Kate Levant and Nnenna Okore
@ Monique Meloche Gallery
2154 W Division St, Chicago, IL 60622
Opening Thursday, September 15th, from 6PM - 8PM
On view through Sunday, October 29th
Kate Levant makes her much anticipated return to Chicago for her second solo exhibition with moniquemeloche, “…Which’s Ploying the Fans”, featuring a new body of work comprised of objects and energies that the artist has accumulated globally, from the islands of the Caribbean, New York, and Maine. The show’s title is a reassembly of the phrase “witches foiling the plans”, referencing the traditional narrative that depicts witches as agents of chaos. Through the destruction of language and found materials, Levant herself is an agent of disorder, esoterically reconfiguring and layering her resources to challenge the audience’s understanding of the natural and unnatural, verbal and non-verbal.
As in her practice, much of the work is manipulated on site, leaving the end result ambiguous while in Levant’s hands. The charged relationship she has with her materials is evident in the many stains and folds, the struggle to control their physical properties a metaphor for the artist’s growing concerns about climate change. The subsequent imagery evokes the wreckage left behind by a hurricane or flood, and the push and pull struggle between Mother Nature and man.
Levant’s show is presented in conjunction with Nigerian artist Nnenna Okore’s site-specific #onthewall installation, “When all is said and done”. Referencing delicately interwoven forms, Okore’s large-scale installations seek to reveal the marveling entanglement and twistedness of skeletal lattices found within nature. Through her use of recycled materials, the artist references the social, historical and environmental interconnectedness of our collective experiences as humans.
Okore employs reductive and deconstructive processes to expose elements of decomposition that are elevated by age, death and decay – transient experiences that befall anything that is living. She is keenly sensitive to the rhythms and contours of everyday life, as they signal both the transience of human labor and its inevitable mark on the material world.
Both exhibitions will culminate with a fully-illustrated, digital catalog, including an interview with both artists and Karen Patterson, Curator of the John Michael Kohler Arts Center (JMKAC) in Sheboygan, Wisconsin.
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Tags: Chicago, Kate Levant, Monique Meloche Gallery, Nnenna Okore, West Town
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