On view from October 16, 2021 to April 10, 2022
OPEN during EXPO weekend!!
noon - 4pm from April 7 -10
No appointments necessary / outdoor venue
3522 W. Franklin Blvd. Chicago, IL 60624
Having a relationship with my surroundings is linked to my sense of being consciously present in one place.
The natural world and all its life force nourishes and enables out planet to survive. We should welcome the embrace as it fosters life on our planet.
I am navigating new surroundings while thinking through a familiar set of old concerns: geography, transience, shifts, slippage, belonging, community, identity, home.
I notice the subtle changes and movements in my surroundings. I respond to the environment, the spaces, the places and the objects around me. I try to create new meaning and logic by rearranging them.
If I’m thinking about the cosmos, my relationship is entangled and really really old.
If I’m thinking about DNA my relationship is my grandmother, my great grandparents, and their journeys across seas, an ocean, and colonized land to a place called the ‘middle-west.’
If I think about the cosmos I know that there is no upside-down, or north, or ‘western’ and that is useful. And if I look around myself I think about people I love who love me as well.
Not only do psychedelics re-connect us with nature but that connectedness also makes us feel better.
When I see, my eye is the material for the reception of the image. My toes touch soil of the same chemical cocktail as my foot. When I go, I’ll return what I’ve borrowed.
Constantly exploring new surroundings as sensory knowledge building through the structures, people and cultures I'm surrounded by.
When I think of my surroundings, I find myself thinking most deeply about our metaphysical landscapes. I think about what it does to our health to carry so much psychic weight in the form of personal, collective and ecological grief.
Is like being a stranger in a strange land. The limitations of knowing no one, lacking English skills, and having extremely restricted resources became my new possibilities.
Watching them continue to die is a transformation that takes on beautiful and unexpected turns. They help me pay attention to my surroundings, and all the things that come and go from our lives. They remind me beauty is difficult.
Inspired by two themes, landscape and absence, she conveys a wake-up call about the effects of economic growth on environmental sustainability and the island’s inhabitants.
I see a lot going on or nothing much at all and I try to make something beautiful of it either way. At my best I see the best in what is close.
Today on the train a black woman three seats away offered me a seat next to her.
Mouthing words of understanding.
Pleasing and appeasing the needs of others
with less of an ancestral weight of womaness of blackness.
The seat was left empty for stops.
Emptiness filled with fear of black skin and kindness for her likeness.
The natural world and all its life force nourishes and enables out planet to survive. We should welcome the embrace as it fosters life on our planet.
Grass, the cicada, and corn adorn the boot and skull, touching on each artist’s personal history as well as the rhythms and patterns of life, culture, politics, and death. We, like the cicadas and the corn continue our lives in cycles as we adapt to today’s ever-changing climate.
— This statement is a composition of fragments and sentences submitted by the artists in response to the prompt: What is your relationship with your surroundings?.
No appointments necessary / outdoor event. Mask is required for indoor access.
THE FRANKLIN is a Cultural and Organizations partner for the Chicago Architecture Biennial.
Satellite partners for this exhibition and events include Garden Apartment Gallery @gagchicago and Compound Yellow @compoundyellow. Please visit https://thefranklinoutdoor.tumblr.com/ for more information.
