"Religare": according to Tom Harpur and Joseph Campbell the word Religion derives from the Latin word "ligare" which means "bind, connect", and combined with the prefix "re"= re-ligare, i.e. re (again) + ligare or "to reconnect". For this art exhibit, artists will create work that analizes and critiques the concept of religion. Work by Saul Aguirre, Miguel Cortez, Rocky Horton, James Jankowiak, Laura Olear, Josue Pellot, Polly Perez, Jenny Priego, Elvia Rodriguez-Ochoa and more.

Summer is best used nursing a cocktail on the veranda, not for stewing over challenging concepts. Booze and Bacon is my personal foolproof recipe for crowd pleasing. A group of dynamic people indulging in simple pleasures is both the desired outcome and generative of the next. It’s like that kiss good night after a really good first date: enough of what you want to get you hooked for the second. Maybe we don’t learn that much along the way, but it sure is a hell of a ride. This show will feature artists who have been exhibiting for years, sometimes in really ...

Our dark ages. A spectral gathering of amplifiers. The ghostly smear of hair in mid-headbang. A charred chapel, blasted out windows, candles burn in some arcane rite and a bonfire menaces in the distance. What are we in? A concert gone wrong, a cult ceremony, the apocalypse? For the past few years, Terence Hannum's oneiric gouache drawings have culled the periphery of heavy metal subculture and amplifier worship to analyze the nexus of music, myth and ritual. In Negative Altars the drawings are combined in triptychs, arrangements that position them akin to medieval narrative devices. In many of the pieces, ...

Work by Carl Baratta, Carolina Wheat, Montgomery Perry Smith, Theodore Darst and Ryan Ingebritson. Living Treasure is a shadow of Pentagon Gallery's first opening Nemesis, a show that engaged cultural others and darkness in music, film, literature and athleticism. Living Treasure attempts to take note from Nemesis but focuses on current global issues and America's involvement with in them. Each artist transforms ideas of violence, destruction, environment, religion, and sexuality by utilizing different mediums and engaging the viewer to be critical of their own social nature. The show it's self might seem sinister but stays ...

It's not unfortunate there is no internet at this event. All the works will be uploaded onto the hardware that will be setting before you. In some cases, the artist's personal laptop will be on view. You will be standing and viewing a "vvork" like the artist saw as he made it, or found it etc whatever. This exhibition aggressively addresses issues of "immateriality" and "free art" in the context they've been discussed on rhizome, the jogging, tom moody etc whatever. Unlike the internet, this exhibition—social is free. Crates & Laptops is an exhibition-social presenting screen-based works, installations and ...

Work by Saul Aguirre, Adriana Baltazar, Miguel Cortez, Salvador Jiménez-Flores, Jaime Mendoza, Jenny Priego and Elvia Rodriguez-Ochoa. Yong Choi on the Project Wall Space.

What's the point in stating the sensible facts of experience, perceptually obvious tropes and/or the marriage of information and theory in mystery? In his first solo show, Jesus Javier considers two separate yet colloquial bodies of work, in a standard context of a relative medium creating idiomatic/ dialectical junctures between points A and B. i.e.: indicative v. subjective, information v. influence, perception v. emotion, certainty v. doubt, TV, Chinatown/ Pilsen, [painting], cords, PEREGRINEPROGRAM, windows, doors, walls, Jesus, portraits, language, narrative, illustration, objects, image, process, space, Edmund, amor es realidad, signifies, myth, light, DVD player, Duke Ellington, Leopold von Sacher-Masoch, ...

The lake that we are walking to is in the shape of a heart. The heart rises up and floats in the air, it makes a void inside the mountain. The moon is like a fire that shrinks and rises into the sky. After the fire, the structure of the forest remains, like a ruin. In the regrowth of wildflowers among the burned out trees are colors bright and alien. Purples, pinks, and yellows. Oceans that once were, rivers that have eroded the earth, and civilizations that altered lands and died: these landscapes are alien, what is left does ...

Work by Deborah Stratman, Jim Zimpel, Jesse Avina, Daniel Baird, Jake Myers and the Pentagon Education Collective. The artwork featured in this exhibition examines the effectiveness and importance of heroics in contemporary American culture. Images and stories of heroic athletes, soldiers, astronauts, cowboys and other saviors are transformed to expose the idiosyncratic, dangerous, sincere and sometimes necessary efforts of American heroes. The Pentagon Saves the World will feature video, photography, sculpture and film. Come early for soup and beverages.

