FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE CONTACT: Allison Stites, Executive Director
773-342-6777
MACERATE: May 27 to July 2, 2005
Opening reception May 27, 6-10pm
Closing party and Film Screening July 2, 6-9pm
Curated by Currency Exchange
Artists include: Steven Bell, Jon Cates, Frank Ebert, Kathy Grayson,
Christa Holka, Kim Kelley, Marriage, Peter Miller, Angela Mobley,
William O’Brien, James Trainor, Andy Roche, Christine Taylor, and more….
Macerate/’masereIt/ verb. 1 verb trans Soften by steeping in a liquid, with
or without heat; wear away or separate the soft parts of, by steeping 2 verb
trans. Cause to grow thinner or to waste away esp. by fasting. 3
verb trans. Fret, vex, worry.
Curfews. Boners. Sweatpants. Intersections. Secrets. Shrines. Jacks.
Hyper-color. Mix tapes. Culture Jam. Dudes. Toast. Alligators. And
notes passed. Macerate presents a driving compulsion to discover, live,
re-imagine, understand, and illustrate adolescent experience. Through the
mediums of painting, drawing, photo, video, prose, sculpture, film,
installation, and live performance, local, national, and international
artists query concepts of youth in its various iterations.
The works engaged here are ubiquitously relevant across generations, class,
gender, sexual identity, and geography through invoking a shared experience
of coming of age. Reflecting on adolescence allows all of us to connect to
something that is human rather than national, accessible rather than
elitist, everywhere rather than unique. There is comfort in the
awkwardness, the uncertainty, the insecurity of adolescence – a comfort in
which we can share and through which we can speak. As a cultural and social
phenomenon whose endpoints are not easily defined, there is something in the
material space of this transition, in the navigation of this period of
physical and psychological development, which continues to be relevant
throughout our lives, constantly coloring our perceptions.
Macerate highlights artists who explore and appropriate pop-culture icons
and objects that we collect during our teenage years, as well as the essence
of angst and “just being okay”. This is the material to which we turn for
both historical and geographical placement. And, drawing across such
boundaries, these constants act as a certain knowledge through which we can
function and upon which we build our social systems.
At its core, Macerate is a space where we handle, turn upside-down,
manipulate, and re-mold these modes of experience, allowing us to connect,
to grow, to change, and to understand our present.
Currency Exchange is a couple of fun, schmoozy artist/curators making life
in Chicago extra-toasty. Alligators.
Around the Coyote, a not-for-profit organization, supports, promotes and
makes accessible Chicago’s multidisciplinary arts community. Our activities
enhance public discourse and provide creative outlets for emerging artists.
Year-round programming includes multi-media arts festivals featuring visual
art, theater, dance, video and poetry in the spring and fall; art
exhibitions in the Around the Coyote Gallery; an artist-in-residence
program; membership opportunities for artists and art aficionados;
educational outreach for all ages through multi-media art workshops,
collaborations with local schools, and career development workshops for
artists.
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