Sofa King

PLATO GRYO

Sun, 14 Apr 2013 11:37:19 -0400

PLATO GYRO

by Kevin Jennings

Food trucks, fast food joints, and greasy spoons are vying for top rankings and claims to being the best in the city. Gyros were introduced to the United States via Chicago in the 60’s and have been a staple in the pedestrian food scene ever since. Imports from Greece soak much deeper than street food. Plato was a Greek who helped lay the foundations of Western philosophy and science and founded the first institution of higher learning in the Western world

Plato Gyro celebrates the distance between notions of perfection, creativity, food cravings, and physical forms by activating the joy in exploring the minute and colossal ways the physical world defies the ideal world we construct in our heads.

Priced to move, the art in this show conflates platonic ideals and what we find within walking distance.

Opening Reception: Saturday, April 27th, 7-10pm

3216 s. Morgan st. Apt 4R

Chicago, IL, 60608

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Sun, 14 Apr 2013 11:34:50 -0400

Plato Gryo by Kevin Jennings Food trucks, fast food joints, and...

Sun, 14 Apr 2013 11:34:13 -0400

Plato Gryo

by Kevin Jennings

Priced to move, the art in this show conflates platonic ideals and what we find within walking distance.

PLATO GYRO

by Kevin Jennings

Opening Reception: Saturday, April 27,7-10pm

3216 s. Morgan st. Apt 4R

Chicago, IL, 60608

Photo

Sun, 14 Apr 2013 11:32:20 -0400

PLATO GYRO

Sun, 14 Apr 2013 11:30:57 -0400

Plato Gryo

by Kevin Jennings

Priced to move, the art in this show conflates platonic ideals and what we find within walking distance.

PLATO GYRO

by Kevin Jennings

Opening Reception: Saturday, April 27,7-10pm

3216 s. Morgan st. Apt 4R

Chicago, IL, 60608

Photo

Sun, 14 Apr 2013 11:14:49 -0400

SOFA KING WHAT? by Brandon Alvendia

Wed, 13 Mar 2013 23:23:31 -0400

SOFA KING WHAT? by Brandon Alvendia

SOFA KING WHAT? Brandon Alvendia

Wed, 13 Mar 2013 23:21:22 -0400

SOFA KING WHAT? Brandon Alvendia

Wed, 13 Mar 2013 23:16:10 -0400

SOFA KING WHAT? Brandon Alvendia

SOFA KING WHAT? By Brandon Alvendia

Wed, 13 Mar 2013 23:10:00 -0400

SOFA KING WHAT? By Brandon Alvendia

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Sun, 17 Feb 2013 18:36:02 -0500

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Sun, 17 Feb 2013 18:33:00 -0500

Brandon Alvendia SOFA KING WHAT? SATURDAY, MARCH 9th, 7-10pm 3216 s. Morgan st. Apt...

Sun, 17 Feb 2013 18:32:00 -0500

Brandon Alvendia

SOFA KING WHAT?

SATURDAY, MARCH 9th, 7-10pm

3216 s. Morgan st. Apt 4R

Chicago, IL, 60608

SOFA KING WHAT? is an installation by Chicago artist Brandon Alvendia of 100 mixed media paintings.

SOFA KING WHAT? is a reprise of my first “proper” gallery exhibition roughly 10 years ago while seeking my (not nearly as paid down as I’d like) Bachelor’s in Fine Arts at The School of the Art Institute. “THE MOST POLITICAL SHOW EVER” was presented at the then-named Lounge Gallery (AKA Michael X. Ryan’s office) in the also then-named Champlain building at Wabash and Monroe. The exhibit featured 100 paintings made in one week while I was enrolled in the highly sought after course offering Conceptual Approaches To Painting headed by artist Gaylen Gerber. Being the obedient student (AKA Gerber Baby), I fulfilled the challenge by Gaylen to complete 100 paintings in a week. This decision was made at the end of an awkward critique of 5 resoundingly bad paintings I presented (that the class deemed illustrated the concept of “laziness” rather than embody it, which I thought maybe was the style at the time, trying to fit in).

As you might expect, the paintings were executed in a variety of hurried styles, not quite slapdash, but full of an erratic energy dosed with humor (sarcasm), meta-inside jokes (“look how smart I am”) and soft-conceptualism (installed in a grid). I wanted to make sure they were all unique works that could stand on their own but were always tied to their place in the set. All the paintings were eventually numbered in the order of completion and titled one by one. I also wanted to make sure that I liked them and that they felt good. What that meant at the time isn’t exactly clear and definitely isn’t so clear 10 years later, but it was a document of my thoughts and ambitions at that point in my life. The crit went well and I felt I was maybe making art for the first time after Gaylen remarked, “This looks like it was made with someone I’d have a beer with”.

We never did get that beer and the paintings were eventually trashed to make room in my UIC grad studio (after a studio visit with artist Carlos Amorales who said, “I don’t want to sound like your mom, but you need to clean your room…”). I’m not sure if they hold up after a decade but I really hope I didn’t also trash the documentation. What I can say is that the whole experience has stayed with me (as evidenced by its continual presence at the bottom of my CV) over the years and many of those initial impulses continue in my practice until today.

SOFA KING WHAT? is a reflection of that point in time (Relational Aesthetics was still kind of new, darkroom art was still the norm, WiFi was magic and one year into George Bush’s first term!) a work that responds to our current time (Relational Aesthetics is kind of old, darkroom art is an artisanal process, everyone complains that their 3G is f’n slow and Michelle Obama has bangs!) but mostly exhibits my desire to just forget all that and make some paintings.

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Tue, 12 Feb 2013 13:54:50 -0500

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Tue, 12 Feb 2013 13:51:00 -0500

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Fri, 25 Jan 2013 12:22:37 -0500

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Fri, 25 Jan 2013 12:20:00 -0500

ADAM GROSSI’S HOUSEHOLDER

Fri, 25 Jan 2013 12:18:03 -0500

ADAM GROSSI’S HOUSEHOLDER

HOUSEHOLDER New Work by Adam Grossi Opening Reception: Saturday, December 15th, 7pm-10pm Hours by...

Tue, 13 Nov 2012 18:25:06 -0500

HOUSEHOLDER

New Work by Adam Grossi

Opening Reception: Saturday, December 15^th, 7pm-10pm

Hours by appointment from

Saturday, December 15^th, 2012 through January 17^th, 2013.

SOFA KING

3216 s. Morgan st. Apt 4R

Chicago, IL, 60608

www.sofa-king-chicago.tumblr.com

Adam Grossi creates images as a response to powerful experiences and as a way of speaking back to culture. He grew up in suburban Northern Virginia in a town called Reston, a place conceived of and developed along utopian-spirited ideals. As time has gone on, those ideals have been challenged by the dominant narrative of the American pleasant life and the ensuing argument is literally encoded in the streets, the parks, and the homes. Adam approaches his work as a decoding of this perpetual conflict between the spaciousness of ideals and the confines of cultural conventions.

Householder, Adam’s exhibition of new works on paper and paintings at Sofa King, covers a wide spectrum of visual inquiry, allowing the cultural language of pleasantness to unravel through the influence of emotional upheaval, intellectual resistance, and the slow force of indeterminate observation.

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Sun, 28 Oct 2012 23:04:33 -0400