Aug 19th 2017

Aaron Walker: / e

@ The Back Room at Kim's Corner Food

1371 W Estes Ave, Chicago, IL 60626

Opening Saturday, August 19th, from 3PM - 6PM

On view through Sunday, October 1st

“For this project I will look to Kim’s Corner Food as a hyphenated whole, a corner shop-artist studio-gallery-showroom-recycling center (surely there’s more?).

Drawing upon the restless pictographic invention of Thomas’ collages and the idiosyncratic, fortuitous and deeply contextual exhibition space that is The Back Room, the show will imagine likeminded, one-roof-multiple-identity enterprises.

By conjuring new slashies, I will consider the ad hoc spaces in which culture—perhaps not always art, but certainly something similar—is produced and disseminated.”

—Aaron Walker

Aaron Walker’s ‘/ e’ will close with an afternoon performance at a date to be announced.

$

The Back Room at Kim’s Corner Food houses several thousand collage and assemblage works made by the artist and convenience store proprietor Thomas Kong over the past seven years. Beginning as a collaboration between Kong and artist Dan Miller in 2015, the room was adapted to store these artworks in an arbitrarily-sorted archive, alongside a dedicated exhibition space that makes use of the existing architecture.

Since October 2015 The Back Room has hosted a series of exhibitions and performances conceived by artists and thinkers whose practices intersect with Kong’s in various ways. Each exhibition begins by responding to Kong’s archive and larger practice, and often includes selections from the archive and work by other artists. These exhibitions are intended to expand the audience for Thomas Kong’s work and encourage a conversation about the art field’s relationship to production, visibility, history, hierarchy and value.

Visitors to The Back Room are also welcome to view work in the archive at their leisure. The room contains a fold-out table, two chairs, and a ladder for this purpose.

The Back Room at Kim’s Corner Food is coordinated by Dan Miller and supervised by Thomas Kong, with ongoing assistance from Nathan Abhalter Smith.

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