May 16th 2014

GURL DON’T BE DUMB: LIT UP

@ Forever & Always

905 W 21st Place, Chicago

Opening Friday, May 16th, at 7PM

On view through Wednesday, December 31st

Open Hours: By Appointment

Did you listen to Channel Orange on repeat when it came out? This is not an inside joke. I mean, really, the album is addictive. Two artists who met at a residency in Michigan that summer started collaborating and two years later have curated shows, shown work, and offered countless beer bongs to peers at galleries and outside of them. Eileen Mueller and Jamie Steele are photographers who extend research for their individual practices through a joint social project, taking their name from Frank Ocean lyrics. At ACRE in Wisconsin last summer the two made a series of work that will be shown at Forever & Always, opening May 16. Candidly irreverent, Gurl Don’t Be Dumb replaces white with pink and clearing throats with laughter, bringing the party to the gallery. GDBD is not an overarching synthesis of feminism, anti-feminism, anti-gender, nor gender identity politics. GDBD is Jamie and Eileen making contact with playful material, creating relationships of mischievous viewership and interaction, and inviting everyone along for the ride – shotgun.

GURL DON’T BE DUMB is a Chicago-based curatorial project founded by Eileen Mueller and Jamie Steele trafficking in artists that reclaim the rejected with irreverence and total genius. Our aim is to build playful exhibitions in an effort to free the works from the academy and facilitate empowered viewership. We wish to expand the discourse between works making the exhibition a celebration of interpretation rather than an exercise in divination.

More information about GDBD can be found at gurldontbedumb.com.

FOREVER & ALWAYS is an experimental community center in Pilsen where exhibitions, lectures, screenings, discussions and other programming generate opportunities for contemporary artists to share new work and research. It is the home of co-directors Billy Joyce and Brook Sinkinson Withrow.

More information about Forever & Always can be found at foreverandalwaysprojects.com.

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