New Exhibitions Open Sept 15 and 16
Alma Art & Interiors
Opening: Friday, Sep 15, 5 – 9 pm
Sep 15 – Nov 3 • Bridgeport
Elizabeth Burke-Dain features a series of artworks made from ceramics, paper, and textiles in a solo debut. These works are presented in an immersive art installation setting that reflects the color, geometry, and architectural features found in her ceramic paintings. Designed to encourage participation from the owner, these artworks may be arranged in any configuration preferred, based on personal taste and available space.
No Martins: Encontros Políticos (Political Encounters)…Part 2
Mariane Ibrahim Gallery
Sep 15 – Oct 28 • West Town
No Martins’ newest body of work confronts Brazil’s aspirational thesis of racial democracy. Through a series of nine large scale canvases, Martins depicts dark skinned Black people of varying genders, body types, friend groups, and familial dynamics in varying states of repose and interaction. Their gaze is turned towards each other, the ocean, or whatever thing they’re focused on - but never towards the viewer. Intentionally, Martins’ figures have no concern for anyone but themselves and the experience of sun, salt, and sea. In this manner, Martins gifts the Black people in his paintings an agency that is not recognized by the broader Brazilian society.
The Renaissance Society
Opening: Saturday, Sep 16, 4 – 7 pm
Sep 16 – Nov 26
In the fall of 2023, the Renaissance Society will present the first institutional solo exhibition of Beirut and London-based artist Dala Nasser, featuring a new site-specific commission responding to the expansive height and volume of the Ren’s exhibition space.
As an artist working through abstraction and alternative forms of image-making, Nasser applies an interdisciplinary approach through painting, performance, and film. Her indexical paintings of land, made through direct contact on location, stand in opposition to the sweeping vistas offered by traditional landscape painting.
Cydney M. Lewis: Beauty Amongst the Darkness
Elephant Room Gallery
Opening: Friday, Sep 15, 6 – 9 pm
Sep 15 – Oct 14 • South Loop
ydney Lewis is a multimedia artist with a multi-disciplinary and distinguished background. Currently living in Chicago, her art practice highlights the transformation and manipulation of materials. As a self-described “visual archaeologist,” Mrs. Lewis considers the intersection of the natural, spiritual, and scientific worlds. Through our current landscape, she observes nature’s perseverance and ability to adapt, and asks how we might coexist in harmony. Pattern, repetition, and constant movement form the foundation of her work. By weaving nature, technology, destruction, and beauty, she presents her intuition of the surreal and the real. The fluidity of her ability to transform materials reflect her mastery of ballet as well as her endeavors in film.
ornament IS – Arguments On Ornament in Design
Bridgeport Art Center
Opening: Friday, Sep 15, 7 – 10 pm
Sep 15 – Nov 3 • Bridgeport
“ornament IS” will document through drawings, paintings, essays and artifacts, the dominant and discarded movements of architecture and design, as well as the diverse resources of architectural ornament throughout the world history. The other goal is to exhibit an exploration of new possible theories of ornament in architecture and design and to display them as renderings, writings and artifacts.
The Stop Motion Worlds of Joe Baughman
Krasl Art Center
Sep 16 – Nov 26 • St Joseph, MI
Imagine a production studio: You walk past the set of an attached garage – a car, workbench, and sofa inside. You can see up the steps and through the open door that the rest of the house is missing. In the background, someone is working on the battery-powered lights to some street lamps. Around the corner is a nature scene with a giant fake tree in the middle. An otherworldly creature – a cross between a bird and a bear – is resting near the tree. Beyond that, you see painted mountains. Now, imagine all of this inside someone’s home.
These miniature worlds form the basis of artist Joe Baughman’s stop-motion animations, the likes of which you might have seen in music videos for Wilco, The Roots, and Julien Baker as well as his own band, Joe Baughman and the Righteous Few.
Istituto Italiano di Cultura
Sep 16 – Oct 8 • Michigan Ave.
“Through Our Eyes” is a long-term photography project which launched in 2019. So far, it has involved 156 children aged 9 to 17 in Samos, home to one of the Greek islands' hotspots for migrants, in North-West Syria, in the internal displacement camps of Ad-Dana, and in the Mathare slum in Nairobi where roughly 500,000 people live in extreme poverty.
Evanston Art Center
Opening: Saturday, Sep 16, 1 – 4 pm
Sep 16 – Oct 29
Mardy Sears is an Evanston artist and a member of the Evanston Made art community. She is a printmaker, ceramicist, and artist book maker. After graduating with a Masters in Fine Arts from The Center for Book and Paper Arts, Columbia College Chicago in 2006, she began working as a Conservation Technician with a focus on paper at The Art Institute of Chicago.
Mardy’s visual language includes images of animals, primarily birds and sea creatures. Her animals tell stories of humanity and connect our everyday lives to the environment we live in. She incorporates text and poetry into her image making, that is often presented in book format.