PER_FORM October 9, 6-10pm
October 10, 12-5pm
Driven by the simple question “How does form inform perform?” Chicago Art Department is pleased to present PER_FORM, curated by Mike Nourse featuring Tony Orrico, Matty Davis, Peter Reese, Lee Blalock, Regin Igloria, and ROOMS .
PER_FORM
Friday October 9, 6-10pm
Saturday October 10, 12-5pm
Chicago Art Department, 1932 South Haslted
Tony Orrico’s work has reached mass circulation for its ingenuity within the vernacular of performance and conceptual drawing. He developed his own physical symmetry practice (circa 2005) as point of entry into his visual work. He is interested in organized consciousness and applications of the body to a surface, object, or course. “I commit my attention, rationally, to the sensitivity of the body at the receptive level— ready points and lines in space. I attain a sense of embodiment that is geometric and mechanical, with no dominating sense of axis or outside force, and find the ability to motor from invented traction. The course is non-objective; it is a continuation of pathway and response to stimuli.” www.tonyorrico.com. Tony will be performing Friday night only.
Matty Davis is an artist and dancer who was born in Pittsburgh, PA in 1989. His work pits the body against often radical undertakings and journeys that explore the limits and empathic possibilities of embodiment, as well as the origin of materials and mark-making. He is also the principal performer and co-artistic director of BOOMERANG, a fearlessly physical, poetically nuanced dance and performance project that he co-founded in 2012. Within and aside from BOOMERANG, Davis has performed at the Parrish Art Museum, the Watermill Center, Judson Church, the United Nations, the Putney School, in Performa 13, and has staged guerilla-style performances in Death Valley, on the ball fields of Oklahoma, and atop deserted tractor trailers in the Great Smokey Mountains. He has studied at Kenyon College, the American Dance Festival, P.A.R.T.S. in Brussels, Belgium, and is currently pursuing his MFA at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago He was recently selected as one of 80 artists internationally to work with Robert Wilson at the Watermill Center International Summer Program. More information about his work can found at www.mattywdavis.com & www.boomerangdance.com. Matty will be performing Friday between 6-10pm, while Saturday he will perform 20 minute sets at 1pm, 2pm, and 3pm.
Lee Blalock is an artist who considers what it may mean to live in a future somewhere between here and nowhere. Her research began when she was a kid and would visit her father at his job as a computer programmer / operator. Rules and systems are inherent to her process, while her imagination leans toward the N3w Hum4n. Lee uses her work to create new origin stories, visual or written, which are influenced by a life long interest in speculative fiction and science fiction. Many ideas behind Lee’s work attempts to describe the future human, replacing the failed language around identity with the self-constructed and amplified self. This new body (or “NeueBody”) often takes the form of abstraction and presents a mix of algorithmic and heuristic behavior. In all cases, Lee’s work represents the physical, computational, or behavioral body and uses repetition as a strategy to move past the automatic and into something transformative. Lee writes and performs under the alphanumeric moniker of L[e]^2. leeblalock.com. Lee will be presenting a remote performance on Friday and a sound installation on Saturday.
The collaborative work of Free Air (Amy Sinclair and Regin Igloria) uses performance as a vehicle to engage audiences in various participatory acts of “indiscriminate hospitality”. Their current works encompass effort, accumulation, and human sensitivity to possession. Free Air has performed at the DePaul Art Museum, Out of Site Performance Festival Chicago, Chicago Home Theater Festival, and Chicago Art Department among others. The duo are Chicago-based interdisciplinary artists. Sinclair is interested in the body’s intelligence. Through performance, writing, fashion, and object-making, her work explores states of trauma and recovery. Igloria makes books and drawings with themes of tension and opposition found within nature, space, and social structures. Regin and Amy will be performing Friday, and leaving installation work for Saturday.
Peter Reese. “The process of making is most commonly comprised of three primary components: the maker, the making, and the made. These elements follow a simple formula to accomplish their designated function: the maker performs the making which, in turn, produces the made. My diverse studio practice navigates this formula, probing, analyzing, and culling particular aspects or nuances. I craft conceptual frameworks that serve to challenge the traditional conventions of each element and propose alternative roles in an effort to expand the predominant discourse. Whether composed of an unwitnessed action, a projected idea, an internalized task, or a physical product each offers a new lens through which to view making.” www.makermakingmade.com. Peter will be presenting both Friday and Saturday.
ROOMS is the wife/husband team of Marrakesh & Todd Frugia. Recently ROOMS has experimented with the mechanics of ritual through the creation of systemic performance installations. Utilizing indeterminate and/or serial processes, as well as self referential concepts, ROOMS transforms performers into sacred totemic structures in motion. Like ocean waves or a field of wheat in the wind (phenomenon bound to natural order and chance operation), ROOMS explores simplicity’s power to create complexity. roomsgallery.com