THE FRANKLIN: 3522 W Franklin Blvd, Chicago, IL 60624 (312)823-3632
@thefranklinoutdoor
Marzena Abrahamik (b. Poland, grew up in Greece) lives and works in Chicago, IL. She received a MFA in Photography from Yale University and a BA in Political Science and Philosophy from Loyola University. Her work draws on ordinary experiences to address the intersection of photography, feminist modes of identification and representation. Abrahamik is visually inspired by attachments to unachievable, deceiving yet necessary for survival fantasies, as they take shape in intimate and communal formations. Meticulously composed, with a focus on sensibility through light and gesture, the photographs question the operations that have historically defined the feminine as a social category. Her exhibitions include: Girl Play & A L'ouest, solo exhibitions at Johalla Projects, solo exhibition at The Turchin Center for the Visual Arts (Boone, NC) and solo exhibition Gallery of Classic Photography, (Moscow, Russia). Group exhibitions at Heaven Gallery (Chicago, IL), Latitude (Chicago, IL), Whitney Houston Biennial (New York, NY), Silver Eye Center for Photography (Pittsburgh, PA), Weinberg/Newton Gallery, (Chicago, IL), Soccer Club Club (Chicago, IL), Aperture (New York, NY), Sushi Bar (New York, NY), Art & Design Festival (University of Ulster, United Kingdom), and the International Photography Festival (Tel-Aviv, Israel). Her work is included in the collections of the Art Institute of Chicago, Museum of Contemporary Photography and Haas Library. Abrahamik is the recipient of the John Ferguson Weir Award, PACC, and IAS Artist Project Grant.
Regina Agu, Passage (installation view at New Orleans Museum of Art), 2019, digital print on Samba Opaque, 4 panels total dimension 100 ft x 6ft.
Regina Agu was born in Houston, TX. She relocated to Chicago in spring 2020, where she now lives and works. Her work has been included in exhibitions, public readings, publications, and performances internationally. She has exhibited most recently in the 2021 Atlanta Biennial: Of Care and Destruction, and the 2021 Texas Biennial: A New Landscape, A Possible Horizon. Her first solo museum show, Passage, was presented at the New Orleans Museum of Art (2019-2020). Her work has been supported by an Artadia Houston award, grants from Houston Arts Alliance, The Idea Fund, and the Kathrine G. McGovern College of the Arts + Project Row Houses fellowship at the University of Houston for her research project A Psychogeography of Emancipation Park. She has attended residencies at the Joan Mitchell Center in New Orleans through a partnership with For Freedoms, A Studio in the Woods, Open Sessions at The Drawing Center in NYC, Atlantic Center for the Arts, Lawndale Artist Studio Program, among others. From 2014-2017, Agu was the co-director of Alabama Song, a collaboratively-run art space in Third Ward, Houston, which received a 2016 SEED grant from The Robert Rauschenberg Foundation. Agu is the founder of the Houston-based WOC Reading Group, and her other collaborative projects include Friends of Angela Davis Park and the Houston-based independent small press paratext. Agu holds an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.
Upon arriving to Los Angeles by train I arrange flowers that fell from a tree into a line, 2021
Alberto Aguilar: I wrote this line in Los Angeles while standing in line on my phone waiting to board a plane to return to my home in Chicago. I wrote this line the next morning on my laptop while sitting in my favorite green seat from the comfort of home. A little later I will take the blue line train to meet my new students for the semester at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Like all other aspects of my life, teaching is an integral part of my practice. I view my work as an opportunity to make a meaningful connection with the viewer using whatever material is at hand.
"open sky" video still, Kyle Bellucci Johanson, 2021
Kyle Bellucci Johanson completed a B.A. in Reconciliation Studies and Art from Bethel University in 2009. In 2008 he studied peace and conflict at the University of Ulster in Derry/Londonderry, Northern Ireland, and completed an M.F.A. at California Institute of the Arts in 2016. Kyle was a 2015 fellow of at land’s edge, an artist-led, autonomous, and experimental platform focused on intergenerational mentorship and engaged programming in community-run spaces across east and south Los Angeles. In 2018 he opened table, a temporary project space dedicated to situating artist’s practices through exhibition, discursive meals, and publication. Presently Kyle works as a part-time faculty member of the the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. He has been a visiting faculty at University of Illinois at Chicago, and is a 2020-2021 recipient of the BOLT artist residency of the Chicago Artists Coalition. Kyle’s work has recently been on view at Gray Center for Arts and Inquiry at the University of Chicago (Chicago, Illinois), Bill’s Auto (Chicago, Illinois), Museum of Contemporary Art on the Moon (MOCAM), Automata (Los Angeles, California), Sullivan Galleries at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (Chicago, Illinois), ALTES FINANZAMT (Berlin, Germany), Centro Cultual Metropolitano – MET Quito (Quito, Ecuador), and Human Resources (Los Angeles, California).
