overview — march 2024
since start of representation — engage projects gallery — in 2020:
artforum ‘must see’ in chicago — both solo shows to date.
2 solo shows, 5 group shows, and 3 art fairs to date (chicago, new york, london).
the gallery places two to three pieces in established collections each year.
next solo show pending 2025 chicago.
areas of practice
oil painting
personal writing system
legible texts
abstract texts + new cave paintings
conceptual
image texts
video + sound
installations + performance + happenings
late 2023 + early 2024 updates
artforum — ‘must see’ chicago — first two solo shows 2021 and 2023
mousse magazine — selected best shows aligned with expo chicago 2023
most recent show — THIS IS TEXT BASED ART — artist’s descriptions .pdf
more information below
about the gallery
engage projects (formerly aspect ratio gallery) is a commercial gallery in Chicago with a national and international reputation in multidisciplinary conceptual art in painting, photography, video, installation, and sculpture.
the gallery’s mission is to remove art world barriers through an artistic community with diverse voices. demonstrating this, the gallery currently represents just over twenty artists from almost a dozen countries and continents.
gallery artists have exhibited at The Museum of Modern Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, the Whitney Museum of American Art, The Tate Modern, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, The New Museum, the Brooklyn Museum, the Museum of Contemporary Art of Chicago, and La Panera Art Center.
current interests
2024 — I am interested in what moves forward and what holds back.
about the studio
i live and work in my studio. it’s in portland maine. i use my hallway, 27 feet long, 3 feet wide.
scale
most pieces are ~ 4 to 10 ft wide and 5 to 8 ft tall. large. works on paper are ~ 18 x 24 in.
artists i’ve shown with
since representation in 2020 i’ve appeared in shows with Alec Soth, Alberto Aguilar, Nick Cave, Bob Faust, Alejandro Figueredo Diaz-Perera, Chris Larson, David Leggett, Derrick Woods-Morrow, Edra Soto, Xie Hongdong, Hasan Elahi, Jovan C. Speller, Jean Alexander Frater, Sharon Louden, Morgan, and Nick Albertson, among others.
latest objective metrics - 2023-2024
— the gallery has placed 8 pieces since 2020 in serious / prominent / established US collections.
— Artforum chose both solo shows to date (2021, 2023) as ‘must see’ in Chicago.
— Mousse also chose the 2023 solo as one of the best aligned with EXPO Chicago 2023.
— the Senior Curator and Head of Modern Art at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, Harry Cooper, short-listed two pieces as the jurist of an international show (2021) (Species Anosognosia and We All Like To Look Away Sometimes).
— the Berlin-based art advisory Artfacts (cf. NY Times, Le Journal des Arts, Le Figaro, The Guardian), which tracks verified shows of ~ 1m artists worldwide, now lists me in the top 12% globally and top 1% to 5% for artists associated with:
post-conceptualism
postminimalism
conceptual painting
appropriation art
text based art
photo montage / photo collage
activist art
backstory
self taught.
this started tumbling out in 2014. i was 42. it was after a psychiatric meds change, after a mania. i have the mental illness formerly called manic depression, now called bipolar 1. since then, my mind is almost always in hypo (low grade) manias. Except during depressions which come about every 8 years.
my psychiatrist says, basically, that for electrical and chemical reasons, some of my neurons connect-link-match things in unusual ways. also, i often think-feel-sense in my mind and body all as one, all at once — what comes out is head-heart-body-feeling-thought. except when i write appellate briefs in courts of law. i don’t have an art degree, rather traditional degrees from penn and stanford law.
lithium signature
after the past two decades on lithium, plus other psychiatric meds, twelve pills a day, permanent tremors are in my painting hand. so there’s a one-of-a-kind brushstroke when i paint, if you look close. sometimes it’s called my ‘lithium signature.’
current practice 2023-2024
current mediums … oil paint, oil stick, charcoal, ink, photography, new media, video, canvas, aluminum.
current subject matters … (a) words, lines, curves, and colors, on the one hand … and (b) meaning, on the other hand … especially (c) meaning loss that occurs between makers and receivers …; and (d) somatic (body-felt-experience) art in relation to conceptualism (mind-thought) and abstraction (heart-emotional-aesthetic); and (e) art creation as performative mind-heart-bodily-sense.
current research and writing 2023-2024
current studio research = global histories + theories of text art — artist’s draft monograph .pdf or webpage
current studio research = somatic art, conceptualism, abstraction, and minimalism — artist’s draft research paper .pdf
current art theory development = conceptual ownership + meaning
pending art theory development = art theory, legal systems, and artificial intelligence: past theories of interpretation that served us well now hinder and harm what we want to be (pending 2024 in preparation for next solo show 2025).
first short-form art criticism writing nov 2023.
Most recent installation, US collection, spring 2024.
Artist talk with artist Kelly Matthews, Chicago 2023.