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Above Image: Bed of Junk Mail – by Barbara Hashimoto

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The Installation Experiment

Curated by Barbara Hashimoto

Six storefront window installation at Pilsen
along South Halsted between 18th and 19th Sts..

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These are:
Billowing Drops – by Nikki Renee Anderson
The Yellow Car – by Bernard William
Portals behind Mirrors – by Ben Foch & Chelsea Culp
Folded Terrain – by Barbara Cooper
Justice Chair – by Gerda Meyer Bernstein
Bed of Junk Mail – by Barbara Hashimoto

 

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Bed of Junk Mail – by Barbara Hashimoto.

“Bed of Junk Mail”, is a whimsical , sensual peek into the guilty pleasures of excess. The genesis of this piece came from “Junk Mail Confessions” video-taped convesation with exhibition visitors in Los Angeles, Paris and Chicago, during the five year run of Hashimoto’s project, “Junk Mail Experiment”. These soliloquies always begin with a rant against the waste and intrusion of this unsolicited postal menace. , but frequently evolved into revealed private secrets of Fantasy indulgences induced and encouraged by these click advertisments and consumer catalogues. In the first public showing of “Bed of Junk mail”, Hashimoto has created a fanciful vignette inspired by two seemingly contradictory forces: the innocence of “Little Nemo in Slumberland”s darkly surreal somnolent quest for the Land of Morpheus, and the casual stark reality of Leon Bellocq’s “Crib Girls of Stroyville” [early 1900’s photographs of private lives of the women of New orleans Red Light District]. This isntallation is crammed into a tiny storefront window space further referencing the Window Brothels of Amsterdam [some of which in recent years have been converted into artists exhibition space] and the comisc strip from the Windsor McCay’s Little Nemo.

 

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Folded Terrain – by Barbara Cooper

Folded Terrain – As the film “Between the Folds” suggests , folding involves compaction and expansion and is found in many places and scales in our lives. For example, geological strata folds to create mountains. proteins in the brain, airbags in our cars, petals in a flower, all fold and unfold as they function. It is a means to make a compact form out of something voluminous and to create 3-dimensional structure from a flat plane of material. A fold implies an unfolding and vice versa and thus embeds movement into form.

 

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Billowing Drops – by Nikki Renee Anderson

 

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Portals behind Mirrors – by Ben Foch & Chelsea Culp.

Wood, drywall, acrylic paint, mirrors, found lamps, spray paint, ceramics, laminate motorized turn-table, book, plastic skull, cow skull, cinder blocks, rug, shiva lingum stone, selenite crystal, carnation, wicker basket, party fringes, glitter, jug of water.

The three totem structures sources several religious mythologies and iconographies as well as the context of contemporary art. Each point toward a degradation of context over time via the market economy and increasing the distance between the owners, designers, producers, and users of object of everyday use. Yet, there is an attempt for the renewal of cultural relevancy by reclaiming both latent and vague history of the objects and making new social rituals and exchange for their use.

Ben Foch and Chelsea Culp have been collaborating since 2009. Their most recent project being NEW CAPITAL, an artist run exhibition space located in East Garfield Park.

 

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Yellow Car – by Bernard William

 

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Justice Chair – by Gerda Meyer Bernstein

 

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RELATED LINKS

My Commissions
Photo-Documentation of Events.. click here..
Published Photographs.. click here..
Public Art Talks.. click here..

Home: Public Art in Chicago.. click here..

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