Lionel Cruet b. in San Juan, Puerto Rico, lives and works in New York City and San Juan. Received a Bachelor in Fine Arts from La Escuela de Artes Plásticas en Puerto Rico and a Master in Fine Arts from CUNY - The City College of New York, and a Masters in Education from the College of Saint Rose. In his artworks he uses multiple mediums including experimental digital printing processes, performance, and audiovisual installations that confront the audience with issues that concern thoughts around ecology, geopolitics, and technology. His artworks have been included in exhibitions at the Bronx Museum of the Arts (2017); Everson Museum of Art, Syracuse (2017); Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Puerto Rico (2013); and Universidad de Sagrado Corazón, Puerto Rico (2014); and a solo exhibition at the Bronx River Art Center (2015) and most recently Centro de Arte Contemporaneo de Quito (2021) and have been reviewed by multiple publications around the world.
Keeley Haftner, “Glitter Bottle”, 2019, Performance (glitter, water bottle)
Keeley Haftner is a Saskatchewanian-Canadian artist based in the Netherlands whose artwork deals with garbage as a material and as a philosophical construct. Haftner’s work has been exhibited internationally in the US, Canada, and Europe at venues including MOCA (Toronto), Schering Stiftung (Berlin), and the Art Institute of Chicago. She received her BFA in 2011 from Mount Allison University and her MFA in 2016 from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in Fiber and Material Studies. She is a current recipient of the Canada Council for the Arts Research and Creation Grant, and a Hague Artist with Stroom Den Haag.
Devin T. Mays, An Orange Dragon 2019 Ceramic and cast iron plates Dimensions variable
Devin T. Mays holds a B.B.A in International Business and Marketing from Howard University. After receiving his degree, he worked in advertising developing brand strategies and commercials for the better part of a decade. He returned to school to pursue an M.F.A in studio practice from The University of Chicago. There, he developed an interdisciplinary practice he often refers to as an exercise in the infinite, a practice-in-participation, a practice-in-practice. Since then, he has exhibited at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; Museum of Contemporary Photography; Lowe Art Museum, University of Florida; Nahmad Projects, London; DePaul Art Museum, Chicago; Regards Chicago and The Gray Center among others. He currently lives and works in Chicago, IL.
Elsa Muñoz Controlled Burn 25, 8"x8", oil on panel, 2021
Elsa Muñoz is a Mexican-American artist born and raised on the South Side of Chicago. She credits her interest in both nature and healing to her experiences growing up in an underserved and often unsafe community with little access to green spaces. Spending most of her childhood indoors led to the cultivation of a rich inner world in which she was able to find beauty and sanctuary. Muñoz writes, “Beyond any particular message in my work, I'm always fundamentally seeking to call upon and transmute my earliest encounters with the natural world--imaginary encounters which filled me with wonder and longing.” Elsa received her BFA in oil painting from the American Academy of Art in 2006. She's since had 8 solo shows including one at the National Museum of Mexican Art (2011) and at the Union League Club of Chicago (2016) along with several group shows throughout the United States. She was recently awarded the Helen and Tim Meier Foundation For The Arts Achievement Award (2019). Notable collections include the National Museum of Mexican Art (Chicago), North Park University (Chicago), and the private collection of Martin Castro, Chairman of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights under President Barack Obama.
Caroline Robe, “Two monuments from above, 2021”
Caroline Robe is a woodworker, sculptor, food-grower, jeep-wrencher, and co-operator from Maine who has made a home in Chicago. Their work is small time world building— from a cohousing community to a material culture that could’ve been.
