Hyperallergic Review

The Afterlives of Art Scraps

Artists Selina Trepp, Leslie Baum, and Diane Christiansen repurpose their own and others’ creations into new artworks. https://hyperallergic.com/732093/the-afterlives-of-art-scraps-chicago-cultural-center/


Preview of "An Instrument in the Shape of a Woman: Leslie Baum, Diane Christianson, and Selina Trepp."

Lori Waxman's preview of this Cultural Center exhibition that has been postponed due to the pandemic.


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A Garden in Vase

Solo exhibition at Julius Caesar Gallery


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Creative Quarantine: Leslie Baum

August 20 2020 interview with Esthetic Lens magazine about my practice during lockdown.


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Poem From Home: an online project curated by Rema Ghuloum
Beer With a Painter: Leslie Baum

My February 2020 interview with Jennifer Samet for the Hyperallergic feature "Beer With a Painter."

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Ghost TV screens at Forbes Plaza, University of Pittsburg June 24- July 23
With a Capital P: Selections from Six Painters at the Elmhurst Art Museum
May 11 - August 25, 2019

The group exhibition With a Capital P, curated by six local painters Leslie Baum, Magalie Guérin, José Lerma, Nancy Mladenoff, Suellen Rocca, and Kay Rosen, consists of nearly 100 artists in six distinct sections. The title With a Capital P is a reference to an approach that doesn’t always use paint or brush. The group exhibition consists of six rooms, each using different criteria to interpret artistic approaches and a wide-ranging conversation about process and media by artists based in the Midwest and beyond. Artists include Chris Bradley, Zoë Charlton, Mel Cook, Julie Doucet, Mari Eastman, Paul Erschen, Radamés 'Juni' Figueroa, Susan Frankel, Carrie Gundersdorf, Dan Gunn, Portia Hein, Sophie von Hellermann, Marie Herwald Hermann, Jim Hodges, Carol Jackson, James Kao, Brian Kapernekas, Ella Kruglyanskaya, Nazafarin Lotfi, Christy Matson, Tim Nickodemus, Melissa Oresky, Angel Otero, Christina Ramberg, Scott Reeder, Tyson Reeder, Clare Rojas, Lisa Sanditz, Olivia Schreiner, Arlene Shechet, Carolyn Swiszcz, Frank Trankina, Michelle Wasson, Kevin Wolff*, Scott Wolniak, and more. Works by each of the artist-curators is included in their gallery as well.

With a Capital P Artists/Curators

  • Leslie Baum, whose contributions are the result of an ongoing plein air painting project, curated an exhibition including twelve other painters with interests in abstraction and landscape. Their pieces are hung salon style and joined by Baum’s work, which contains light washes and patches of color describing the feeling of a specific time and place.
  • Magalie Guérin, whose painting process includes constantly revisiting and building compositions, chose six artists whose work in sculpture complement some of her own shape-oriented painting process and sensibilities. She states, “Oil paint is sculptural in its application; it is not a far stretch to think about sculpture when painting.”
  • José Lerma, known for works that are part art history and part personal mythology, invited numerous artists to make work on paper napkins, inspired by an installation piece from Elmhurst Art Museum’s collection by Jim Hodges. In this section of the exhibition, the ordinary material of paper napkins has been transformed through the artists’ works.
  • Nancy Mladenoff exhibits several pieces of her own work along with her personal art collection, which she lives with and is inspired by on a daily basis. Mladenoff's recent narrative work explores the vernacular lives of women. In her current series, a frog serves as her personal avatar, providing shared moments of humor, contemplation, and physical activity.
  • Suellen Rocca, one of the original members of the Hairy Who, most recently curated The Figure and the Chicago Imagists: Selections from the Elmhurst College Art Collection at the Museum, chose to focus on multiple works by two other artists, Susan Frankel and Frank Trankina. Providing more exhibition space to each artist allowed a larger representation of their work to be shown.
  • Kay Rosen’s text-based work reveals content through the formal configuration of words and letters, and their deconstruction. Rosen has dedicated her gallery solely to the work of the artist and teacher Kevin Wolff, who passed away in 2018. She explains, “His humor and wit, tinged with a contrariness, mischievousness, and sabotage, infuses most of his works.”

Participating artists: Sahand Afshar, Leslie Baum, Samuel Beattie, Cecilia Beaven, José Bernardy, Brigette Borders, Chris Bradley, Danny Bredar, Ethan Brown, Hannah Buddig, Ben Cabral, Chris Capoyanes, Io Carrión, Zoe Charlton, Ryan Travis Christian, Mel Cook, Decheng Cui, Nicole Doran, Julie Doucet, Jessica Du Preez, Magdalena Dudziak, Matthew Dupont, Cassidy Early, Mari Eastman, Liza Eilers, Jeni Emery, Nathan Engel, Paul Erschen, Peter Fagundo, Andrew Falkowski, Radames Juni Figueroa, Susan Frankel, Sean Gannon, Griffin Goodman, Mary Griffin, Evan Gruzis, Magalie Guérin, Carrie Gundersdorf, Dan Gunn, Efrat Hakimi, Portia Hein, Sophie von Hellermann, Francisco Herrero, Marie Herwald Hermann, Elisabeth Heying, Jim Hodges, Cody Hudson, Richard Hull, Carol Jackson, Caroline Jacobson, Leasho Johnson, James Kao, Brian Kapernekas, Leah Ke, Alex Keller, Dominique Knowles, Michael David Kozlowski, Ella Kruglyanskaya, Eric Lebofsky, Madeline Leplaie, José Lerma, Elizabeth Loftus, Nazafarin Lotfi, Alin Lu, Katherine Marra, Christy Matson, Deanna Miera, Yae Jee Min, Nancy Mladenoff, Amadeo Morelos, Judith Mullen, Tim Nickodemus, Ed Oh, Melissa Oresky, Angel Otero, Ricardo Partida, Josue Pellot, Guzzo Pinc, Ruth Poor, Christina Ramberg, Scott Reeder, Tyson Reeder, Suellen Rocca, Clare Rojas, Kay Rosen, Lisa Sanditz, Olivia Schreiner, Yongxuan Shao, Arlene Shechet, Wei Shen, Woo Jin Shin, Geoffrey Todd Smith, Tl Solien, Carolyn Swiszcz, Sumire Skye Taniai, Lucas Thomas, B’Rael Ali Thunder, Frank Trankina, Christine Elisa Turner, Omar Velazquez, Erin Washington, Irene Wassner, Michelle Wasson, Kevin Wolff, Scott Wolniak

Related Programs

Saturday, May 11, 2019 - 1:30pm

Panel Discussion with curators of With a Capital P

Artists Leslie Baum, Magalie Guerin, Jose Lerma, Nancy Mladenoff, and Suellen Rocca will discuss the galleries they curated for the exhibition With a Capital P: Selections by Six Painters. This dialogue will explore contemporary practices in painting and curation as a means of art production.


