Presented by the Network of Crowded Art. Actually, everybody is a dragon, but current conditions discourage and disallow us to express those sinuous traits. Like a multi-headed hydra, Hey, We're All Beginners Here! is an exhibition with numerous voices to illuminate our historical moment and paths into the future. It's a series of social events and collection of images. Cultural workers and artists from different fields are contributing to this cloud of images. Among those contributing are Robin Hustle, Sarah Kavage, Pennie Brinson, Salem Collo-Julin, Sarah Ross, Red76, Sarah Smizz, Courtney Moran and Park ...

Based between London and New York, Isobel Shirley uses both her practice to address the different functions of the art world, and the roles created within it. Whilst promoting interaction and discourse, her work often uses a knowing humour to question her own intentions as an artist and motivations for producing work. Using the platform of her first solo exhibition Shirley questions the implications of an artist. Always striving to make that piece of work that will make your mark, yet dreading forever being associated with it and pigeon holed. During her exhibition at Happy Collaborationists, Shirley will present a ...

An exhibition that celebrates the centennial year of Ox-Bow, school of art and artists’ residency. Located in Saugatuck, Michigan, for the past 100 years, Ox-Bow has provided an immersive experience for artists where the influence of a creative community, pristine natural environment and the process of retreat has made a lasting impact on countless individuals. The artists in this exhibition represent the range of relationships that artists have to Ox-Bow, from faculty members, to staff, to resident artists, to fellowship recipients and students. The majority of the artists included in the exhibition represent the contemporary generation, while two artists, George ...

A new installation by Austin Knierim and Jésus Mejia.

A closing reception for David Price and Andy Roche’s silent Super 8 film series where we will be screening all four of their collaborative films from the project titled 2001-2010: Bardic Visions from Britain and the Americas / Hands Across the Water.

An exploration of those events that bring us to age and explore the many facets of a right of passage. Work by Andrew Burkholder.

Sebastian Vallejo's new work suggests a vibrant and tantalizing flash forward to a strange and classy version of the 1980's. These works come alive with brilliant fabric application, day-glo paint, and copious amounts of opportunely placed glitter.

A program of work by noted Chicago/Toronto artist Steve Reinke.

We will "walk the line" between country and western, homage and derivation, sexism and sexuality, recreation and self-abuse, God and people, people and animals, swing and boogie, spring and summer, volume and noise, nostalgia and authenticity, art and whatever the other stuff is. Images and objects provided by Slim Limb, weelittleladdy and Beelzebubba.

For this exhibition, Carmen Price and Erin Zona have produced a variety of multiples and works on paper that reflect their mutual interests in language, sexuality, the night sky, cinema, jazz, work, loss, emoticonography, and time. Also featuring a new installation by Kate Ruggeri in the project window.

Featuring a full bar, Chicago style street food, funky DJs and a world class art auction featuring the generosity and talents of Lauren Anderson, Mike Andrews, Isak Applin, Ali Bailey, Michelle Bolinger, Aline Cautis, Joel Dean, Dana DeGiulio, Rob Doran, Craig Doty, Ryan Duggan, Austin Eddy, Ryan Fenchel, Carson Fisk-Vittori, Howard Fonda, Gabrielle Garland, Theaster Gates, George Gittins, Jacob Goudreault, Geoffrey Hamerlinck, Phil Hanson, Shara Hughes, Michael Hunter, Kelly Kaczynski, Jessica Labatte, George Liebert, Caleb Lyons, CJ Matherne, ...

While the MFA program at the University of Illinois at Chicago is relatively small, it provides an intimate site for the exchange of ideas and methods of working. This screening consists of a selection of moving image work from the 2010 graduating class, featuring films and videos by Olivia Ciummo, Nick Harvey, Rebecca Mir, Michael Morris, Orson Panetti and Michael Sirianni. These works construct a kind of portrait of this educational microcosm, visiting themes of loss, longing, doubt, transcendence and light.

Chicago, IL claims as its own a plethora of hardworking film, video, and new-media artists. Since 2008, a rough and ready microcinema called The NIGHTINGALE has been presenting their work. To celebrate the second anniversary of the space, director, Christy LeMaster and her sister, print-maker Jessica LeMaster, are heading out on the roads of the quiet midwest with THE BROAD SHOULDERS TOUR, a showcase of recent Chicago-made work screened at The Nightingale since its opening. The works in THE BROAD SHOULDERS TOUR represent a diversity of mediums and aesthetics but share a similar sensibility. This isn't a city of artists ...

Join us for the first installment of our Spring Series Cotillion. And exploration of those events that bring us to age and explore the many facets of a right of passage. Performance by EJ Hill.

Re-arranging pre-arranged non-arrangements. Formal, temporary and permanent situations. New work by Carson Fisk-Vittori and Michael Hunter.

CHANNELING is a film and video program curated by Latham Zearfoss and Ethan White. CHANNELING is an entryway into the spirit realm and the queer body politic: a program of experimental moving image work that calls up the ghosts of the past and the specters of the future. The intent of the program is to re-imagine film and video as occult technologies that allow us to connect with the bodies, experiences, and emotions that are often invisible– ghostly, even–in everyday life. Videos by Vanessa Renwick, Elliot Montague, Shana Moulton, Michael Robinson, EMR (Math Bass & Dylan ...

