CHRISTINE TARKOWSKI
Chthonic Void
April 3 – May 14, 2016
Opening reception: Sunday, April 3, 4 – 7 pm
devening projects + editions is very pleased to invite you to Chthonic Void, Christine Tarkowski’s first solo exhibition with the gallery. Featuring dramatic new glass, steel and printed works, Chthonic Void is the result of recent studio and residency projects completed during the past year. Please join us for the opening and a catalog release on Sunday, April 3 from 4-7 pm. The exhibition continues until May 14, 2016.
From his 2016 essay for the catalog that accompanies Chthonic Void, Jeremy Biles writes:
“Chthonic Void: the fullness of nothing, the nullity of the idea of totalizing unity, a body of imminently shatterable works, the work of shattering—body, psyche, matter….
Tarkowski’s work in glass emerges from the chthonic void. In her hands, glass is a chthonic medium—not just because it derives from the earth (the ultimate source of all mediums), but also because glass generates chthonic associations, especially as related to process: glass is heated in the belly of a furnace; it emerges glowing and flowing like magma; it is a moving vision of amorphous, excessive life.
Tarkowski’s art reminds us that even the ground is shaky, every surface an indication of earthly depths: chaotic, chthonic. Each sculptural piece in this show constitutes a small debacle, gorgeous in its ruinous lineaments and the swells of its soft geometries, delicate in its structural and material instability.
In fact, Tarkowski’s art exploits the allure and power of the precarious—the precariousness of frangible glass and fragile lines, of the unforeseeable and contingent. This is sculpture that positively courts precariousness, bodying forth a willingness to oppose, defy, and refuse those structures, conditions, and habits of thought and behavior whose presumed certitudes—whose very stability—too often produce and maintain oppressive relations and moribund politics.”
Christine Tarkowski is a Chicago-based artist who works in a variety of mediums including sculpture, printed matter, photography and song. Her works range in scale from the ordinary to monumental. Equally variable is her scope of production, which incorporates the making of permanent architectural structures, cast models, textile yardage, and temporary printed ephemera. Many of her recent works point toward the flotsam of western culture relative to systems of democracy, religion and capitalism. Her work has been exhibited at Chicago Cultural Center, Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, MassMoCA, Manilow Sculpture Park, Socrates Sculpture Park, Renaissance Society, Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum. She is the recipient of grants from the Driehaus Foundation, Creative Capital, Illinois Arts Council, Ellen Stone Belic Institute for the Study of Women and Gender in the Arts and Media and is on faculty at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.
The exhibition features a 16-page catalog with an essay by Jeremy Biles and designed by Jason Pickleman.
