Colorful Language

Opening: Friday, Jan 7, 2022 5 – 8 pm
Friday, Jan 7 – Feb 5, 2022

704 N. Wells
Chicago, IL 60654

Featuring work by Joanne Mattera, Cat Crotchett, Kathleen Waterloo, Alicia LaChance, Joan Holleb, Julia Katz, Michael Hoffman, David Versluis, Rebecca Crowell, Allison B. Cooke, Lisa Pressman

This ambitious group show presents an exciting selection of artists who have each developed a unique visual vocabulary based on their history with color. The works in this exhibition derive their unique chromatic characteristics from each artist's understanding of color properties, meanings, and relationships. This understanding is married with the artists' experimental sensibilities in the studio. Shape, pattern, and occasionally imagery often provide the framework for the color investigations present in the work, but the color explorations are rarely at the mere service of description and imagery. Instead, color itself most often acts as the primary life force of this work. In addition to their attraction to saturated tonalities, these artists demonstrate a commitment to process, materiality, and the physicality of the surface. Texture plays an important role in these works, and the tactile qualities of surface, which are widely varied, work hand in hand with each composition's optical properties.