Free with admission or current membership.

Saturday, May 18, 2019 - 1:30pm

Director’s Tour

Join Executive Director John McKinnon for an exclusive tour of With a Capital P: Selections by Six Painters and Parallel Perspectives.

Free with admission or current membership.


In Gallery Two My informal printmaking residency with Stan

In the summer of 2014, Stan Shellabarger awoke from a dream in which he was making pressure prints on a letterpress with artist Elijah Burgher (whom to his knowledge, had never made a print before). Compelled to make this dream a reality, Shellabarger took a class at Spudnik Press in Chicago to learn this technique and subsequently invited Burgher to Spudnik to produce a group of unique prints. Since then, Burgher has returned to the press twice more to print with Shellabarger. Shellabarger, a member of the Spudnik Press Cooperative, has in turn invited several more Chicago artists (most with no printmaking experience) to make prints. In exchange, Shellabarger only requests that he and Spudnik both receive a print from the session instead of financial compensation. Shellabarger savors the experience of witnessing the working methods of artists he admires and while working within the parameters of their artistic visions.
Running concurrently with Stan Shellabarger’s solo show in Gallery 1, My informal printmaking residency with Stan Shellabarger — in Gallery 2 at Western Exhibitions — features prints by Leslie Baum, Elijah Burgher, kg (Karolina Gnatowski), Kelly Kaczynski, Rachel Niffenegger, Paul Nudd, Steve Reinke, and Jeremy Tinder made in collaboration with and at the invitation of Stan Shellabarger at Chicago’s Spudnik Press. Both shows open with a free public reception on Friday, March 1 and run through April 13, 2019.

Cloud 9 2.23.19 - 3.31.19 at LVL3

LVL3 blissfully presents Cloud 9, an anniversary show marking our ninth year as an artist-run space. Each year, LVL3 invites back five previously exhibited artists to celebrate their accomplishments and positive impact on our programming as we continue to grow. Cloud 9 refers to the intense feelings of well-being and happiness. The work in this exhibition shares the feeling of euphoria and new found heights. It’ll have you walking on air. Featuring works by Leslie Baum, Will Hutnick, Dan Rizzo-Orr, Esther Ruiz, and Cecilia Salama.
Saturday 23 February 2019
6-10pm

COMP magazine: artist interview
Rebuilding the Present January 18th - April 13th at the Weinburg Newton Gallery

Presented in partnership with the David Lynch Foundation, Rebuilding the Present brings together artists whose works engage a spectrum of meditative practices. The paintings, objects, audio works, and performance documentation on view suggest that meditation can function as a tool of not only self-care but of social justice writ large, offering practitioners a sense of agency to cope in the ever-growing chaos of our world.
Click here to stream Meredith Haggerty's Tiny Retreat, a series of guided meditations made specially for Rebuilding the Present
Leslie Baum, Meredith Haggerty, Cameron Harvey, Susan Hiller, David Lynch, Stan Shellabarger, and Rhonda Wheatley

night brings day/day brings night, a solo exhibtion at heaven gallery

Night brings day/day brings night is a selection of intimately scaled paintings from an ongoing project. This project came to fruition in the shadow of the 2016 presidential election. In that moment, the studio became a refuge and a place to contemplate forces greater in scale than the politics of the day. The paintings that emerged meditate on natural cycles and the passage of time: seasonal rotations, the turning of the calendar, and the rhythmic flow of night into day and day into night. Each work imagines a world within a world: a portal, an opening, into the unknowable, and each is tethered to the hope found in the long arc of time.

Waterworld catalog release

"History merges with the present through the quaotations of Leslie Baum's painting practice. Baum cites imagery from existing artwork as if arranging partners in a duo while simultaneously trying to learn the steps of their dance. Visitors are invited to move into a floor painting, mountainand SEA(partial) p.c. where a Cezanne-like landscape surrounds the body on all sides. In shape of the day:e.v.l.h, Baum references imagery from the plein air landscapes of Lawren Stewart Harris along with the abstraction of Esteban Vicente. Harris's Iceberg, Davis Strait, from which Baum quotes, was first painted during a ship voyage through the artic. The artist describes this series, shape of the day, which materialized in the wake of the 2016 election cycle as a way to meditate on natural forces greater than the politics of the day. It is hard not to ponder in this age of climate change that a view of the icebergs may not be visible much longer. In the work of Baum, we find another avenue to explore the world, what we inherit from artists, and the traditions of the part through her artistic agency."

Waterworld, curated by Holly and Zachary Cahill

Participating artists include: Leslie Baum, Drexciya, Julie Marie Lemon, Iñigo Manglano-Ovalle, Mohau Modisakeng, David Nasca, and Allan Sekula.

Curated by Holly + Zachary Cahill

Pushing Up Daisies at Peana/Monterrey Mexico

A new collaborative piece with Allison Wade is featured in Pushing Up Daisies, a group exhibition at Peana organized in collaboration with Triumph Chicago. 

54 Basel Street: Assaf Evron at the Herzliya Museum

At the heart of the exhibition is a photograph of a concrete mural relief situated at the entrance to the Beit Yad Labanim memorial building (which from 1975 to 2000 also served as the Herzliya Museum's main entrance). In this relief - created by the local artist Shlomo Eliraz - we see a combination of a formal, geometrically abstract arrangement, biblical verses, and excerpts from Natan Alterman's poem, "The Silver Platter" - in keeping with conventional official and ceremonial protocol. Recently, the Mundi_Lab research group of the Technion's Faculty of Architecture in Haifa (headed by Dr. David Behar-Perahia) removed the partitions between the memorial building and the museum, as part of ongoing research that they presented at the museum. Evron has placed a photograph of that relief within the museum space, as an integral part of it, in a bid to tackle the charged historical, national, and local contexts that it embodies. In addition, Evron invited the American artist Leslie Baum - to respond to it in her own language, which engages with the modernist heritage. The juxtaposition between the photograph of the relief and these paintings offers a study of complementary contrasts, bringing together the universal and personal as well as an ideological call for the right to autonomy.

