Photography Show next Friday!

The Photography Exhibition
Friday, April 26th 7-10pm


Las Manos Gallery presents Artists Michael McGuire, Mark Pease, Paul Clark, Juan Fernandez, Gwynne Johnson, Patrick Manning, Emily Franklin and Jim Van Bibber.


MICHAEL MCGUIRE
Michael McGuire photographs, deconstructs, then reconstructs images of Chicago's tenement buildings. New and abstracted structures bloom through repetitive collaging of elements such as doors and windows.

GWYNNE JOHNSON
Gwynne Johnson takes a look at both the future and the past. Her series “This Doubtful Paradise” explores immigrants as they struggle to straddle departures and homecomings and how it shapes their present.

EMILY FRANKLIN
Emily Franklin explores the intangible forces that propel people through shifting identities. The result is the existence in an intermediary state; their tangible bodies rooted in a physical reality but their conscience functioning independently.

PAUL CLARK
Paul Clark’s "Barrier" series is a two-decade-long documentation of gardens across the nation. Clark focuses on fences and wires, which he treats as minimal forms and lines. His witnessing of the passage of time and the changing relationships between nature and man-made structures becomes an observation on life.

JIM VAN BIBBER
Jim Van Bibber presents unusually languid views of  Chicago's own Lake Michigan coastline. Long exposures lend a hand to the enigmatic presence of shifting fog and water. These elements add to a slow sense of disorientation and movement through each image... 

JUAN FERNANDEZ
Juan Fernandez photographs pristine but banal buildings frozen under gray skies. Fernandez “cleans” the images of distracting elements such as trash, cement cracks or rust stains. This process eliminates actual location and time while letting some aspect of reality remain. These odd photographic moments are meant to exude isolation and rejection. 

MARK PEASE
Mark Pease's "Underground" series touches upon his ongoing fascination with form and void. By capturing vacated public transit tunnel walkways, the absence of life lets the viewer visually examine the emptiness. 

PATRICK MANNING
Patrick Manning's "Then She Smiled" photographs feature manipulated inkjet prints of highly-pixelated grins.  The viewer is taken in by the inviting gesture, but simultaneously repelled by lips and teeth morph together. The end result is a study in the grotesque and beautiful as one.

Coffee with the Artists this Sunday!

Have you ever wanted to delve into the artists mind? Now's your chance 
to pepper questions at the artists in the Works on Paper Exhibition!

Coffee, bagel & donuts will sweeten the day too!

Sunday, April 14th noon-2pm

Artists stopping by:

Michael McGuire
Jeffrey Janson
Kathy Trumbull Fimreite
Steven Green
Doug Stapleton
Alan Lerner
Antonio Martinez
Jay Fernandez
Monika Wulfers
betsy birkey

Works on Paper opening at Las Manos Gallery!

Folks that showed up on the Works on Paper Exhibition experienced great art, a toasty fire and some delicious hot toddies!

Work by fourteen artists kept folks visually busy for hours! The show was so well attended that it was shoulder-to-shoulder the entire evening.
Thanks to everyone that came over on the cold spring night!

A closer look at one of betsy birkey's folded books.

Jeffrey Janson stands with a few of his graphite on watercolor images of chandeliers.

Collage Artist Doug Stapleton stands next to his "salon style" display during the opening.

betsy birkey stands with a few of her folded books. She does not use glue or any foreign substance to create her pieces. Each one is strictly hand-folded.

A great crowd for a great eve...

Monika Wulfers stands with her folded "Manga books" pieces.

Young and old wanted photos of betsy birkey's books. Appealing to all ages!

Eric Gushee stands with pieces from his "Emergence" series.

Paul Clark and one of his photographs printed on canvas that stands up to outdoor weather. Friday night was the perfect testing ground to try it outdoors!

Las Manos Gallery newcomer Antonio Martinez and his piece "Diablo II" during the opening on Friday.

Our wonderful Gallery Artist Michael McGuire and his American Flags made of recycled cereal boxes. The gray pieces are India ink on cardboard.

Alan Lerner and his wonderful screen prints.

Gallery Assistant Jay Fernandez, left, chats with friends underneath Eric Gushee's work.

Steven Green with his new work featuring downtown city scenes.

betsy birkey's wonderful shoes!

Jay Fernandez and his "Ren and Stimpy Backgrounds."

Kathy Trumbull Fimreite's piece titled "Jane Teaches Manners."