In Oblivion Begins with the Eyes, Rebecca Walz presents a group of 21" x 21" inkjet archival prints of photographs taken of Polaroids from her extensive archive, assembled over the course of the past seven years.  The archive comprises Polaroids taken from art history books, television, film, the Internet and life. Walz's diverse subjects reflect our daily consumption of information on the world wide web: Abu Ghraib, the cave paintings at Lascaux, Hitchcock's heroines, pornography and the Pennsylvanian countryside in which the artist grew up.  As with artists of the Pictures Generation, such as Richard Prince and Sherrie Levine, these Polaroids ...

5 durational performances based on 4 accounts of 1 event. Video by Georgia Wall. Performances by Vicki Fowler, Millie Kapp, Isabella Ng, Libby O'Bryan, Ali Scott and Hannah Verrill.

An exhibition of work by Ellen Nielsen. Using craft processes on an exaggerated scale, Nielsen addresses issues of consumerism, labor, ornamentation and spectacle. In WHIM JOBS, benign decorations are transformed into monstrous objects of desire. Symbols of feminine whimsy and excess become potent and imposing forms.

John Hartley discovered his life’s passion while growing up in Piqua, Ohio. Encouraged to develop his talents in an academic environment, he moved to Fort Worth, Texas in 1982 to study art at Texas Christian University. After graduation, he began building a body of work that includes paintings, prints, and sculpture. Exhibiting throughout Texas and the United States, his work has been critically received and is included in collections across the country. In 1990, the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth purchased two of his monoprints for its exhibition, Forty Texas Printmakers. His exhibitions include shows at Kidder Smith Gallery ...

A collection of images & objects by Paul Erschen.

Zack Stadel builds paint until it becomes an entity. No id. But there it is. As with a minimalist cube, it is the thing, not about the thing. Funny how that common impulse leads one group of artists toward purity and another toward the sewer. Zack’s paintings have the presence of a someone, but not the essence. Confrontation with this lump that resembles a head generates ambivalence. There is something alien and oddly threatening. But what can be learned if caution is thrown to the wind and the significance of this thing is allowed to become the field of ...

And so: as the Great Depression (Redux) becomes ever more depressing and the breadlines grow longer under President Obama's communist administration (32 czars and counting!), your comrades at BEN RUSSELL have taken to the hills with the few thousand kopeks (100 to the Ruble) they still have hidden under their collectively-owned mattress to bring you yet another Thematic Group Art Exhibition (in which all works are equal and sold for the same price) - BEN RUSSELL : RUBLES. Timed to open one week prior to Art Chicago and the NEXT Fair and supported in part by the rubles-for-clunkers program, BEN RUSSELL ...

A solo exhibition by Manya Gerlib-Barr of relief prints in an installation exploring space, tradition and perspective.

In Palimpsest, Jorge Mujica looks critically at painting and sculpture to create hybrid objects that examine the use of painterly materials and the interaction of space. The hybrid objects are created with hand crafted stretcher bars and commercially bought materials to compose a contemporary perspective examining the architecture of the pentagon gallery. The result is a conceptual intersection between minimalist sculptor Donald Judd and the assemblage work of Jessica Stockholder. Like a palimpsest, the work shows the art historical context he is dealing with and makes room to insert his perspective. Human curiosity can be described as an internal pursuit to ...

"Susanna Coffey could be called the Robert Ryman of self-portraiture," according to New York Times art critic Ken Johnson. Aside from her signature portraits though, Susanna Coffey consistently pursues other subjects. More recently, she exhibited a series of flower paintings (at the Jerald Melberg Gallery) in South Carolina. In the body of work leading up to that, the flowers were usually shown with paintings depicting war and devastation. Presented on their own, the flower paintings read very differently, and more importantly remind us of Coffey's constancy as a painter first and foremost. To work at painting is to work at ...