Kellie Romany, From the “Proximity” series, Watercolor on Paper, 2021, 3” x 3”
Kellie Romany is an abstract painter interested in bodily representation, materiality, and the history of the painting process. Using a color palette of skin tones, Romany creates objects that act as a catalyst for discussion about human connections, femininity, and race and the systems surrounding these themes. She received a Masters of Fine Arts in Painting from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2011 and a Bachelors of Fine Arts from the Maryland Institute College of Art in 2008. Romany has exhibited both nationally and internationally, including museum shows at the High Museum of Art, Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, and DePaul Art Museum.
Onajide Shabaka, Flag (orchid), silk on silk, 44.5″ x 23″, 2012
Onajide Shabaka, b. 1948, lives and works in Miami, Florida. Shabaka was awarded an MFA [2000] from Vermont College of the Fine Arts. Shabaka’s art practice is focused primarily on the ethnobotanical, geological, archeological, historical and biographical themes related to the African Diaspora and Native American cultures. Through a well developed research based walking practice he has explored the environment and its biology allowing site specific histories and nature to reveal the untold historical narratives from the past in the form of film, photography, sculpture, and mixed media works on paper.
Selected solo exhibitions include, “Alosúgbe: a journey across time,” The Studios of Key West, Key West, Florida (2020); “Alosúgbe: a journey across time,” Emerson Dorsch, Miami, Florida (2019); “Floridian Lacunae,” The Art and Culture Center/Hollywood, Hollywood, Florida (2019). Selected group exhibitions: "Why Shouldn't We Talk About These Things at the Table?,” Florida Atlantic University, Boca Raton, Florida (2020); Round 49: “penumbras: sacred geometries” Project Row Houses, Houston, Texas (2019); “Reconstructing Identity,” Museum of Contemporary Art of the African Diaspora, Miami, Florida (2019). Recent awards: Locust Projects Wavemaker Grant and Oolite Arts Ellies Grant to facilitate two residencies in Brunswick, Georgia (2020) and in Darien, Georgia (2019).
Marcela Torres b. Salt Lake City, Utah. Residing in a transitory journey between Utah, Illinois and New York. Torres is a performing artist, organizer and educator chasing sensorias towards proprioceptive generational portals. Torres received a BA in Sculpture Intermedia and a BFA in Art History from the University of Utah, continuing their studies with a MFA in Performance from School of the Art Institute Chicago. Torres has performed at the Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts (Omaha, NE), The Momentary (Bentonville, AK), Fringe Festival (Detroit, MI), Experimental Actions (Houston, TX) and Time Based Arts (Portland, Oregon). Torres has exhibited work at Recess (Brooklyn, NY), Hyde Park Art Center (Chicago, IL) UW-Parkside University (Kenosha, WI) , Tropical Contemporary (Eugene, OR), Petzel Gallery (NYC, NY). In 2021 Torres will be a resident at Creative Exchange Lab at the Portland Institute for Contemporary Arts and Denniston Hills Residency.
Rodrigo Valenzuela, New land #90, 29 x 34, Acrylic and toner over canvas, 2021
Rodrigo Valenzuela (b.Santiago, Chile 1982) lives and works in Los Angeles, CA, where he is the Assistant Professor and Head of the Photography Department at UCLA. Valenzuela has been awarded the 2021 Guggenheim Fellowship in Photography and Smithsonian Artist Research Fellowship; Joan Mitchell award for painters and sculptors; Art Matters Foundation grant; and Artist trust Innovators Award. Recent solo exhibitions include New Museum, NY; Lisa Kandlhofer Galerie, Vienna, AU; Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art, Eugene; Orange County Museum; Portland Art Museum; Frye Art Museum, Seattle. Recent residencies include Core Fellowship at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture; MacDowell Colony; Bemis Center for contemporary arts; Lightwork; and the Center for Photography Woodstock.
