Western Exhibitions
The Runner, a new animated film and project series by Lauren Wy, foregrounds her second solo show at Western Exhibitions. Taking a cue from late 60’s and early 70’s films, especially Le Weekend by Jean-Luc Godard, the animation and its attendant sculptural edition distill the spirit of fantasy escapism, of running away into a dream. Wy’s animated film is a surrealist collage experiment utilizing analog processes with digital tools and altered frame rates to create a time-based pseudo-narrative drawing that embraces a raw provisionality. The short film is presented alongside a series of large-scale drawings and paintings on thin, mechanically flat synthetic surfaces. Inspired by American New Wave cinema and Science Fiction literature, Wy weaves her personal narrative into the collage as a further exploration of the Auto-theory elements present in her recent Autodesire series. The Runner animates saturated dancing color scenes of vintage cars speeding through dream landscapes. A woman character is an archetype, a titan, a goddess, a replicant, a Chimera, shapeshifting from human to animal to machine; from human skin to cheetah running, from feathered bird to Mercedes Benz; always pitched forward in the perpetual forward motion of running.
westernexhibitions.com/exhibition/lauren_wy_the-runner_2023/
Journie Cirdain thinks of the drawing surface as a locus for thought, puns, personal narrative, scraps of information, remembered art history, daydreams, desires and other tangled remnants of everyday life to magically become visual. For Cirdain, drawing is the flower child of art; it’s non-aggressive, laid back, experimental, lascivious, and sometimes deceptive, at least to a less observant person. For her first show at Western Exhibitions, Cirdain combines traditional drawing tropes—still life, observational drawing, even bouquets—with invented images from the subconscious that elucidates her place in the world. Cirdain’s drawings are materially minimalist, pared down to wood, graphite, and paper. Visually, they explode with a Baroque detail as Cirdain scuffs and cobbles her images together, growing organically. These are notes from the forest, a tongue in cheek psychedelic attempt to mark down the infinite and ineffable way in which all things touch, change and create each other.
westernexhibitions.com/exhibition/journie_cirdain_2023/
Opening September 8, closing October 28.
(Northern) Western Exhibitions
A survey of Ben Stone’s athletics-themed work, SPORTS! opens at our second location, (northern) Western Exhibitions, in Skokie, Illinois with a free public reception on Saturday, September 23, from 5 to 8pm. Gallery hours at nWX are Wednesday to Saturday, 12-6pm and Sundays 12-4pm. The show will be accompanied by an essay by Abraham Ritchie.
BEN STONE’s sculptures elevate ubiquitous icons and ever-present visual ephemera through a compulsive attention to detail and fastidious production quality. He has built his career off of a sensitive study of omnipresent imagery found in advertising and signage, public speech, and encounters in his daily life. By enlarging the scale of his source material and remaking it into a three-dimensional form, he transforms a derivative of a derivative into a de-coded, un-conditioned original. Stone explores the contemporary psyche as he reckons with violence and corruption in his midst and in society at large; his frustration with politics, both local and national; bad or just plain weird public iconography; and his continued exploration of his own self-worth as an artist. Stone’s sincere pursuit of profundity within sloppy, over simplified imagery and lazy ideas transcends irony, groping towards the tragicomic.
westernexhibitions.com/exhibition/ben_stone_sports/
Opening September 23, closing December 17.
Western Exhibitions
Friday & Saturday: 11 - 6
Sunday: closed
(Northern) Western Exhibitions
Friday & Saturday: 12 - 6
Sunday: 12 - 4