The Roots & Culture screening series will feature a program of work recently added to the archive of the Video Data Bank. Focusing on acquisitions from the past year, the program highlights eight pieces spanning a variety of genres and styles. This VDB program has recently screened at several major film festivals, and this Roots & Culture event is an opportunity for the VDB to showcase their new acquisitions in Chicago. Work by Jesse McLean, Sterling Ruby, Dani Levanthal, Jim Finn, Pat Steir, Susan Youssef, Wynne Greenwood & K8 Hardy and ...

Work by Jacob Goudreault, Angel Otero, Max Reinhardt, Simon Slater, with special guest Easton Miller. The premise of this exhibit is to address painting as an increasingly abstract notion, and to consider its inherent sculptural and object based possibilities. The way has been clearly cut to broach the topic of "subject as object" with respect to painting, to lure out the infinite possibilities paint and its associated materials has when piled up, cut and woven, collaged, wrapped around a form, chewed up and licked onto whatever, etc, etc. Clearly there is nothing new about apparently non-traditional uses ...

Presented by Homeroom, hosted by Jon Satrom. The YouTube Assembly is an attempt to capture the phenomenon of viral video in a live event. The event consists of screening web-based video for a live, participating audience. Like karaoke or a traditional performance open mic, the YouTube Assembly creates a situation in which people take turns entertaining each other, in this case, by sharing their favorite Youtube clips. In the spirit of the popular YouTube interface, audience members will be encouraged to comment on the videos they watch, except out loud and in real time with no anonymity Each screening will ...

An evening of new film and video work from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago's Editing Aesthetics course taught by Michelle Peutz. Featuring brand-spanking-new films and videos from Theodore Darst, Nick Edelberg, Samuel Jacob Eisen, Carlos Enriquez, James Ferguson, Danny Gallegos, Emily Irvine, David Lee, Karina Natis, Matthew O'Shaughnessy, David Olson, Hae Yeon Park, Anthony Rizzo and Heather Shilling.

Torsten Zenas Burns works with lots of different mediums and with lots of different people. Collabtronica is a sample of different projects created in tandem with artists, Anne McGuire, Darrin Martin, Christian K. Burns, and Halflifers. Traversing through the worlds of Choregraphy, Performance, Video, and New Media, he explores the realms of performed identity through fantasy characters and has an interest in re-envisioning educational spaces. Often creating animated counterparts of his collaborators, TZB creates spaces where kinesthetics meets virtual life. For example, WHAT IF?, made with longtime collaborator, Darrin Martin utilizes dance software that recreates ...

Curated by artist and California College of the Arts graduate, Liliana Lewicka, the exhibition features work in a wide range of media including illustration, new media, painting, photography, sculpture, textile, and video. Prompted by the 1985 music project We Are the World, co-written by Lionel Richie and Michael Jackson, and recorded by nearly 50 of the biggest names in music in an effort to raise money and awareness of the famine crisis in Africa, this current show asks artists born in the 1980s to reimagine on the original project. Conceived as both a critique of the ineffectiveness of ...

In Public Houses, private homes and Working Men’s Clubs across England a customary tradition for the celebration of Monumental Events and Great Festivals has been to relieve oneself of responsibility and inhibition and organize a Knees Up. In this tradition Industry of the Ordinary invite you and your loved ones to their 2009 Xmas Knees Up. Traditional British food, drink, music, dancing. games and visuals will be served, and the first one hundred guests will receive a commemorative drinking vessel to use and cherish.

A show about the unconventional portrait featuring works by Ben Fain, Ian Hokin, Andrew Holmquist, Autumn Ramsey and Alice Tippit. Throughout history, the face has been an enduring, ambivalent subject manipulated by artists to explore a range of human emotion. Often a formal affair required for the preservation of a family memory, portraiture has long been swapped out for it's modern equivalent- the photo. Since the invention of photography, portraits have become a new beast altogether- sometimes barely reminiscent of the human form in varying states of play, despair, or terror. These five artists take the definition of ...

New sculptures and paintings by Brian McNearney begin to try to empathize with and understand the plant's sense of humor, while simultaneously feeling seriously sorry for them, ultimately left terrified at their prevalence. New sculptures and paintings by Edra Soto explore how different forms represent ideas of Heaven and Hell. Speculations of what awaits us after passing, rebirth, transformation, world peace, communions, hope, love, and ideas of mental and spiritual darkness are all referenced through a lens of a Roman Catholic upbringing.

Roots & Culture gallery presents a screening of video work by Scott Wolniak. As an artist whose video work grows out of his regular studio practice, Wolniak’s humorous, labor-intensive and frequently metaphysical work is a well-regarded fixture in the Chicago gallery community. This program highlights ten years of Wolniak’s videos, from early pieces focusing on performance, to more recent animation projects. This screening of collected work is a rare chance to see the bulk of Wolniak’s pieces, most originally shown in installation contexts, in one program. Scott Wolniak is an interdisciplinary visual artist working in drawing, sculpture, video and installation. ...

Being Beings uses performance-based video to describe the role of collaboration in the art-making process, as well as, to look deeply into the artist in order to share broader concepts of a generational and meditative background.

Work by Scott Cowan and Paul Cowan. We have options, an infinite amount of them, which we must see as wide-open variables to use or deny. Every decision made is made with intention. It isn’t about being ‘right’ or ‘wrong’, but rather the sequence of events and how they add up. The more reduced something is and the more minimal its expression, then the more malleable it is to having meanings applied. It is a challenge to attempt to communicate in a realm where a rhetoric language has precedent over all others. Our perception is keen and desires to become ...