Newcity's Art Top 5: September 2017
Unfunction at the Weston Art gallery

On Friday, September 8, from 6 to 8 p.m., the Cincinnati Arts Association’s Alice F. and Harris K. Weston Art Gallery in the Aronoff Center for the Arts will kick off its twenty-third exhibition season with the opening of UnFunction, a group exhibition curated by writer and independent curator Maria Seda-Reeder (Cincinnati, OH) that examines the intersection of functional objects and fine art.
The materials with which artists choose to engage have long reflected their particular understanding of the complex consequences of art as commodity. So what does it mean for artists to continue to create objects that will likely outlive their makers? Playing with signifiers of both craft and fine art, the dozen artists in UnFunction undermine and reinforce paradigms of purpose—transcribing meaning from the materials around them in ways that make us question our understanding of function. Interrogating the limits of formalism, applications of affordable and abundant materials, and subversions of the semiotics of design and notions of practical use are explored throughout the exhibition in myriad and unexpected ways.
Featuring artworks by Denise Burge, Terence Hammonds, Emily Hanako Momohara, Sean Mullaney (all Cincinnati, OH); Leslie Baum, Dan Devening, Emily Moorhead, Allison Wade (all Chicago, IL); Daniel Bare (Clemson, SC); Tracy Featherstone (Hamilton, OH); Elizabeth Runyon (Oxford, OH); and Chris Vorhees (Indianapolis, IN), UnFunction surveys a broad cross section of disciplines, techniques, concepts, and materials in an expansive installation utilizing both floors of the Weston Art Gallery. 
 

studio interview
LESLIE BAUM HERE COMES THE RAINBOW August 24 - September 29, 2017 Reception: August 27, 1:00 - 3:00pm


The Cleve Carney Art Gallery begins its 2017-18 season with an exhibition of paintings and works on paper by the artist Leslie Baum.
Known for her painting-based installations Baum's work covers a diverse range of surfaces and media. The different materials, scale and installations of her work mix with a sampling and remixing of iconic modern painting imagery. Her attention to, and referencing of, the rich history of painting is a devoted celebration of its history. At the same time her agility and willingness to move throughout that history is a joyful casting-off of its limitations.  
For Here Comes The Rainbow Baum will be debuting two new bodies of work that use the seven hues of the rainbow as a launching point. Central to the installation will be seven monumental paintings on un-stretched canvas that will be mounted directly on a 45 foot long section of wall in the gallery.
For more of Leslie Baum's work visit: http://lesliebaum.net/
#herecomestherainbow

excuse me if i get too deep at geary contemporary

 
 
LESLIE BAUM: EXCUSE ME IF I GET TOO DEEP
OPENING RECEPTION: THURSDAY NOVEMBER 17, 6-8PM
Geary Contemporary is pleased to open this November with Excuse Me if I Get Too Deep, a solo exhibition of recent work by Chicago-based artist Leslie Baum. Geary Contemporary will be hosting an opening reception for the artist on Thursday, November 17th from 6-8 pm. This will be Baum's first solo exhibition with the gallery.
Baum’s exhibition invites the viewer to a visual and tactile experience. Works on the floor, constructed for seating, offer an experiential invitation for contemplation, rest and reflection. Baum's works act as windows, doors, portals; in her words, “a universe within a universe, within a universe” where a shape becomes a form, becomes a sculpture, becomes a painting, becomes architecture.
The fragment is essential to Baum’s approach, with parts that function as building blocks for painting-based installations and also stand alone as wholly realized objects. She samples the modern painting canon across diverse media, scale, and approach, as filtered through the lens of her memory and the vagaries of digital representation. References to iconic paintings appear in varying degrees of legibility, where distortions and misquotations yield unexpected associations and meanings.
Baum’s work is not defined by art historical citation, but in what might lie beyond the threshold. What can be taken/borrowed and transferred to another material? Fragments occupy wall, floor, and shelf to “make visible what otherwise can’t be seen”, an ode to painting’s history and a celebration of its pluralistic present.
Leslie Baum lives and works in Chicago. She has shown her work nationally and internationally, with recent exhibitions including 65Grand, Chicago; Cleve Carney Art gallery, Glen Ellyn; 4th Ward Project Space, Chicago; Hap Gallery, Chicago; Carrie Secrist Gallery, Chicago; Geary Contemporary, New York. Her animation short, the Megillat Breakdown, made in collaboration with Frederick Wells, was included in the Wisconsin Union Film Committee at the University of Wisconsin 2015 experimental film series and in the 2014 Eyeworks Festival. Review and features in Artforum, Art in America, Hyperallergic, the Chicago Tribune, New American Paintings vol. 119, and 100 Painters of Tomorrow. Baum has received residencies at Yaddo and Vermont Studio Center.
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For additional information please contact Sasha Cohen @ info@jackgearycontemporary.com
www.geary.nyc
185 Varick Street, New York, NY 10014
 
 
 
 
 

EXPO Chicago 2016

Booth 553

Leslie Baum
Suzette Bross
Andy Hall

Ohne Titel at 65 Grand


  
We are thrilled to announce the gallery is opening in a new location on September 16th, 2016 with the group exhibition Ohne Titel.
 
Ohne Titel
Friday, September 16th
6:00 pm - 9:00 pm
3252 West North Avenue
 
Featuring:
 
Leslie Baum - Recent solo exhibitions include "Co-conspirators and the Possibilities of Painting in a Parallel Universe" at Hap Gallery, Portland, OR, "Souvenirs from Wonderland" at Hiestand Gallery, Miami University of Ohio, Oxford, OH, and "The Eyes Have It" at Devening Projects + Editions, Chicago IL. Baum's work has been written about in Artforum, Art in America, The New Art Examiner, and Newcity.
 
Kevin Goodrich - Group exhibitions include "Material Flex" at Johalla Projects, Chicago, IL,  "Residual Utopia" at Institute of Contemporary Art, Maine College of Art, and the traveling exhibition "Anonyme Zeichner" at Uferhallen, Berlin, DE; Galerie Delikatessenhaus, Leipzig, DE; and Temporary Art Centre, Eindhoven, NL. 
 
