Gallery Y: Michiko Itatani, “Shadows of the Mind”

Gallery X: Paula Henderson, “Groundwork(s)”

Gallery O: Paula Henderson, “Regard”

September 7, 2018 – October 27, 2018

Opening Reception: Friday, September 7th from 5-8pm

EXPO Chicago Art After Hours: Friday, September 28th from 6-9 pm

Artist Remarks with Paula Henderson: Saturday, October 13th from 3-5 pm

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Linda Warren Projects is proud to present the solo exhibitions of two powerful and esteemed, female Chicago-based artists, Michiko Itatani and Paula Henderson. While clearly distinct in both style and focus, each artist uses recurring motifs and imagery to explore their individual concerns for the forces that shape and define our human condition. Existential questions – the who, what, where and how the self is developed – is advanced in these artists’ work through quite literally an array of vantage points, points of view and painterly codings. Itatani’s show in Gallery Y, “Shadows of the Mind” draws us outward toward the vast cosmos and her self-designed universes, brimming with the emblems of culture, science, advancement and learning. Inquiry, curiosity, and imagination drive Itatani’s epic works that posits the mind as the central character and devotes fiction as a vehicle to uncover some of these truths. Alternatively, Henderson’s two exhibits, “Groundwork(s)” and “Regard” (in Gallery X and O respectively) quite literally pulls us to earth, to the land upon which we walk and to our physical bodies. These series lend design to our collective history and prompt discussion of the schematic patterns that shape our contemporary landscape and self-image.

Gallery Y – Michiko Itatani, Shadows of the Mind

For the last forty years Michiko Itatani’s work continues to be informed by her ongoing quest for knowledge through her spirited and intellectual grappling of all the unknown mysteries of our universe. In this newest body of work, the next chapter in what she refers to as her ongoing novel being written with paint, Itatani continues her exploration of space and time but is ever more focused on the meaning and nature of consciousness. Amongst the many books and journals Itatani has read about science, psychology, philosophy, biology, astronomy, and the like, Roger Penrose’s “Shadows of the Mind: A Search for the Missing Science of Consciousness” has inspired this exhibition. In monumental immersive works and intimate miniatures, both for which she has become well known and will be on display, we are brought along on a spectacular journey to enter the cosmic playground of her mind where she grapples with these profoundly complicated and perplexing questions. Persuading a vision of progress, observatories of wondrous architecture, geodesic domes adorned with Baroque, Greek, Roman and even Moorish accents are loaded with representations of learning and discovery. A visual vocabulary is constructed of particles, molecules, stars, planets, planetary rings, rockets, control panels, computers and dark holes which mingle and dance with winding helix staircases, libraries, globes, pianos, harps and chandeliers – all symbols for the hallmarks of humanity and culture. More recently, a black box “character” has emerged as a key image, driving home the idea that the more one learns the less one knows and that this tale should have no known ending in sight. Through time, Itatani’s chapters/bodies of work have been called Celestial Narratives, Celestial Connections, Cosmic Theaters, Cosmic Encounters, Cosmic Symphony, Cosmic Wanderlust, and Personal Codes to name a few. In “Shadows of the Mind,” Itatani confirms for us, that the “ring of lights”, that signature symbol of orbs found in every recent Itatani painting large or small, means the presence of the conscious mind. These paintings are amalgamations and manifestations of energy born from consciousness, personal experience and fiction. Like her, we get to be the lucky visitors. As she states, “Its my fiction writing: incomplete, fragmented, and under inquiry …through this working process, I am trying to come to terms with the complex reality of the 21st century. And my vision stays incorrigibly optimistic.”

Gallery X & O – Paula Henderson, Groundwork(s) & Regard

Paula Henderson’s newest work furthers her ongoing conceptual investigation of the formation of identity and the self. Veering between series thatpush the genres of figuration and formalist abstraction into postmodern frameworks, Henderson provides innovative ways to approach an array of pervasive social paradigms by making paintings, which appear and suggest decorative fabric, textile or wallpaper. Arising originally from her own lifelong interest in sewing, fashion and interior design, these enterprises continue to serve her visual practice. Remarkably flat and intricate as if they were mechanically produced, Henderson subverts her painterly hand so the viewer must truly look in order to see and experience its laborious handmade quality and its true import. Persuasively merging form with content, she brings to the fore myriad and complex ideas surrounding superficiality, manipulation, social decoying and patterning. Henderson culls her material from ubiquitous social signifiers and codes, which camouflage their influence in the formation of ourselves in an effort to stimulate and provoke a dialogue toward possible change.

