forth between the two pieces, (they each actually depict the same sequence of colors but on differently colored backgrounds). None of these qualities are communicated particularly well in photographs. This situation points out a problem with presenting art via photography (and computers, and the internet) - the photograph invariably changes the art being depicted. It flattens, it alters the color, and obviously, it is a change of media alerting a fundamental intention of its creation. Our hope is that few close ups of the piece can to some small degree communicate more clearly special qualities of these pieces. Or better yet, come see them in person if you get a chance.

Contemplating Perception - A Few Images From The Opening

   

View of the Gallery

Tricia Rumbolz, 2 Focal Points - 262 lines, Ink on Panel, 8 x 10 inches

Chuck Rolwing, White Fences, Oil on Canvas, 41 x 60 inches

Digital Postcard For Upcoming Show - Contemplating Perception - Opening August 9th

Our new show with some of our favorite artists opens this Friday. Hope you can stop by. 

And a few images from Chuck Rolwing hinting at some of the new work he will be showing this month.

Opening August 9th at Las Manos Gallery

   We don't have all the details ironed out for upcoming August Show in the gallery, but we do have two of our favorite artist from the old gallery space line up, and we could not be more excited.


   Tricia Rumbolz will be showing with us once again and promises some new color pieces like the ones pictured below. It has been a few months since we have had Tricia's amazing work in the gallery and we are looking forward to having it grace our new space.

Charles Rowling, who has shown with Las Manos Gallery for years,  also promises new work. Chuck is an amazing painter and printmaker and we can't wait to see what he has been working on this summer.

There will also be three new artist showing in the gallery this August; Ben Bauman, Jonathan Cernak and pictured below, Jean Alexander Frater.

The show will open on Friday August 9 and the reception will take place from 7 - 10 pm that evening. I promise more current images as soon as We have them in hand. It should be an awesome show with some of our favorite artists, hope you can make it.

"Chromanaut" By John Mosher

Stories about reality from an absurd mindset- from a hypnogogic consciousness, John Mosher pieces together fragmented narratives, collaging video, paper, and text. These narratives are left incomplete or cryptic, inviting the viewer to imagine and interpret. Mosher's aesthetic is lighthanded, yet bold; bright, yet eerie; and child-like, yet sophisticated. 

Join us for the opening Friday July 12th, 7-10pm at 1515 W. Foster. Refreshments will be provided

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Happy Birthday Michelle!

Happy Birthday for our wonderful Michelle Peterson-Albandoz! 

Michelle and Michael's annual two person show

If you have not yet come by to see Michelle Peterson-Albandoz and Michael McGuire's annual two person show...well you should!

Stop by at our new location at 1515 W Foster right in between Asland and Clark

Th/F 12:30-5:30 Sat/Sun 11-5

Michael McGuire's beautiful ink wash on cardboard constructions. 

All of the pieces for this show were made from scraps of previous works, making something special from the casted-off

Michelle Peterson-Albandoz's wood constructions are nothing short of spectacular. 

Come on by!