Deborah Handler - Shortlisted for the 2011 Clare Rosen and Samuel Edes Award, Handler's work has been exhibited by SideCar Gallery, Hammond, IN, Anonymous Gallery, Mexico City, MX, Woman Made, Chicago, IL, Galerie Lifebomb, Berlin, DE, and Randolph Street Gallery, Chicago, IL.
 
William J. O'Brien - Recent solo exhibitions include Shane Campbell Gallery, Chicago, IL, Taka Ishii Gallery, Tokyo, JP, Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, Almine Rech, Paris, FR, Marianne Boesky, New York, NY, and The Renaissance Society at the University of Chicago. O'Brien's work has been written about in Artforum, Bloomberg, Frieze, The New York Times and Vogue.
 
Kellie Romany - Solo exhibitions include, "Disseminate" at Callanwolde Fine Arts Center, Atlanta, GA, "Kellie Romany" at Alice Yard, Port of Spain, Trinidad, and "Gestate" at the Arts Incubator, University of Chicago, Chicago, IL. Group exhibitions include "Sprawl! Drawing Outside the Lines" at The High Museum, Atlanta, GA, News from Chicago and New York City" at Fiebach Minninger Gallery, Cologne, DE, "Big Youth II" at Amel Bourouina Gallery, Berlin, DE
 
Opening the following evening, Saturday, September 17th, at SideCar Gallery is Sans Titre. Organized by 65GRAND, Ohne Titel and Sans Titre are conceived as a single untitled exhibition taking place across two venues.
 
Sans Titre
Saturday, September 17th
5:00 pm - 10:00 pm
411 Huehn
Hammond, IN 46327
 
Sans Titre features Kellie Romany and:
 
Judith Geichman - Solo exhibitions include "Solitaire" at Regards, Chicago, IL, "New Paintings and Works on Paper" Carrie Secrist Gallery, Chicago, "Judith Geichman" at Julius Caesar Gallery, Chicago, and "Recent Work" at Mahan Gallery, Columbus, OH. Group exhibitions include "Rocket Run/Abstraction from Chicago" at Elder Gallery, Nebraska Weselyan University, Lincoln, NE, "Figuratve vs Abstract" at the Hyde Park Art Center, Chicago, and "American Abstraction: From the Collection" at Rockford Art Museum, Rockford, IL

Sam Jaffe - Recent solo exhibitions include "Bleed" at 65GRAND, Chicago, IL, "Body and Host" at The Contemporary Art Center, Peoria, IL, and "Haircuts" at Dickson Art Project Space, Waubonsee Community College, Sugar Grove, IL. Group exhibitions include "Unkempt" The Terrain Biennial in Waterloo, Ontario, CA, "Pareidolia" at Red Pipe Gallery, Los Angeles, CA, and "Spectra: Did You See Heaven?" at Peregrine Program: Chicago, IL.
 
Boris Ostrerov - Recent solo exhibitions include "New Paintings" at Portrait Society Gallery, Milwaukee, WI, and "My paintings, I guess" also at Portrait Society Gallery, Milwaukee. Group exhibitions include "Human Sized" The Fine Art Gallery at Colorado State University, Pueblo, CO, "Should have gave you my number" Group show, Art Amalgamated, New York, NY, and "RECONNECTION" at the Milwaukee Institute of Art and Design, Milwaukee, WI.
 
SideCar
411 Huehn
Hammond, IN 46327
708 - 337 - 1090
 
 

 

3252 West North Avenue 
Chicago, IL 60651
312.719.4325 | 65GRAND.com 
   
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Known Unknowns:Painting in Chicago

Known Unknowns: Painting in Chicago
June 2 - July 29, 2016
Opening Reception: Saturday June 4, 1-3pm
Closing Reception: Friday July 29, 6-7:30pm

The exhibition Known Unknowns is a survey of eight Chicago artists who are working to create new areas of possibility within the known confines of painting. Through experimentation with the materials of painting, the expansion of the definitions of what is traditionally defined as painting or by continuing to negotiate the status of the image within painting, the artists in Known Unknowns show us that there are still many things we don’t know when it comes to the possibilities of the painted surface.
Artists Include: Leslie Baum, Magalie Guérin, Anna Kunz, Steven Husby, Sherwin Ovid, Autumn Ramsey, Rebecca Shore and Craig Yu.
For Information regarding this exhibition please contact: Justin Witte / wittej259@cod.edu / 630-942-3206

NEWCITY ART review of Known Unknowns

RECOMMENDED
It’s time to call off the search for “new areas of possibility within the known confines of painting.” Congruent with the mission of marketing consumer goods (including art), that is the stated goal of this exhibition, but all that it has found are the usual collection of techniques and strategies found in contemporary academic art. The strongest claim for novelty might be Anna Kunz’s installation of paint on porous fabric, but the banal results clutter the corner of an already aesthetically challenged institutional space. Some of the other art would look better in other contexts. Sherwin Ovid’s paint-skin-over-canvas “ceramics” would benefit from being hung at eye level instead of above the door, while Steven Husby’s calligraphic geoform and Craig Yu’s nocturnal landscape would greatly benefit from proximity to the rest of their work.
On the other hand, the contrasting work of three remarkable women complement each other quite nicely. Rebecca Shore has chosen to follow the Chicago Imagists. Her work has the fragmentary precision of Ray Yoshida and the repressed sexuality of Christina Ramberg. Both pieces suggest a female torso whimsically transposed into a mechanical drawing. She has co-opted the tireless energy of industrial production for a feminine presence, with just a hint of self-deprecating humor.

Installation view of "Known Unknowns" featuring work by Anna Kunz, Summer 2016
Installation view of “Known Unknowns” featuring work by Anna Kunz, Summer 2016 /Photo: Clare Britt
The piece by Magalie Guérin feels no less precise, though it is defined by scraping and rubbing to a variety of edges that feel like the consequences of hard fought self-examination. The resulting image suggests a human face as seen from behind. Its beauty is that of inner strength as unshakable as a mountain range.
In contrast to both of the above, Leslie Baum ignores herself in pursuit of mystic beauty. Equilateral triangles, inherently mysterious, are enhanced with the kind of lush, decorative designs for which Scandinavian fabrics are justly celebrated, exemplifying the happiness of a well-ordered and sensual life. She has created a kind of meditation center by leaning one of her ornate triangles against the wall in front of an ornate cushion on which viewers may sit.
These women offer three successful strategies for living, as well as making art. (Chris Miller)
Through July 29 at Cleve Carney Art Gallery, 425 Fawell Boulevard, Glen Ellyn
 
 

Legends for Loose Grids

Legends for Loose Grids

May 20–July 24, 2016 
Opening Reception: Friday, May 20th, 7–10pm


Legends for Loose Grids is a relaxed triangulation of artists and ideas, bringing together the work of David Bartley, Leslie Baum, and Alexander Herzog. Together, their studio practices are networked by a shared interest in painting as a process, and format, as well as a concision device for personal vocabularies, grid systems, and modernist art histories.