In “Groundwork(s)” in Gallery X, compositions are constructed by the layering of shoe treads. These forms Henderson sources and traces directly from the earth whether imprinted in dirt, mud, sand, rain or snow. Recorded and appropriated as she finds them, “these surface iconographies, a residue that marks us routinely across space in time-prosaic, routine, overlooked, interest [Henderson] as vestigial configurations of our collective history.” Also of fascination, is the degree of design that underlies the making of shoes. Treads are used in forensics to identify and profile a wearer as suspect; they can reflect the migration of groups as in diasporas. Shadows of a human presence blend with these human markers and lend meaning to their credence as social signifiers. Through palette, composition and form, Henderson mimics the mechanisms employed in the branding process, delivering images that imply both a transient and ephemeral commoditization of the self. What is left behind as we move through life? Let us consider.

In “Regard”, the exhibit in Gallery O, Henderson furthers this notion of branding, yet her focus and concern is on the social impact of the media’s representation of the female body and the effect of our cultural obsession with image. Tracing bodily forms found in commercial advertising, and more so, the self-advertising of social media, i.e. the “selfie”, Henderson explores how women, to various degrees, invest in their own objectification to build an image that embodies a powerful self, a narrative of identity. In a series titled “Contours,” Henderson obscures and distorts via the fusion of a variety of all too familiar poses as she thought about how, “the contrapposto stance, a canon of classical Western art, (which) was an embodiment of the ideal of man communicating to viewers of Greco-Roman statuary a state of balance, confidence, and ease in the world. Postures struck by women in selfies posted currently on social media suggest that the pervasive publishing of sexualized tropes, ubiquitous in commercial fashion and celebrity media, have similarly come to function as a type of cultural archive of poses for women/girls to circulate representations of themselves as powerfully attractive and in control.” Does the edifice of the outer self, the distorted, unrealistic attempt to manufacture usually unattainable, idealized body distract and substitute for the value of that within? In her “Eye-Con Frieze” series, Henderson posits the highly stylized and luring female figure as stone like superficial deities carved on temple walls- mere surfaces on an inner-sanctum. Places where heart and soul and real self-worth lays awaiting for realization.

Chicago-based artist Michiko Itatani was born in Kobe, Japan, and received her MFA in 1976 from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, where she is currently a Professor. Itatani has shown widely around the globe, and her work can be found in such prestigious collections as the Art Institute of Chicago; the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; the National Museum of Contemporary Art, Seoul, Korea; Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona (MACBA), Barcelona, Spain; and Tokoha Museum, Shizuoka, Japan. Itatani has been the recipient of numerous awards and honors including the John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship, the Union League Club of Chicago’s “Distinguished Artists” Membership Award, and a National Endowment for Art, Artist’s Fellowship amongst many others. Recent exhibitions include “Hi-Point Contact”, a career retrospective at the Zhou B. Art Center, and solo exhibitions at the Illinois State Museum and Hatheway Cultural Center. Itatani is represented by Linda Warren Projects, and this marks her third solo exhibition with the gallery.

Chicago-based artist Paula Henderson’s work has been exhibited extensively throughout the country, including venues such as Boston Center for the Arts; Crystal Britton Gallery, Atlanta, Georgia; Long Island University, Brooklyn, New York; the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago (where Henderson’s work was exhibited in a 12 x 12 solo exhibition, multiple group shows, and was acquired for the permanent collection); Rockford Art Museum, Illinois; and the Union League Club of Chicago, amongst many others. Henderson has been the recipient of such honors as multiple Illinois Art Council Grants, a regional fellowship from the NEA, and in 2014 was chosen to create a permanent public art commission for the CTA White Sox/35th Red Line Station. She has had recent solo exhibitions 621 Gallery, Tallahassee, Florida; Riverside Art Center, and Waubonsee Community College both in Illinois. Riverside Art Center. Henderson received a BFA from the University of Massachusetts in 1971 and an MFA from the University of Chicago in 2004. She currently serves as an Adjunct Assistant Professor in the Liberal Arts Department and as a Faculty Advisor in the CAPX Program at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. This marks her sixth solo exhibition with the gallery and over twenty years of working with Linda Warren Projects.