Jun 16th 2023

Angela Azmitia: summer & other dreams

@ Grace Jane

3203 S Halsted St, Chicago, IL 60608

Opening Friday, June 16th, at 6PM

On view through Thursday, July 6th

Join us! Friday, June 16th for the Opening Reception of
“summer & other dreams” ;

A Solo Exhibition by Chicago based artist Angela Azmitia.

“summer & other dreams” is a solo show featuring stark and evocative graphite drawings by Angela Maria Azmitia. The white of the paper meets the black velvet of repetitive pencil strokes to portray Azimitia’s memories of Florida. She records the women around her and renders every detail from the hours spent poolside beneath the oppressive summer sun to the flowering of a fern at night. As intimately-scaled drawings, the viewer is pulled into these vignettes of tenderness and at times, ambivalence. In Deep End, a foot stands upon a tiled ground, hovering above the jagged lapping of waves. The pool, even as it is a refuge from the heat, presents another set of obstacles. By contrast, in the individual portraits of women, their eyes fearlessly meet the observer’s gaze. Every portrait carefully attends to the angled arch of a brow and the particularities of each ringlet in her hair. In Baptized, this woman emerges unscathed from the deep end.

Even as the sweltering humidity washes over these scenes with a sense of ennui (such as in Sunburn), life persists. Palm trees flourish, pushing past the frame of the image; they are resilient like the women so meticulously portrayed. As snow ceaselessly falls in Chicago, the artist takes to pencil and paper to dream of summer, of another time and place. Jean-Luc Nancy writes, “Drawing is the opening of form. This can be thought in two ways: opening in the sense of a beginning, departure, origin, impetus, or sketching out, and opening in the sense of an availability or inherent capacity.” With an emphasis on “essential incompleteness,” summer & other dreams begins with Florida as a point of departure and opens to reveal the recurring resilience and inherent capacity of those who, against all odds, continue to grow.” – Jen Chen-su Huang

Light refreshments will be served. Hope to see you 🙂

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