Page-turning snippets of foodstuffs, supermarket deals, catalogue crap, beautiful bodies and smiling idiots capture uncomfortable moments. Glossy images of super perfection are cut, collapsed and re-imagined in This Is Why We Can’t Have Nice Things—eight years of collage and mixed media works on paper by Chicago artist and musician Marvin Astorga. The exhibition places the viewer in an imaginary universe where the slick imagery of consumer culture mutates into nauseating landscapes, false deities, sloppy beasts, and diamonds congealed in the sky. Distorting and reconfiguring the picture-perfect, the collages become dense, dynamic visions reveling in the sudden humor of juxtaposition ...

Repetition on, over, or alongside other repetition creates tones, blanks, and discords not altogether within the artist's control. The use of words, that are a far cry from firm definition in such repetitions, invites confusion. Economy of means allows every small nuance of word, reading, writing, or definition to be highlighted. Repeating these statements dislodges further inherent meaning of each word, phrase, or sentence. It is not an answer to the question, it is a rejection of the question. god god god is a collection of Charles Mahaffee's recent work woven around words usually standing for or with non-material concepts, compulsions, ...

Liminality describes the nature of being "in-between;" neither here nor there – or perhaps here and there. This exhibition explores the nature of liminality though examining work from the virtual world, Second Life, and its dialogues with issues of physicality via an exhibition at Antena Gallery, Chicago and on I Am Columbia Island in Second Life. The show will include objects, mixed reality performance, video, print and virtual installation in either physical, virtual or mixed-reality forms. What is the nature of art when it emerges in virtual worlds, and what happens when it attempts to emerge into physicality, and vice ...

"Love," like "art" doesn’t have a single simple meaning. Every song ever written, every play, movie has tried to figure out what it is and how to deal with it. All of this collective brooding has reduced the language and images about love down to a few we recognize right off, hearts and broken hearts. Artists Mican Morgan and Porous Walker use this lexicon and suggest a slightly new one for an idea refresh and a necessary laugh. Love is not stale; it’s free. Mican Morgan manipulates relationship clichés like her sculptural materials. She pulls them apart and sticks different ...

Radical Semantics is a survey of 16mm films by film-makers whose methods stand in opposition to the algorithmic and computer assisted processes that define many contemporary media works. Often working with home-made optics and developing their film in sinks and buckets, these filmmakers create short works that emphasize the expressive and opt for complexity rather than reproducibility and homogeneity. Featuring Eric Stewart, Alex Lake, Ross McFessell, Adam Neese and Randy Sterling Hunter.

This March Pentagon presents Sara Condo and Kate Ruggeri in their very own two artists exhibition. These solo artists have decided to become a duo and pair work to create a solid visual experience. Their artwork romanticizes ideas of the mundane but brings in humor and physical emotion. Sara and Kate are not afraid to create a dialogue with sincerity, personal experience and aspects of femininity with in their artwork. Showcasing photographs, sculpture and painting this show explores different mediums in hope to create continuity with their ideas.

From lapis lazuli to Lactarius indigo, Painter Smurf to the throat chakra, Lee Mynung-Bak's house to one-half of the Grecian Flag, and Palestinian Nav'i Protesters to Eifel 65, your friends at BEN RUSSELL invite you to wave hello (and goodbye) to all things BLUE on this, the first day of Spring. For a city steeped in so much historical BLUENESS (see: the Chicago Blues, the CTA, the Blue Man Group) and a discipline awash in so much azurite, ultramarine, and cerulean blue (see: Madonna with Child, Picasso's Blue Period, Der Blau Reiter), it only makes sense that these histories would ...

SYNTHETIC/SUBLIME celebrates the range of abstraction in the work of emerging Chicago painters. Curated by Katherine Harvath. Work by Megan Louis, Racer LeVan, Emre Kocagil, Ji Soo Hong and Katherine Harvath.

The private lives of humans, animals, and houseplants exist betwixt and between the magic and glamour of polarized human emotions in Hexenhaus. Fantastic environments created by Tessa Siddle build psychologically charged hybrid spaces and narratives. Domestic objects, natural elements and projections combine to embody multiple versions of self in evocative settings and situations. The breakdown of communication-attraction-domesticity-loneliness-jealousy-witchcraft becomes a meditation. As a Transgender film/video, installation and performance artist, Siddle's work uses costumes, cosmetics, projections, blue-screen and minimally worked materials such as cardboard, yarn, tin foil, untreated wood, leaves, paper, fabric and fur to critique binary social constructions—Nature/Culture, Animal/Human, Autobiography/Fiction, Physical/Mental, ...