The grid has long been a logical way to discuss the materiality of painting. Roselind Krauss describes the grid as, “a structure emblematic of the modernist ambition…” she says, “Indeed, if it maps anything, it maps the surface of the painting itself.” Within the exhibition, the artists approach the grid directly, as a framework to operate in and a structure to unbind; as Cartesian space in which to situate relationships; and implicitly, in the methodical labor of production - the repetitive, accumulative, patterned action of the artists hand - or in the cotton weave of the canvas substrates.

In the work, we see warps and wefts of art history; each artist offers a series of chess moves through a chronology of painters, nodding to Caravaggio, cropping Guston, grafting Martin, an offering for Frankenthaler, an ode to Cezanne, an accidental Twombly. Here grids are elastic, and can stretch over space and time, like 3-D checkers. These grids are non-silent, serving as an efficient container for artistic labor and personal and art-historical narratives.

Leslie Baum shares a sampling of new work from her alphabet-like clusters of paintings-cum-installations. Her paintings parade out into exhibition space like scenic design, occupying a bivalence of foreground/background and in-frame/beyond-frame.

David Bartley shares large-scale patterned works evidencing the labor of obsessive patterning, and residual build up, of personal and art-historical histories.

Alexander Herzog’s surfaces are worked with gesso, leaving the corporal traces of the artists hand. The artist likens the methodical practice of building and leveling the surface of his work to the mundane or repetitive activities of the hospitality industry, like washing and cooking.
 

The Annual : CAC

 
The ANNUAL: An Exhibition of New Chicago Art
September 16 - 29 , 2016
The ANNUAL is a yearly sales exhibition celebrating cutting-edge Chicago-based artists. Arranged by a guest curator, The ANNUAL creates an accessible forum for emerging collectors to discover affordable new work and engage directly with its creators. This year The ANNUALwill run for two weeks on either end of EXPO Chicago, opening Friday, September 16 and closing on Thursday, September 29.
2016 Exhibition: SHOWROOM
The Chicago Artists Coalition is delighted to announce the second edition of The ANNUAL with the exhibition, SHOWROOM curated by Edra Soto and featuring Chicago artists and makers.
SHOWROOM, is an installation unto itself, bringing together work influenced by fundamental aspects of interior architecture and design objects, and placing them on custom made furniture by Dock 6 Collective. SHOWROOM aims to draw new connections between our understanding of the relationship between art and design, and to make us question our assumptions. SHOWROOM exists within that delicate balance of the expressive world and the pragmatically crafted architecture that holds it. 

2016 Curator: EDRA SOTO
Edra Soto is a Chicago-based artist, educator, curator, and gallery director. Along with her husband, Dan Sullivan, Soto co-founded and runs THE FRANKLIN, an outdoor project space supported by the 3Arts Foundation, Northeastern Illinois University and the Propeller Fund. Some of her latest projects include: The Elmhurst Art Museum Biennial, The 4th Poly/Graphic Triennial of San Juan and the Caribbean, and the Cuchifritos Gallery + Project Space in New York. Soto co-curated Present Standard, a group exhibition at the Chicago Cultural Center that was on view January-April, 2016. Currently, Soto and Sullivan are working on a commission from the Chicago Transit Authority. Their project, Graft, will be featured at the Western Avenue stop on the train line to O’Hare Airport.
Soto received her MFA from the The School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2000. She also attended Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, and the Beta-Local in Puerto Rico. Recently, Soto completed the Robert Rauschenberg Residency Program in Captiva, Florida through a 3Arts Fellowship.
 

mountain and SEA

February 17 - March 4 and March 14- 22, 2016
Opening: Wednesday, February 17, 5:30 - 7:30pm
SXU Gallery
3700 W. 103rd Street
Chicago, IL 60655
M 11-5, T 12-5, W 11-5
TH 12-5, F 11-5, S 11-2


 The exhibition at Saint Xavier University, mountain and SEA, features an immense painting that covers the entire gallery floor. Baum’s application of acrylic paint appears as watercolor, and the work is liquid and luminous. Composed of 12 separate, but conjoined canvas drop cloths, the painting references tree imagery of Ernst Ludwig Kirshner, Paul Klee, Paul Cezanne and Georgia O'Keefe. In mountain and Sea, Baum creates a space with multiple perspectives, ultimately upending our sense of orientation, location and comfort. Gallery visitors are invited to walk on the drop cloths, to stroll on a painting that, during the darkest days of Chicago, conjures a vibrant landscape.
 

MOUNTAIN and sea

MOUNTAIN and sea

February 28– April 2, 2016
Opening: Sunday, February 28, 4:00 – 7:00pm
4th Ward Project Space
5338 S. Kimbark Ave



1-5 Saturdays and by appointmentThe second installation, MOUNTAIN and sea, at 4th Ward Project Space is primarily engaged with the gallery wall. Continuing to plumb the arboreal landscapes of 20th century painters such as John Marin, Ernst Ludwig Kirshner, and Piet Mondrian, Baum offers the installation as a meditation space. An equilateral triangle serves as a visual mantra, and the triangle appears in a variety of scales and media, most notably as a large, un-stretched painting that reaches from floor to ceiling of this intimate gallery space. The installation at 4th Ward Project Space is the MOUNTAIN to Saint Xavier University's SEA.

APPROPINQUATION

Upcoming Exhibition

APPROPINQUATION

September 12—October 31, 2015


Carrie Secrist Gallery is pleased to announce the group exhibition:


APPROPINQUATION
September 12 – October 31, 2015.
Opening Reception: Saturday, September 12, 5 – 8 PM


Artists included in APPROPINQUATION are Leslie Baum, Shannon Finley, Jamisen Ogg, Min Song and Dannielle Tegeder.