Michael McGuire serves up some hot toddies to take the edge off the cold spring evening.

Work on Paper Show next Week at Las Manos!

"Sweetest Downfall"  by Artist Doug Stapleton

Works on Paper

Reception

 Friday, March 22nd

7-10pm

 
Las Manos Gallery presents the work of fourteen artists and the inquiry beyond the traditional use of “works on paper."


These works capture the artists' endless visual choices. The lack of obligation to the traditional paper medium has given rise to a generation of artists that are free to explore their work in a new language. They achieve this through the use of uncommon methods and the ever-shifting role of technology.

Gallery Artist Michael McGuire is letting his process become the vehicle that drives his aesthetic. His template consists loosely of the American flag; a loaded symbol that pays homage to work by the artist Jasper Johns. The layered use of India ink on recycled cardboard makes up the body of the flag, incurring a somber unity in grays and blacks.

Artist Doug Stapleton cuts and re-configures found images to set up ambiguous narratives that often refer to the original source. His background in anthropology and art history informs his work. Stapleton plays with symbols and metaphors from language and religion and creates new images with a nod toward the absurd.


Featured Artists:

Michael McGuire, Doug Stapleton, Jeff Janson, Alan Lerner, Antonio Martinez, Monika Wulfers, Grace Levine, Amos Kennedy, Mark Pease, John Mosher, Steven Green, Kathryn Fimreite, Jay Fernandez, betsy berky.

Exhibition runs through April 26, 2013

Las Manos Gallery is now located at
1515 W. Foster Ave., Chicago IL. 60640.
For more information please contact:
mail@lasmanosgalleryl.com

Jackleg Press Reading Series at Las Manos Gallery

The Jackleg Press Reading Series



Friday, March 15th
7 PM @ Las Manos Gallery 
1515 W. Foster Avenue, Chicago



Join us for a special reading from JackLeg Press’ latest book, Hallucinogenesis, by author D.C. Gonzales-Prieto. The evening also features local poets Joel Craig and Nicole Wilson.

ABOUT HALLUCINOGENESIS

In a language flexible, and frank, and— god, I mean, truly— at times mind-bedazzling, the poems explore the slipperiness of perception, the interchangeability of truth and fiction, rawness and fabrication, eros…..and tenderness…. Fresh from reading HALLUCINOGENESIS, I’d say there’s nothing “adequate” about poetry. Indeed, quite possibly, “there is no lamp more frightening in its splendor.”
--Miranda Field, author of Swallow (Mariner Books, 2002)

FEATURED WRITERS

JOEL CRAIG. Author of The White House (Green Lantern Press, 2012), curator of the Danny's Reading Series, and poetry editor for MAKE: A Literary Magazine.

DC GONZALES-PRIETO. Lives in New Jersey with his family. His work has appeared in Sonora Review, the Iowa Journal of Cultural Studies, Harpur Palate, and Quarterly West, among other publications.

NICOLE WILSON. Author of the chapbook Amazing Face (Phantom Limb Press, 2013) and her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in journals such as 1913: a journal of forms, jubilat, Handsome, and Destroyer.

lasmanosgallery.com jacklegpress.com

Photography opening at Las Manos!

Photographer Juan Fernandez stands with his ambrotype during the opening reception of his MFA photo show at Las Manos Gallery. The exhibition features work from his facade, fabricate and The Known Unknown series. Show runs through Sunday, March 17th.

Patrons stand in front of a few images from Fernandez's "Fabricated" series.  

Façade is a photographic project that concentrates on vernacular architecture and spaces, i.e. schools, housing, industrial, retail buildings. Photographs of urban and suburban architecture operate with a sense of familiarity, illustrating seemingly banal moments, however, upon further inspection, certain oddities begin to rise to the surface. I want the peculiarities to exist as metaphors for uneasiness, rejection, and isolation. I illustrate these feelings as odd photographic moments within a landscape of form, structure, and order.

A view from the back of the gallery pre-opening.

Fernandez uses materials such as cardboard, paper, fencing and wire to create studio constructs. These studio constructs reference complex issues while using simple common materials. The purpose for this is to allow the viewer’s subjectivity to aid in the decoding of the images. This subjectivity allows the images to allude to issues of race, power, control and assimilation, all which function within social construct.

The Broken Thoughts Garden courtyard provided a nice place to snack, mingle and discuss the work!

Artist Diana Gabiel takes the opportunity to toast a marshmallow in the courtyard. Her work is on view at the Willis Tower this month!