Opening Reception, Friday April 16th 8-11 PM
This is a humorous exhibition that was made with an active balance between frustration and friendly relaxation (featuring: secondary objects, eye movement, paintings of paintings of paintings, patience, stability, the formation of doing things together, and 125 lbs. of wax).
THE HILLS ESTHETIC CENTER////128 N CAMPBELL STREET////UNIT G////CHICAGO, ILL///
www.thehillsgallery.blogspot.com
SCOTT CAN BE FOUND AT www.scottcowan.us
KATY CAN BE FOUND AT www.katykeefe.com

agency@the Agency, 10th April-15th May 2010, Preview Friday 9th April, 6-9pm, Special Event with microPerformance April 30th, 6-9pm coinciding with Deptford last Fridays

The Pigeon Wing presents 2009 Retrospective as an open discourse investigating differences and similarities between the project space and the gallery. Within a literal reincarnation of shows held at The Pigeon Wing in 2009, agency presents a new platform for the artists involved to re-visit their motives and re-enact their works, to fit within the walls of The Agency. Artists will include Joanne Smithers, Tim Adams, Alastair T. Willey, Amy Hye Jung Shin, Gareth Lloyd, Frederick Fuller, Harriet Piper, Isobel Shirley, Katy Keefe, Nikos Mantzios, Theo Turpin, Xavier Jimenez, Scott Cowan, Matthew Verdon, JL Murtaugh, Paul Cowan, Annabel Tilley, Francesca Ricci and Jack Bishop.

Following an interest in the action of showing an exhibition within an exhibition and the self-reflective nature of this situation, The Pigeon Wing will work continually within the durational period of the show. Developments and alterations will be forthcoming throughout, in reaction to the meetings and discussions that occur in the space. The Pigeon Wing hosts an annual series of exhibitions, curated by both invited and house curators. We also deliver sequential events from progressive projects as well as singular events including film screenings, talks, performances and critiques. Pioneering for the recognition of artists whose merit lies within the procurement and successful development of new ground, The Pigeon Wing provides a facility for the discussion and implementation of emerging art.

How many Chicagoans know what their alderman looks like? How many Chicagoans can tell you who their alderman is, and what he or she has been doing lately? We’re not pollsters, so we don’t have any hard data to provide answers to these questions — but we are artists, and we’re interested in using art as a vehicle in depicting and learning more about the aldermen who represent us at City Hall. To this end, we invite other Chicago artists to join us in producing 50 ALDERMEN/50 ARTISTS: A group exhibition of portraits that will enable people to learn more about the 50 aldermen who make up the Chicago City Council, and raise awareness of local government. On Friday, March 19, 2010 from 7-11pm, Old Style proudly presents 50 ALDERMEN/50 ARTISTS at the Johalla Projects Gallery, 1561 N. Milwaukee.

“Love & Heartbreak: new works by Katy Keefe and Samuel Payne” opens at The Metro Gallery on 14 January 2010 and runs though 27 February 2010. The gallery is located at 1700 North Charles Street in Baltimore, MD. Intensely personal and layered with texture, Keefe’s paintings, drawings and photographs are inspired by the romantic, as an answer to Payne’s heart-wrenching, violent paintings and works-on-paper inspired by heartbreak and scorn. Despite the immediate contradictory nature of the two perspectives, the works are thematically united under the auspices of passion, devotion and enlightenment. Using totems and hero worship, Keefe glorifies while Payne simultaneously destroys. The dense works of the two artists are aesthetically complex compositions constructed meticulously of accumulating detail and narratives. The work is both genuinely personal and universally metaphorical. Keefe and Payne utilize their joint belief in the constant presence of separation and division to establish a dialogue regarding heaven and hell, the dichotomy of brokenness, and the question of power and rule in daily life. “Love & Heartbreak” is an exhibition of journeys, failures, enlightenment, and common experience.