For as long as there has been iconography or idols, monuments to ideas, time, and space have been placed in areas of engagement. With sculpture, the floor is burdened with supporting these objects – creating zones of inferred meaning within the viewer’s personal space. Simultaneously, the wall offers a ready template for parallel experiences: tempting, embracing and occasionally expelling. Sometimes this can be subtle, verging on the subliminal, and other times sensational – implying forces that resonant in one’s core.


For the artists in APPROPINQUATION (n. A drawing nigh; approach / the act of coming into near relation or proximity / The act of bringing remote things near), participation is implied and relationships are encouraged within the act of seeing. From the austere to the sybaritic, the way we move around, up to and beside works of art can be a tangential experience. The viewer is invited to consider their personal space as it relates to each object. Approaching this art is encouraged from every angle.


Leslie Baum’s (Chicago) “moon”, along with her standing paintings, creates an enlarged dioramic experience that both collapses and expands space with the aid of art historical references. Taken in concert with each other, each element of these works create a readymade dialogue as the viewer may see these as symbols or harbingers of what is to come, or what was already there.


Shannon Finley’s (Berlin) work straddles mark making by hand with digital processes to create strangely familiar, yet abstract, visions. The sculptures presented here are a new mode of creating that alludes to maquettes for monuments; built or un-built, that resonates with the context of his hometown of Berlin.


Jamisen Ogg (New York) presents a site-specific oversized mobile constructed from two architectural trusses. Strong yet delicate, this sculpture invites an approach that is cautionary and demarcates, formally and informally, a charged area within the context of the gallery space.


Min Song (Chicago) creates works that traverse multiple mediums from photography to sculpture. Using accessible materials – from found and personal photography to basic building materials – these works create scenarios that utilize mnemonic devices to trigger something that verges on sentimentality, but not quite.


Dannielle Tegeder (New York) With an overt inquisitiveness, Tegeder presents a wall-based installation that incorporates a variety of media (house paint, vellum, wood, frames) into one plane while expanding the meaning of what a composition can be within a specific space. Responding directly to the architecture of the gallery, the networks and systems alluded to are complicated, while meant to encourage contemplation.


APPROPINQUATION is organized by Carrie Secrist and Britton Bertran.


Please contact Britton Bertran for further information at 312.491.0917 or britton@secristgallery.com


co-conspirators

Leslie Baum
Co-conspirators and the possibilities of painting in a parallel universe
September 3-October 1, 2015

Hap Gallery
916 NW Flanders Street
Portland, Oregon 97209

503.444.7101
hapgallery.com
welcome@hapgallery.com

new painting painting issue 119

Midwest #119

Juror: Kelly Shindler


Newsstand Dates: August 2015 / September 2015

Editors Note: Steven Zevitas | Spotlight: Josh Reames, Michael Wilson speaks on his aesthetic characterization | Jurors Comments: Kelly Shindler, Associate Curator, Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis, St. Louis, MO | Winners: Juror and Editor Selections


making strategies


June 12 to July 17

Opening reception: Friday, June 12
6 p.m. to 8 p.m.

Making Strategies explores the unscripted nature of the studio.
This show brings together several artists who devise specific, essential methods in response to personal brands of conceptual physics, long-term grapplings with process, and material invention.

There is no single language for the cycles of discovery and tactile feedback that happen in and around art making. Artists’ in-studio solutions can be confounding and revelatory. It is a forward motion that is irreversible but never straight. From the making well pour endless iterations, harnessed accidents, direct gestures, indirect forces, and purpose built tools.

Grasp the apparitions that vaguely prompt us! Follow flow! Enter portals to strategic quasar imagining!

Making Strategies features work from:
Leslie Baum, Joell Baxter, Nick Brown, Ben Dowell, Andy Hall, Alexander Herzog, Matt Rich, Jennifer Rochlin, and Scott Wolniak

making an entrance

Invited by Vincent Uribe
Leslie Baum – Lauren Clay – Alika Cooper – Chelsea Culp & Ben Foch – Alan & Michael Fleming – Robert Chase Heishman – Ryan Lauderdale – Matt Nichols – Heidi Norton – Sabina Ott – Ben Sanders – Daniel Shea – Adam Parker Smith – Olivier Kosta Théfaine

LVL3 and Robert Blumenthal Gallery present Making an Entrance. Making an Entrance highlights fifteen contemporary artists who are making an international impact with their creative practice. Often seen as a theatrical action involving light and shadow, making an entrance suggests a significant character entering a scene in an attention grabbing manner. The importance of the character’s entrance can be heightened with the dramatic use of silhouette in order for a stark reveal. This exhibition reinterprets a subject’s entrance into a frame, which reflects upon the artists’ own entrances both inside and out of a gallery setting.

Opening Reception
Thursday, June 25, 2015
7:00 – 9:00 p

http://lvl3media.com/making-an-entrance/

escape, release, and return

a comic i created in conversation with robin beth schaer's poem, messenger, is featured on guernicamag.com. check it out!

review the seen//drunken geometry

by Ruslana Lichtzier

Language is itself a corrupted medium—to think with, and to write about art. While art can reach singularity, in that it can stand by itself, denoting nothing other than itself, language is unbearably caught in the referential; it is a net of the world as it is (which also hints upon why some modalities of art are so frequently analyzed, while others remain coated with silence).

drunken geometry 1

The Window, The Curtains, The Table, The Floor (green), 2015. Acrylic, spray paint and gesso on canvas dropcloth, wood table part, stain, watercolor on stoneware

In visiting devening projects + editions I was reminded of this; and in return I decided to attempt and write about Art, not Art and. However, prior to it, it reminded me of the joy that comes with seeing a good show. My visit to Drunken Geometry, a collaborative exhibition of Allison Wade and Leslie Baum, was both a mental and physical exercise. While my eyes quickly settled within the territory of pure formalism, my body accelerated in movement, starting to bend closer towards the objects, and then, stepping back, to see the arrangements / installations, until it reached an almost frantic movement—a movement where I was practically running between both of the gallery’s spaces, comparing moves and noting the myriad of gestures. I felt I was gifted back something that I had lost, something that I had forgotten how to look for: play, suspense and discovery; something that children have, a secret language.

