Love Songs for the Club
Friday, August 21, 2015
Art NXT Level Projects in the Zhou B. Art Center
1035 W. 35th St., Chicago, IL
Love Songs for the Club is an exhibition featuring over 30 paintings, sculptures, installations and wall paintings by emerging artist Marina Ross in collaboration with Luis Sahagun. The exhibition explores how empathy is activated through romanticized objects and images that the artists have created individually and collaboratively, inspired by their personal histories. The title Love Songs for the Club is an appropriation of a Brooklyn dance party theme that asks the DJs to play romantic R&B/rap songs. This title was appropriated to talk about ideas of romanticism, mood and an immersive environment through a contemporary metaphor. While individual works depict romanticized motifs such as sunsets, figurative painting and hand-painted wall patterns, the curatorial installation reveals a whimsical, child-like mood.
Marina Ross uses painting and the ready-made to talk about varying levels of reality through the representation of various physical planes. Her paintings, which employ illusionistic space in various genres, refers to how convincing a certain position may be at one point but unconvincing, later on. Ross’ ready-made installations further blur the line between the abstract and the real when abstract paintings are used as the backdrop of the scene, hung on graphically-painted walls. Seemingly unrelated objects are arranged in front of the paintings reminiscent of both a shrine and a pile of garbage. These installations suggest the unconscious compositions, created through the accumulation of raw materials that may be found in a hoarder’s apartment or in a landfill, for instance.
While the subjects of the individual works are personally inspired, the mood of the exhibition is between a celebration and a diary. The exhibition imitates a stream of consciousness with materials and labor at every juncture of the space. Audiences are invited to explore the artists’ train of thought rather than focus exclusively on the art objects. Departing from the typically austere conditions of a gallery setting, the exhibition suggests new ways for artists to work within the confines, as well as new ways for audiences to engage with the work.
Marina Ross uses painting and the ready-made to talk about varying levels of reality through the representation of various physical planes. Her paintings, which employ illusionistic space in various genres, refers to how convincing a certain position may be at one point but unconvincing, later on. Ross’ ready-made installations further blur the line between the abstract and the real when abstract paintings are used as the backdrop of the scene, hung on graphically-painted walls. Seemingly unrelated objects are arranged in front of the paintings reminiscent of both a shrine and a pile of garbage. These installations suggest the unconscious compositions, created through the accumulation of raw materials that may be found in a hoarder’s apartment or in a landfill, for instance.
While the subjects of the individual works are personally inspired, the mood of the exhibition is between a celebration and a diary. The exhibition imitates a stream of consciousness with materials and labor at every juncture of the space. Audiences are invited to explore the artists’ train of thought rather than focus exclusively on the art objects. Departing from the typically austere conditions of a gallery setting, the exhibition suggests new ways for artists to work within the confines, as well as new ways for audiences to engage with the work.