Opening Reception: Friday, October 23rd, 2009 from 7-11 PM.
HEAVEN GALLERY and JOHALLA PROJECTS
1550 and 1561 N. Milwaukee Avenue Chicago, IL

Each summer, The Harold Arts Residency Program brings together emerging and midcareer artists and musicians to work in the wilderness. This exhibition presents the products of that work.

OPENING RECEPTION SEPT 2nd 6-10 PM
The Pigeon Wing presents:
Scott Cowan, Paul Cowan and Katy Keefe

This exhibition is a test of foundations. In You Can Build a House the audience is guided to a point of introspection. As people we must be honest about why we promote that which is being advocated through the way we live our lives. Until this rudimentary obstacle is confronted there is hardly any room for complex considerations. Where post-modern thought takes us is into a place where truth and meaning are gone. When something is eliminated, though, something must be posited into its place. For this exhibition we will examine the inadequacy of redefinition and shed light onto an absolute that is found within a non-absolute world view.

Open 11am till 6pm on the 5th and 6th of Sept and by appointment from the 3rd until the 5th and 7th till the 11th of September

The Pigeon Wing, Top Floor Guild House, Excelsior Works,
Rollins Street, London, SE15 1EP
info@thepigeonwing.co.uk | www.thepigeonwing.co.uk
+44 (0)797 6844 720 | +44 (0)774 0336 383

July 18th-August 3rd, 2009

Harold Arts is a non-profit arts organization based in Chicago, IL, which seeks to revitalize and recontextualize personal artistic processes by establishing an alternative environment to traditional arts education institutions.

Our annual intensive arts residency takes place on the Jeffers Tree Farm outside of Chesterhill, OH, and is devoted to fostering the collaborative and interdisciplinary endeavors of new, emerging and mid-career artists.  For one or two week sessions in July, artists enter into a dialogue with their colleagues to collaborate on new projects and refine their own practices. The residency staff work to facilitate collaborative projects developed by residents as well as offer potential project ideas. Programming includes group discussions, critiques, concerts, and lectures involving residents, staff, and guest artists andspeakers.

Green Gallery West
631 E. Center Street
Milwaukee, WI
May 15th-June 19th
Opening Reception: May 15th, 8-11 P.M.

"Eyes to the Unknown" is a series of paintings and drawings of profound optimism and regeneration. The work in this exhibition addresses themes of love and enlightenment using individuals as the vehicles for expression. These are serious investigations of the human as subject and all those elements that make up the personality of the subject construct the imagery surrounding. Bodies intertwine, overgrowth of flora envelop the canvas, and geometric configurations warp light in and out of the landscapes depicted. What is conveyed is the deep soul of a thing. My work is very personal in nature, constructed in a way that reads like a visual diary; for this exhibition the viewer is opened to the world often hid behind and underneath my previous artworks.

NEXT:
The Invitational Exhibition of Emerging Art
More than an art fair, NEXT is a showcase for the world’s talents and an adventure in cutting-edge culture. An opportunity to redefine the relationship between art and its public, NEXT is a portal to seeing contemporary art in new, innovative, eye-opening ways. NEXT will include works from both commercial and non-commercial arts organizations--galleries, project spaces, art publications and key private contemporary collections from around the world.

NEXT will be located at:
The Merchandise Mart
222 Merchandise Mart Plaza, 7th Floor
Chicago, IL 60654

NEXT 2009 Opening Preview takes place Thursday, April 30
Show Hours:
Friday, May 1, 11am - 7pm
Saturday, May 2, 11am - 7pm
Sunday, May 3, 11am - 6pm
Monday, May 4, 11am - 4pm

SATURDAY APRIL 25 and SUNDAY APRIL 26, 2009
The NFO XPO, Shelter Corps, & Free University + MORE
The Benton House complex, 3052 S Gratten Avenue
1pm to 8pm • $7 adults / $3 Children ($10/$5 for 2 day pass)

The NFO XPO (pronounced "info expo") brings art groups and community orgs together to exchange information and ideas as well as provide a public platform for each group to present themselves. It's a trade show for experimental art, emerging spaces, and radical exchange. It's our version of what an art fair should be. It is a fantastic opportunity to view emerging art, to network and make shit happen.