(from left) The Window, The Curtains, The Table, The Floor (purple), 2015, wood, stain, paint, watercolor on stoneware. New Things (the persistence of ordered objects) #2, 2015, wood, stain, paint, watercolor on stoneware. New Things (the persistence of ordered objects) #1, 2015, wood, stain, paint, watercolor on stoneware. Many Things Conspired #1, 2015, wood, paint. Accidental Artifacts: Remnant #1, Accidental Artifacts: L.C., Accidental Artifacts: G.M., Accidental Artifacts: Remnant #2,, Accidental Artifacts: B.N., 2015, all watercolor on stoneware

(from left) The Window, The Curtains, The Table, The Floor (purple), 2015, wood, stain, paint, watercolor on stoneware. New Things (the persistence of ordered objects) #2, 2015, wood, stain, paint, watercolor on stoneware. New Things (the persistence of ordered objects) #1, 2015, wood, stain, paint, watercolor on stoneware. Many Things Conspired #1, 2015, wood, paint. Accidental Artifacts: Remnant #1, Accidental Artifacts: L.C., Accidental Artifacts: G.M., Accidental Artifacts: Remnant #2,, Accidental Artifacts: B.N.,
2015, all watercolor on stoneware

In Drunken Geometry the gallery floor becomes a stage; on it, the objects arranged in scenes, tableaus of frozen pictures. The main room features The Window, The Curtains, The Table, The Floor (green), a piece that contains four canvas drop cloths, affixed to the wall, and several wood table parts. Here, as the written description proposes, the drop cloth is located in the “background,” while the wood table parts are in the “foreground.” The frontal arrangement enacts a cautious walk; each step raises tension. I wonder where then rests this invisible line, and with it, if I’ll cross into the frozen picture. The tension gratifies; in crossing over, or rather, when I transgress (transgress: from trans— “across” + gradi—”to walk, go”) I am rewarded. The bare objects become agape to a material speculation, while mutating and reinventing their form and texture into something different, constantly escaping my grip.

Accidental Artifacts: B.N., Accidental Artifacts: E.S., 2015 watercolor on stoneware

Accidental Artifacts: B.N., Accidental Artifacts: E.S., 2015
watercolor on stoneware

The background, however, the drop cloths, are spray-marked with objects missing from the show, traces bound in the canvas with an unforgiving horizontality—bound to be forever horizontal, even though they are hung. This gesture pulls the rug out from under my feet, sweeping me into vertigo.

Still, the canvas is not the main attraction. The main attraction, or rather the leading actor is missing from the scene. In the foreground we encounter five sculptural components (the count itself is speculative—in a work like this, which is not only an outcome of a collaboration between two authors, but is also installation in nature, it blurs the defined lines of unified objects and erases viewers’ possibility to follow predetermined logic). These are re-and-de-constructions of wood table parts; cut apart, reassembled, repainted, and treated. The objects explain to me, perhaps for the first time, what Lautréaumont meant in 1868 by writing “as beautiful as the chance encounter of a sewing machine and an umbrella on an operating table”(Les Chants de Maldoror). The early grandfather of surrealism defined in this the new modernistic vision. He outlined a horizontal composition of familiar elements that in proximity become estranged. Is it possible that Wade and Baum have succeeded in dusting off what has been, for some time, an old bourgeois aesthetics, and instead turn it into a revitalizing sight?

New Things (the persistence of ordered objects) #1, 2015, wood, stain, paint, watercolor on stoneware

New Things (the persistence of ordered objects) #1, 2015, wood, stain, paint, watercolor on stoneware

In stepping forward, or aside from Surrealism, the show’s aesthetics are not only non-hierarchical, but also leans toward the thin abstract. While working with what we may assume as domestic furniture, the grand canvases give an atmospheric hue. One room is green, the other purple; two brilliant colors that don’t easily succumb to common connotations. There is an ease to the exhibition. Interestingly, it also comes through language. Drunken Geometry’s off space features, among others, New Things (the persistence of ordered objects), Accidental Artifacts, and Many Things Conspired.

Here the theatrical is muffled. Due to the nature of this room being a project space, the arrangements are more loose. Some objects turn their back to you. At arms length, the same movements recurring; the works surrender to the thing as it is and at the same time re-imaging it as something new and different. It is rooted in serious playfulness, an engaged mode of action. These objects—subtle, and barely settled—seem to be accomplished with rupture, suddenly, when they only just begin to solidify.

Indeed, as Baum and Wade describe, “their work marks the horizon of a democratic act.”

——
Drunken Geometry at devening projects + editions runs through March 7, 2015.

Ruslana Lichtzier is a Chicago based artist, writer, curator and educator.

newcity review, drunken geometry

RECOMMENDED


“Drunken Geometry,” the new collaborative exhibition by Leslie Baum and Allison Wade, is a risky proposition. By tackling the classic conventions and traditions associated with the still life, these two Chicago-based artists seek to extend our preexisting notions of the genre by, in effect, taking them apart. The approach is as pregnant with possibility as it is fraught with travails.


Sculptural formulations are particularly susceptible to problems inherent to deconstruction since a table displayed without substantive transformation remains merely a table, an artifact of our mundane world rather than an active agent in the world of art. Though reasonable people can (and should) disagree, objects placed within the environs of gallery are not art by default. The wall-mounted “Many Things Conspired #1” as well as the floor-bound “New Things (the persistence of ordered objects) #1,” which both seem a little too self-satisfied as minimally altered objects, are the most problematic in this regard.


Leslie Baum + Allison Wade.

Leslie Baum + Allison Wade. “The Window, The Curtains, The Table, The Floor (green),” (detail view), 2015, acrylic, spray paint and gesso on canvas dropcloth, wood table part, stain, watercolor on stoneware, dimensions variable


The best moments in the show occur as the result of a potent one-two combination when “Many Things Conspired #2-#6” and “The Window, The Curtains, The Table, The Floor (green),” resist the necessity of individual transformation and instead turn their energy outward on the gallery itself, exploding a kind of fractured cubist space into three dimensions. The result is an immersive environment that resembles a kind of assemblage forest where itinerant wooden legs, tabletops and feet collide with oblique glances and fuse into a compelling holistic experience.