Norma Vila Rivero, Visit Cueva Ventana: A Breathtaking Window to the Past, 2021, Archival pigment print on Moab Entrada Bright Paper mounted on Styrene, edition 1/5 24 x 36 inches Courtesy of the artist
Norma Vila Rivero (Puerto Rican, born 1982) interdisciplinary artist, exhibit coordinator and cultural manager. She received a B.A. in Visual Arts from Universidad del Sagrado Corazón (2005) and a M.A. in Art Administration from Ana G. Méndez, Universidad del Turabo (2010). Her work has been presented in Argentina, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Mallorca, Mexico, Norway, Peru, Puerto Rico, Switzerland, Saint Croix, and several states in the U.S. In 2017, she was selected to participate in the Occupy Museums Debt Fair installation at the Whitney Biennial. In 2020, she received a National Association of Latino Arts and Cultures Artist Grant to continue her project “A Metaphor Against Oblivion.” Vila Rivero's work is in the Luciano Benetton Collection, the collections of Museo de Arte de Puerto Rico (San Juan, PR), Museum and Center for Humanistic Studies Dra. Josefina Camacho de la Nuez (Universidad del Turabo, Caguas, PR), and FIART Foundation (International Foundation Fund for the Arts, Madrid, Spain), and numerous private collections.
Amy Vogel has had solo exhibitions at Larissa Goldston (NY), Paul Kotula (Detroit), Edward Mitterrand (Geneva), and Air de Paris (Paris). In 2014 she had a survey of 15 years’ work, entitled Amy Vogel: A Paraperspective, at the Cleve Carney Gallery at the College of DuPage. She has participated in group shows at Western Exhibitions (Chicago), White Columns (NY), The Suburban (Oak Park), FRAC Haute-Normandie (Sotteville-lès-Roue), Francesca Pia (Zürich), and other venues. Vogel’s work has been reviewed in national and international periodicals, including the Chicago Tribune, the New York Times, and Artforum. She is Associate Professor in the Department of Contemporary Practices at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.
Tesselescence (Green Space)
In partnership with Garden Apartment Gallery @gagchicago
Location: 3530 W. Fulton Blvd, Chicago
For information: @thefranklinoutdoor and https://thefranklinoutdoor.tumblr.com/
Keeley Haftner, Xtreme Green Grass Paint is painted on the lawn of the artist’s backyard. This paint was created in California for use in making drought-affected lawns green.
“Tesselescence (Green Space)” is a series of installations on neglected green spaces in and around Humboldt Park and Garfield Park, Chicago. They will be created using a tessellated cube pattern called “tumbling blocks” in three tones: the tone of ungroomed grass, the tone of trimmed grass painted with biodegradable lawn paint, and the tone of open soil embedded with bee and butterfly-attracting seeds. When first installed, the geometric pattern will appear clean and sharp, but over time it will 'rewild' into an ecologically active and natural space, one which “keeps in touch” with the local entomological needs in Chicago’s urban environment. The black and white binary of nature and culture will literally and metaphorically blur as the anthropocentric language of landscaping is overtaken by nature’s (eco)logic.
Keeley Haftner is a Saskatchewanian-Canadian artist based in the Netherlands whose artwork deals with garbage as a material and as a philosophical construct. Haftner’s work has been exhibited internationally in the US, Canada, and Europe at venues including MOCA (Toronto), Schering Stiftung (Berlin), and the Art Institute of Chicago. She received her BFA in 2011 from Mount Allison University and her MFA in 2016 from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in Fiber and Material Studies. She is a current recipient of the Canada Council for the Arts Research and Creation Grant, and a Haagse Kunstenaar with Stroom Den Haag.
Live performance on Saturday, October 16 at 7pm
Kouri Hall is the collaborative music project of artists and multi-instrumentalists Chad Kouri and Andy Hall. Their sound is categorized as Creative Improvised Music—or All Genre—pulling references from various influences, including jazz, folk, rock, classical, funk, hip-hop, dance, experimental music, and high school band class. Utilizing a myriad of instruments, including percussion, synthesizers, tenor saxophone, guitars, bass, and various effects and samples, their systematic and spontaneous minds combine to make music that starts as intuitive, improvised mantras, evolving into playful long-form celebrations of joy, curiosity, exuberance, and self-expression.
