The Merwin & Wakeley Galleries
Illinois Wesleyan University
January 10 - February 2, 2012
Tuesday, January 10
Krainak and Holmes Lecture 4:00PM
Rm 218 School of Art
Opening Reception for both exhibits in the galleries 5-6PM
THE MERWIN GALLERY
Emphatic Objects / Shifting Ground
Mark Holmes and Paul Krainak
"Emphatic Objects/Shifting Ground" is a collaborative exhibition of analogous types of 3 dimensional media by artists Paul Krainak and Mark Holmes. Krainak’s expansive wall installations exploit the visual and evocative potentials of common building materials and contend with the architecture of the gallery. Carpeting, plywood, metal, and plastic trace the topography of utopian abstraction, and reconsider the perceived banality of Midwestern culture and its built environment. As such, they bridge an associative gulf between van Doesburg and Home Depot. Mark Holmes’ densely compact sculptures, while uncompromising in their physicality, inhabit their space and that of the viewer, with a perceptually rich experience of color. While their sober presence as objects resonates with the persistent stance of Egyptian sculpture, they maintain an effacing levity through color and material particularity. Both Holmes and Krainak playfully extend the cultural and formal discourses emerging from the lofty agenda of Modernist abstraction and the frank materiality of Minimalist art. Each enlists the viewer as a participant in a shifting landscape of overlapping geometries and color.
Paul Krainak is a painter, critic and Chair of the Department of Art at Bradley University. He is also the Founder and Director of the Inland Visual Studies Center, a University program devoted to investigating a more comprehensive and authentic cultural identity of Middle America. He is the former Interim Chair of the Division of Art at West Virginia University where he was also head of painting. He has exhibited widely in museums and galleries throughout the U.S. and has lectured in numerous academic venues in the U.S., China and Eastern Europe. He was a visiting artist at the Academy of Art in Prague and Bratislava. He is represented by independent dealer and curator, Ingrid Fassbender in Chicago. Since receiving his MFA from Northern Illinois University in 1978 he has been writing criticism. He is currently the St. Louis and Central Illinois Contributing Editor for Art Papers and the former Associate Editor of the New Art Examiner. He is a former Director of N.A.M.E. Gallery in Chicago, IL. His writing has also been published by Indiana University Press, West Virginia University Press, The Kemper Art Museum and the Miller Gallery at Carnegie Mellon University, as well as the following journals -- Afterimage, Dialogue, and Sculpture Magazine.
Mark Holmes holds a BA from Hope College and an MFA in Sculpture from Yale University. He has taught at Hampton University, Trinity Christian College, and is currently Associate Professor and Chair of Art and Art History at Knox College. From 1990-2004 he owned and operated -Ism Furniture (design and production) in Chicago. His work invokes the formal and philisophic discourses of Post-Minimal and Modernist abstraction. Recent sculpures are objects of densely contained physicality, inhabiting their surroundings with color or light. During the last several years, Mark has exhbited at The Beverly Arts Center, Dominican University, Devening Projects, Sidecar Gallery and The Chicago Urban Art Society.
THE WAKELEY GALLERY
Dream State
Jerry Phillips
Have you ever had dreams with images that leave a strong impression in your mind even after waking? Long after the details of why these images make sense in your dream have faded, they exude a presence so noticeable that you keep seeing them throughout your daily routine.Brief encounters while walking down the street; surfing through the television stations; or flipping through magazines collecting on the side table in your bathroom, all seem mundane to most people. I found myself caught off guard as an image from my dream flashes on the TV for just a second and I spend the following several minutes desperately trying to recall the significance that image held in my dream state.Planes, over growing foliage, silhouettes, aquatic animals, and flowing movements of color all exist in the same subconscious world of mine.- Jerry Phillips
Jerry Phillips writes, "I am Palauan American. I was born in a hospital that was located on the Fort Sill Army Base in Oklahoma. This hospital now is abandoned and is home to forgotten memories and boarded windows. I moved a bit with my military father, a loving mother and two sisters. With brief stints of habitation in Hawaii, and Puerto Rico, I found my self in Kentucky starting school on Fort Campbell in Southwest Kentucky. I never imagined I would have found myself, an islander, residing in a landlocked place for an extended stay.My father retired to the small neighboring town of Hopkinsville, Kentucky, where he and my mother currently reside.My parents never failed to instill in their children unwavering sense of family. It was difficult growing up in this household without realizing my family was quite unique in this small Kentucky city. The juxtaposition of living in two worlds was my life and still is.Traditional images for Palauan folklore and the ocean have permeated my life and are reflected in the images I developed. This affinity for the sea and the fluidity water inform my work and continues my search to find an openness of an ocean in the most landlocked of places."
For more information please visit:
http://www.jerryfish.net
Merwin & Wakeley Galleries
Ames School of Art
Illinois Wesleyan University
6 Ames Plaza West
Bloomington, Illinois 61701
Gallery Information:309.556.3822
GALLERY HOURS:
Monday-Friday: 12-4pm
Tuesday evening: 7-9pm
Saturday & Sunday: 1-4pm
ALL EVENTS ARE FREE AND OPEN TO THE PUBLIC.