Less overtly dramatic works such as the compact “The Window, The Curtains, The Table, The Floor (purple)” demand more than a little effort on the part of the viewer, but it’s effort well spent. The side table’s mismatched leg and painted white foot echo the numerous painted stoneware “Accidental Artifacts” scattered throughout the Garfield Park space. Generally good and occasionally superb, “Drunken Geometry” is a valiant effort to redefine and enlarge our perceptual parameters for one of art’s most established categories. (Alan Pocaro)


Through March 7 at Devening Projects and Editions. 3039 West Carroll


 

ducksLA

DUCKS LA
curated by Ryan Travis Christian


March 27th, 2015


Minotaur Projects
1821 3rd Ave
Los Angeles, CA 90019


material art fair 2015

Leslie BaumLiz Nielsen

LVL3 is traveling to Mexico for the second edition of Material Art Fair, Mexico City’s first and only contemporary art fair dedicated to emerging practices. We will be joining 40 international exhibitors and featuring the work of Leslie Baum and Liz Nielsen.


Dates:
February 5 – 6-10pm – Public Opening
February 6 – 11-8pm
February 7 – 11-8pm
February 8 – 11-5pm

For a checkl

drunken geometry

Drunken Geometry
Leslie Baum and Allison Wade
January 31 – March 7, 2015


Drunken Geometry is an ongoing collaboration between Leslie Baum and Allison Wade. This iteration of the project engages with the still life genre and its rich history. The table, the ceramic object, the textile–all are foundational elements of still life paintings and materials that figure prominently in Baum and Wade’s individual practices. Through these materials, the artists explore their affinities for particular forms and arrangements. Decisions about placement, proximity, and color guide the conversation, as well as a mutual impulse to uncover the sweet spot between object and image, dimensionality and flatness.


unstuck time: a small stage for wandering minds at clutch gallery

Clutch Gallery is a 25-square-inch space located in the heart of Meg Duguid's purse, which is currently being carried by by Georgina Valverde as the headquarters for Society of Smallness. The gallery is dedicated to exhibiting contemporary art of all media. Clutch opened in December 2009 and was initially intended to maintain regular programming through December 2010. In December of 2011, Meg Duguid decided that she no longer wanted to carry Clutch, so her favorite accessory is being used by other curators. Clutch will continue to run as a curatorial project until the gallery wears out from daily use. To view this exhibition and find out where Clutch is going, follow it on Facebook, or you can make an appointment for a personal viewing time.

megillat breakdown featured in eyeworks 2014

The Eyeworks Festival of Experimental Animation is an invitational festival focusing on abstract animation and unconventional character animation. Festival programs showcase outstanding experimental animation of all sorts, and include classic films and new works. The Eyeworks festival was founded in 2010 by Alexander Stewart and Lilli Carré, and is held annually in Chicago, with additional curated programs presented in Chicago and other cities throughout the year.

The Eyeworks programs showcase a range of animation techniques, including paper cutouts, stop-motion, 3D computer animation, and a wide variety of hand-drawn methods. The content of the films is equally varied, and includes cosmic abstraction, psychedelic characters, geometric patterning, and surrealistic narratives.

rocket run

Rocket Run: Abstractions From Chicago

october 17 2014
organized by alexander herzog
Elder Gallery, Vance D. Rogers Center for Fine Art, Nebraska Wesleyan University. Lincoln, NE

100 painters of tomorrow book launch and exhibition

one art space
23 warren street
new york new york

november 6 2014
6-9pm

broadsheet catalog

New catalog for souvenirs from wonderland exhibition available. Designed by Sonnenzimmer, with an essay by Philip Martin and poem by Maureen N. McLane

solo exhibition: miami university of ohio

Thursday, October 16, 2014
Reception for the Artist: 4:30–5:30 p.m., Lecture: 6:00 p.m., ART 100
Baum's habit of foraging through art history for mysterious image fragments is at the root of her upcoming exhibition, Souvenirs From Wonderland.Her paintings, intimate Sintra panels and large-scale un-stretched canvas "rabbit holes," originate with this search and recovery effort. Through her various studio processes, the images evolve and transform, like word play in the children's game of telephone. Her paintings are object and metaphor and act as a threshold between the known and what lies beyond.

INSIDE/WITHIN Interview
Chromatic Consortium Review on Bad at Sports
100 Painters of Tomorrow

Painting is enjoying a remarkable creative renaissance in the 21st century. Many of the world’s leading artists now work in this most enduring and seductive of media. 100 Painters of Tomorrow is the result of a major new project to find the 100 most exciting, up-and-coming painters at work today.


Their work spans an extraordinary range of styles and techniques, from abstraction to figuration, minimalism to magical realism, and straight oil-on-canvas to mixed-media and installation-based painting. The 100 chosen artists, selected from more than 4,300 entrants, come from over 37 countries.Entries were judged by an international panel featuring some of the most prominent names in contemporary art, including the painter Cecily Brown, curators Tony Godfrey, Yuko Hasegawa and Gregor Muir, and writer-critics Suzanne Hudson, Barry Schwabsky and Philip Tinari.


John Yau piece on Hyperallergic
heart on my sleeve at terrain exhibition, oak park il
My Crippled Friend, curated by Michael Goodson, CCAD

My Crippled Friend investigates the recent history of the intersection of painterly abstraction and the object. While “painting as object” has often been a formalist issue, the works in this exhibition gather their identity through the subversion of formalism—scrambling and reassembling themselves in an aesthetic shell game where the act of painting is always an investigation of a painting’s ability to push into objecthood.


The result is a collection of works that are each alive in a way that only a painting can be, as well as present in a way that seems more like an object. Impossible to label as one specific medium (“a painting” or “a sculpture”), they are, rather, an often-lumpy but always compelling combination of the two.


Participating artists will include Richard Aldrich, Claire Ashley, Leslie Baum, Anna Betbeze, Sarah Braman, Tom Burr, Tom Burckhardt, Kathy Butterly, Sarah Cain, N. Dash, Cheryl Donegan, Michel François, Joe Fyfe, Katharina Grosse, Mary Heilmann, Chris Johanson, Ross Knight, Jim Lambie, Jim Lee, Chris Martin, Sam Martineau, Matt Rich, Cordy Ryman, Nancy Shaver, Daniel Turner, Amy Yoes, and Tamara Zahaykevi

Leslie baum, Stacy Fisher, and Matt Miller, BravinLee programs through October 18.
catalogue for excuse me if i get too deep!

check out the artist book/catalogue made in conjunction with my solo exhibition excuse me if i get too deep at geary contemporary!