Ladies Night in Lascaux featuring work by Hope Esser & Liz McCarthy

Ladies Night in Lascaux is a dual person exhibition that includes sculpture, garments, video, and installation vignettes that visually and physically challenge historical narratives around artistic and cultural authorship. The title of the exhibition playfully references the location of Paleolithic cave paintings in France, the theater of a nightclub, and the misconception that the first artists were men. Through varied approaches both artists explore and mutate the body to perform the role of maker, female, usher, musician, magician, icon, or muse in order to shift comfortable contemporary archetypes and myths. The works highlight the function of objects and bodies as they become performers on the stage of our collective experience.

Performances in conjunction with the exhibition will take place on May 19 at 6PM and May 27 at 3PM.

Hope Esser is a multidisciplinary artist working in performance, garment, sculpture, and video. She earned her BA from Oberlin College and her MFA from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago, where she was awarded the Toby Devan Lewis and the James Nelson Raymond Fellowships. She has performed, screened, and exhibited at the Indianapolis Museum of Art, Gallery 400, the Arts Club of Chicago, and La Esquina Gallery, among others. She has been an artist-in-residence at Triangle Arts Association, ACRE, Hatch Projects, the Watermill Center, and Ox-Bow, where she was a recipient of the Joan Mitchell Scholarship, and has also been a recipient of the SAIC Faculty Enrichment Grant.

Liz McCarthy is a cross-disciplinary artist that recently completed her MFA at University of Chicago at Illinois. Her work has been included in group and solo exhibitions nationally at galleries such as ACRE Projects, Heaven Gallery, Calvin College Gallery, Columbia College Arcade Gallery, Mana Contemporary, Gallery 400, and Threewalls. She has attended artist residencies at Atlantic Center for the Arts, ACRE, High Concept Laboratories, and Banff Centre. She was recently nominated a “2017 Chicago Breakout Artist” by NewCity Magazine.

With Yani Aviles “Iris” in the Milwaukee Ave. window gallery

Iris,

cloud and sea
to see
An opening
A bridge

A shadow where light surrounds

the message.

And just like that and just like that

Sometimes it’s cloudy.

Yani Aviles (b. Brooklyn, NY) is a multidisciplinary artist, healer and INFP. Her practice operates as living sculpture and installation transforming energy and personal life experiences into multisensory metaphors. Through experimental material processes they explore potentials for self actualization and altered awareness. She received a BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and most recent exhibitions include group shows at The Franklin (Chicago, IL), Kruger Gallery (Chicago, IL), The Institute fur Alles Mogliche (Berlin, Germany), and LVL3 (Chicago,IL).