Presented by a forgetfulness of Self within the mixed up feelings of freedom, hope, fear, and consciousness, Sandusky brings the distance of the historic past and the unimaginable future to one single point: the present. With an opening reception at the Caro d'Offay Gallery located at 2204 West North Avenue in Chicago's Wicker Park neighborhood from 6-9 PM on January 17th, 2009 artists Scott Cowan and Katy Keefe invite you to a multi-media installation that questions where the dark undercurrent of the political climate stem.

Upon entering guests are faced with a monumental wall of Moai heads similar to those found on Easter Island dripping with paints of blinding whites and astro-black. The attention is then drawn to the colliding sounds of the intonnations of political speeches, droning frequencies, and the victory of guitar solos. The walls portray a landscape of imagined locations and galaxies, lined with the glitter of gold and silver trees. A rabbit skin tarp hangs above leading to a table of snacks that are free of charge.

As William Black stated, "If the doors of perception were cleansed then everything would appear as it is - infinite". As always, though obviously pressing in the current days of suspicion and anxiety, there is an greatness found in the strength of being powerless; in the dismissal of knowledge there lies the roots of wisdom. There is hope found in that which have the appearance of the absurd and also in a love that is grown with a distaste for self. Sandusky offers a thought on the expectancy of such a mentality - the visitor decides on how it should be carried out.

6 P.M.-6 A.M. $6
Co-Prosperity Sphere
3219 South Morgan Street
Chicago, IL
Saturdays 12-5 or by appt. (info@haroldarts.org)

Performances by:
Slow Horse
Arctic Circle
Lesley Flanigan

Artwork by 2008 Residents:
Kelly Allen
Melina Ausikaitis
Scott Cowan
Melissa Damasauskas
Ben Driggs
Rob Duarte
Natalia Duncan
Grant Ernhart
Gabriel Garcia
Aron Gent
Regan Golden-McNerny
Allison Grant
Maggie Haas
Michael Hunter
Katy Keefe
Jason Lazarus
Jeremy Lundquist
Thomas Macker
Mollie McKinley
Brian McNearney
David Mor
Adam Oestreicher
Tristan Perich
Lucas Blair
Montgomery Perry Smith
Jamie Solock
Greg Stimac
Margaret Taylor
Frank Van Duerm
Leslie Vega
Jacob Wick
Sarah Beth Woods

http//:www.lumpen.com/CPS/

You Rule Me: a show of power

Heaven Gallery
1550 North Milwaukee, 2nd floor
Chicago Illinois 60622

Opening October 10th 7-10pm
Gallery talk by Brieanne Hauger, 6pm


The exhibition offers work that considers questions of authority and power. Initially inspired by the military operations of various factions of bugs residing on the Jeffers Tree Farm, the participating artists responded to my inquiry about their relationships to ruling powers, be they small intimate ones or larger hegemonic ones. The results are varied and textured—Christa Donner responded with drawings focusing on the body and health; Mollie McKinley's response involves a dialog with the supernatural; Tristan Perich and Kunal Gupta's Jelly project offers an alternative strategy to the way we interact with the web; Andreas Warisz's video installation centering around a Chicago Housing project is a rich exploration of the ways information can be disseminated; Melissa Damasauskas offers us a glimpse into a list that rules her; Todd Mattei's photos posit a need for a new deity. Also featuring: installation by Katy Keefe and Frank Van Duerm, drawings by Kelly Allen, Nicholas Wylie, Sarah Beth Woods; photos by Grant Ernhart, Thomas Macker, Lucas Blair; sculpture by Michael Hunter, Scott Cowan, Montgomery Perry Smith and more.